Friday, September 3, 2010

On Aesthetics, Music And God

On the page, it looked... nothing. The beginning was simple, almost comic, just a pulse: bassoons, basset horns like a rusty squeezebox. And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet took it over -sweetened it into a phrase of such delight. This was no composition by a performing monkey. This was a music I had never heard -filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.

- Salieri, Amadeus, 1984.

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