Today a musician who follows this blog told me she likes the metaphysical entries the best. Hmmm.

I had already been thinking about how essential it is to have dissonance in one's musical life. A steady diet of consonance just won't do, just as it won't do to retain the taste of a four-year-old in any other respect.

One person I teach was not granted the possibility of a fully developed brain as most of us experience it, nor does he have sight. I have insisted, gently but persistently, that he learn Bartok from the volumes "For Children." Though he still resists at times, most of the dissonances are there in all their melancholy, even grief. Surely he experiences these emotions somewhere in his being--he is, after all, human--though music is the only means he has to express them.

Everyone who hears him play is moved.

Every time I hear him play I am moved. And challenged.