369 • Tension is resistance to relaxation. That resistance is futile.
368 • Survival is not sufficient
Preparation for performance must be more than the attempt to make it through without mistakes. Music is not a dish one prepares at home and then tastes on stage. Practicing an ornament, a passage, an exposition, or a piece so it is not only clean but also expressive is not the goal: it is the premise of preparation.
367 • Ask what you can do for music, not what music can do for you!
366 • Michelangelo’s hand
In every solar system in the galaxy is a range around the sun within which the ideal distance and trajectory for a life sustaining environment is provided. Astronomers and astrobiologists term that range the Habitat- or Life Zone, colloquially the "Goldilocks Zone", the "just right" distance from the sun. Not surprisingly our planet is in the Goldilocks Zone around our star - 2% further out and global glaciation would envelop the planet.
365 • The beauty of passages
A gesture, passage, arpeggiation, run, and ornament, which is played at the appropriate speed and with dynamic contour, amounts to more than the sum of individual keystrokes, as its parts melt together to bring forth a new quality and aesthetic. Like looking at a painting from the right distance.
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