Music Quickens Time by Daniel Barenboim

"How do we live with discipline and passion? How do we make the connection between our brains and our hearts?" Barenboim asks towards the beginning of this collection of essays, interviews, and appreciations. Barenboim argues throughout the book, against the commonsense idea that gaining life experience can make you a better musician, that music has much to teach us about life. For example, we learn about relationship of parts to the whole, about how music integrates many voices in producing a whole, and how music can contain the tragic and the comic always. Barenboim distinguishes between "strategic" and "tactical" thinking about music... the strategic has teh end in mind, is relating the current moment of music to the whole; the tactical is about performing the moment. This, too, is about negotiating through life's contract. He defines thinking as a marriage between intellect, emotion, and intuition. (Intuition is what you get, I think he means, after studying something for a long time... it's like improvization.) Barenboim claims that we (and musicians in general) have become overly specialized. Conductors know only their own repertoire... the know Schubert's symphonies, but not his piano sonatas intimately. The book is an appreciation, too of several musicians, including Boulez. Barenboim cites Arnold Schoeberg, "The middle way is the only way that does not lead to Rome," in calling for "courage" in performance. "Each performer must find within himself the will required for this process, perhaps apdopting the line of most resistance outside the world of sound as well." Finally, I really like how this is phrased: "The unwillingness to ask these questions is symptomatic of thoughtless faithfulness to the letter and an inevitable unfaithfulness to the spirit."