29-03-2015, 06:20
Lindsay has raised some interesting issues, and has opened the doors and windows to some potentially useful posting here at this site. I'll respond to his post with the following 3 items which are intended. not so much to answer the questions raised but, simply, to stimulate discussion.-Ron Price, Australia
1. As he worked at the Decline and Fall Gibbon became convinced that the true character of men was so complex and elusive that it could be only tentatively described....If even a contemporary could not unravel the complexities of character, what could a historian hope for?.....Gibbon became increasingly reticent about judging character and motivation. Gibbon presents history as preeminently a construction, a literary work with aesthetic rather than systematic order and coherence.-David P. Jordan, Gibbon and His Roman Empire, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1971, p.5.
2. John Corigliano finds that a composer setting out to write a new piece should have âsomething terribly important to sayâ âsomething so important that the music will not be used as background noise, the fate of much music today. The act of composing is a difficult, frustrating process. With few exceptions, this is the message from these composers. Although they find the going rough, their greatest satisfaction is in the final product. There is nothing else they prefer doing, and nothing else is like the mystery of the process. But there is no mystery to inspiration. The muse sings for them only by dint of incessant, tedious work, as they remain ever alert to new ideas. -Ann McCutchan, The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak about the Creative Process, Oxford University Press, NY, 1999.
3. "We played music in the house all the time," recalls Toni Morrison in a 1992 interview with Dana Micucci. Indeed, Morrison was inundated with music and song during her childhood years in Lorain, Ohio. Morrison's mother, Ramah Willis, was just one of many musicians on her mother's side: she was a jazz and opera singer and played piano for a silent movie theatre, while Morrison's grandfather was a violin player. Morrison remembers how her mother sang everything from Ella Fitzgerald and the blues to sentimental Victorian songs and arias from Carmen. That music should play such an important role in much of Morrison's writing, then, will probably come as no surprise for her readers." This is from the journal Connotations (7.3, 1997-98, pp. 372-98). The article is entitled: "Trading Meanings: The Breath of Music in Toni Morrison's Jazz" by NICHOLAS F. PICI.
1. As he worked at the Decline and Fall Gibbon became convinced that the true character of men was so complex and elusive that it could be only tentatively described....If even a contemporary could not unravel the complexities of character, what could a historian hope for?.....Gibbon became increasingly reticent about judging character and motivation. Gibbon presents history as preeminently a construction, a literary work with aesthetic rather than systematic order and coherence.-David P. Jordan, Gibbon and His Roman Empire, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1971, p.5.
2. John Corigliano finds that a composer setting out to write a new piece should have âsomething terribly important to sayâ âsomething so important that the music will not be used as background noise, the fate of much music today. The act of composing is a difficult, frustrating process. With few exceptions, this is the message from these composers. Although they find the going rough, their greatest satisfaction is in the final product. There is nothing else they prefer doing, and nothing else is like the mystery of the process. But there is no mystery to inspiration. The muse sings for them only by dint of incessant, tedious work, as they remain ever alert to new ideas. -Ann McCutchan, The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak about the Creative Process, Oxford University Press, NY, 1999.
3. "We played music in the house all the time," recalls Toni Morrison in a 1992 interview with Dana Micucci. Indeed, Morrison was inundated with music and song during her childhood years in Lorain, Ohio. Morrison's mother, Ramah Willis, was just one of many musicians on her mother's side: she was a jazz and opera singer and played piano for a silent movie theatre, while Morrison's grandfather was a violin player. Morrison remembers how her mother sang everything from Ella Fitzgerald and the blues to sentimental Victorian songs and arias from Carmen. That music should play such an important role in much of Morrison's writing, then, will probably come as no surprise for her readers." This is from the journal Connotations (7.3, 1997-98, pp. 372-98). The article is entitled: "Trading Meanings: The Breath of Music in Toni Morrison's Jazz" by NICHOLAS F. PICI.
married for 47 years, a teacher for 32, a student for 18, a writer and editor for 15, and a Baha'i for 55(in 2014)
