Among all of them, Mozart was perhaps the most genuine and genial artist. It is absolutely impressive to see the vastness and quality of his work, and if we consider his modest three and a half decades of life… There seems to be no one who comes close to him. A work so vast, so beautiful, so touching and so powerful seems inexplicable and impossible. An artist of inexhaustible and ever-excellent manifestations: the Mozart of the sonatas captivates, the Mozart of the concerts enchants, the peerless Mozart of the Réquiem amazes. How is this? how from a single man? In Mozart’s case, having the questions more than satisfies…
A Top Orchestra Is Almost a Cultural Salvation
It is indescribable the feeling of seeing, in color, a first-rate orchestra playing. I say see, and I do not know if I should have said feel. The expenditure of incredible sums to maintain it is justified because a top orchestra, depending on where it is located, is almost a cultural salvation. When one feels it, one concludes: there is hope. To witness, simultaneously, dozens of men who dedicate their lives to art; who, after long years of study and intense practice, train, train, and train to, in a very short presentation, transmit to those who see it the genius of noble and immortal spirits that have crossed the centuries. To notice the subtlety of synchronous, precise, and feeling-laden movements; to be silent and let oneself be guided by a sublime melody; to experience a direct contact with something beautiful: an experience of this nature morally elevates the audience that lives it.
Freedom From One’s Own Ideas
Twenty-six centuries ago, Lao-tze already noted that freedom from one’s own ideas is the mark of the “moderate man,” as my English translation puts it. We could change this adjective to prudent, wise, superior. If there is one trait that distinguishes low, immature, unevolved natures, it is attachment to what they think and believe. From this attachment, —these chains,— which can only be interpreted as a manifestation of vanity and stupid presumption, the days go by, and time does not improve the plastered being, the being hostile to everything new and different. Moderation, if we were to define it in the sense used in this passage from the Tao Te Ching, would be the capacity to give in and accept what is different—an unimaginable virtue for the presumptuous who considers himself to be the center of the universe.
The Ideal Reader
I review my notes and smile at my irritations. The truth is that I consider myself, modesty aside, the ideal reader. When I open a book, the last thing I want is to get irritated with the author. I give him total freedom to say whatever he wants, to create from the absurd to the ridiculous, to break all moral barriers and more as he feels he must do in order to express what he wants. What I do not have—and I am proud of this—is a guidebook for demanding it from whoever I read. I consciously choose readings that appear contrary to what I seem to think. And yet, even with this almost limitless openness, I always end up finding someone who gets on my nerves…