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When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made. – E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
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Daniel Barenboim plays Beethoven’s Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra in C minor. Daniel Barenboim is the conductor and plays piano with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Recorded at the Berlin Philharmonie, 15 February 1995. (final 3 minutes)
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If you look at the essential unrepeatability of music, the fact that it is different every time because it comes in a different moment – you learn many things about the world, about nature, about human beings and human relations. And therefore, it is, in many ways, the best school for life, really. And yet, at the same time, it is a means of escape from the world. And with this duality of music that we come to the paradox. How is it possible that something that can teach you so much about the world, about nature and universe, and for more religious people, about God – that something that is so clearly able to teach you so many things can serve as a means of escape from precisely those things?
Whenever we talk about music, we talk about how we are affected by it, not about it itself. In this respect, it is like God. We can’t talk about God, or whatever you want to call it, but we can only talk about our reaction to a thing – some people know God exists and others refuse to admit God exists – but we cannot speak about it. We can only speak about our reaction to it.
– Daniel Barenboim, Parallels & Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society
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Dispatches from the Asylum 