'Unpacking'

[tealin]

I'm jotting this down mostly for my own nefarious purposes reference, but I thought others might be interested in the idea, especially as it might relate to storytelling (in any medium) as much as music:

Paul Robertson, violininst: So is part of the value of the experience for us, the performer or the listener, actually the challenges of unpacking the meaning -- I mean, is that part of the process that makes the music special, do you think?

Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education: Absolutely. If it was all clear the first time, you'd do it, and you might want to listen to it a few times, and try it a few times, but then you'd want to go on to something more important. If the challenge in front of you is too great, you become anxious, and I could easily see a fledgling violinist or fledgling audience member finding some of these solo later works of Bach to be too challenging. And maybe we could say that the greatest works of art, the ones we come back to over and over again, we find additional challenges in them, as we mature and grow. I guess Bach hit the right combination, because here we are several hundred years later, still intoxicated by what he'd accomplished.

From The Innermost Master, a program on finding hidden intricacies and meanings in Bach's solo violin partitas. There's also an interesting bit on music not necessarily pointing to a specific emotion so much as describing 'the feeling of the feeling.' Link works till Sunday.