{"id":4804,"date":"2012-06-28T05:54:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T10:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=4804"},"modified":"2012-06-28T05:54:45","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T10:54:45","slug":"meditation-music-is-a-means-of-enjoying-the-ephemeral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/06\/28\/meditation-music-is-a-means-of-enjoying-the-ephemeral\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditation: Music is a means of enjoying the ephemeral"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I sat on the balcony for a few minutes this morning as the rising sun began to illuminate passing grey clouds, turning them a peachy-orange from below and creamy yellow from above.<\/p>\n

Views like this one have inspired visual artists for centuries. But their image is frozen in time, similar to yet completely different from what the eye saw a minute before and a minute after.<\/p>\n

What makes the scene particularly compelling is how it is transformed even before our brain can register its approval. The moment is manifestly there, yet completely untouchable.<\/p>\n

The best kind of live concert is exactly the same: a succession of beautiful moments, fondly caressed, yet lost the moment we become conscious of them.<\/p>\n

A note is stuck, it blooms and it decays. It’s the full cycle of life replayed over and over and over again, yet never exactly the same.<\/p>\n

+++<\/p>\n

Here’s a fascinating transcription by American flute and marimba duo Zara Lawler and Paul Fadoul<\/a> of one of my desert island compositions, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Op. 87 Prelude and Fugue<\/em> in A Major, followed by the original, as played by young Bulgarian-born pianist Christo Popov<\/a> at the Euterpe Piano Competition a couple of years ago:<\/p>\n