Friday, August 31, 2012

Time into Music

This morning I had a major revelation about life time in relation to musical time: A dear old friend contacted me the other day resuscitating fond memories from many years ago.  Overwhelmed, I found myself playing the Schubert G major Sonata with the Molto moderato e cantabile first movement in 12/8.  The tempo took on a whole new meaning as savoring past and present revealed something essential about sustained harmonies.

Ordinarily I am far too impatient to let my sense of forward motion be interfered with to that extent, but this time it was as if Schubert was allowing time -- all time -- to stand most powerfully still.