A composer colleague has just purchased my Tonal Refraction book on the Mozart G minor Piano Quartet--the whole thing, complete with annotations of each individual part as well as the score. With any luck working through the book will turn out to be like studying composition from inside a work of Mozart without theoretical analysis -- in other words, it will involve inhabiting the dramatic logic of each line through the sensibility of a musician whose entire life has been devoted to piercing from the ear the inner workings of textures so rich that they require four people to bring them to life.
For what does it mean to study a masterwork if not to inhabit it through the sensibility of its creator, which is completely different from the going standard of imitating the latest recording by famous players.
