Often, especially young artists, you feel like you should be doing something. And I think that can be very destructive because creativity is about connecting with the stuff that's deep inside you and making something out of that.
Max RichterRead
All music is just a collision of sounds until you know its internal conventions and understand the nuances. It's a question of familiarity.
Interpretation
Music requires understanding and familiarity to appreciate its depth.
Max Richter suggests that music, at first glance, may seem like a mere assortment of sounds. However, to truly appreciate and understand music, one must familiarize themselves with its structures, conventions, and subtleties, which transform those sounds into a profound experience. This highlights the importance of insight and experience in the appreciation of artistic forms.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of music in education, one could say, 'As Max Richter wisely noted, all music is just a collision of sounds until we learn to understand it.'
Often, especially young artists, you feel like you should be doing something. And I think that can be very destructive because creativity is about connecting with the stuff that's deep inside you and making something out of that.
I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.
The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something.
Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.
You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like 'Finnegans Wake' and Picasso.
Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.
It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.
I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.
… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?
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