two hundred & forty seven

I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists. ... I must write what pleases me and not what others like, or what the times dictate … I must seek beauty.  Poetry is essentially music that has been transformed into words meant for eternity ... When music touches poetry...all that matters is the actual meeting between the two. There is no philosophy, no world view, only the world singing its own praises as a musical testimony to life itself. *

* Valentin Silvestrov (b 30 September 1937)

two hundred & forty six

Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture. *

* Dmitri Shostakovich (25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975)

two hundred & forty five

art belongs to the unconscious *

* Arnold Schoenberg (13 September 1874 to 13 July 1951)

two hundred & forty four

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.*

* John Cage (5 September 1912 - 12 August 1992)