“… which in turn determine the character of life itself.”
This is from ‘The Many Dangers of Music’ found in Musical Lives and Times Examined: Keynotes and Clippings, 2006-2019 by Richard Taruskin (2023):
… There is the danger, of course, of moral blindness, so well exemplified by Ned Rorem’s perfectly insulated tautology: “Art, insofar as it is art, does not change us.” (I just love that clause beginning “insofar”!)
[line break added] Because it extends its purview to morals, Rorem’s dictum is even smugger than Schoenberg’s famous “If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.” But the other danger is worse. Teaching people that love of art ennobles them teaches them nothing but self-regard. You are left wondering, with George Steiner, “How to explain those who sing Schubert in the evening and torture in the morning?”
… “What music conveys to us,” [Roger] Sessions said:
“— and let it be emphasized, this is the nature of the medium itself, not the consciously formulated purpose of the composer — is the nature of our existence, as embodied in the movement that constitutes our innermost life: those inner gestures that lie behind not only our emotions, but our every impulse and action, which are in turn set in motion by these, and which in turn determine the character of life itself.”
My previous post from Taruskin’s book is here.
-Julie
Coloring 