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Sunday, September 18, 2011

Anecdotal Evidence: `What Matters Is the Beauty of the Attempt'

Anecdotal Evidence: `What Matters Is the Beauty of the Attempt'
Excerpt:
“In the old scores--and that has been enough.
Merely mechanical, sure, all artifice--

“But can that matter when it sounds like this?
What matters is the beauty of the attempt,

“The world for him being so far mostly dreamt.
Not that a lot, to tell the truth, has passed,

“Nothing to change our lives or that will last,
And not that we are awed, exactly; still,

“There is something to this beyond mere adult skill.
And if it moves but haltingly down its scales,

“It is the more moving just because it fails;
And is the lovelier because we know

“It has gone beyond itself, as great things go.” ~Donald Justice, “At the Young Composers' Concert”

...already knowing words fail him. There’s no human gift I envy more than musical performance. Words are a second-best substitute.

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