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in The New Yorker, Aug. 21, 2006
from "Measure for Measure: Exploring the Mysteries of Conducting" by Justin Davidson (here talking to Robert Spano, conductor of the Atlanta Symphony):
"I mentioned a couple of world premieres that I sometimes fantasized about attending: Beethoven's Seventh; Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring.' I wondered how clearly the first listeners and performers had perceived the violent originality of those works, or understood that they were hearing future classics.
'I have diminishing interest in posterity,' Spano said, 'I no longer feel that the test of the value of something is time. What's much more important is the power of a musical experience in a given moment. And that can happen with a Paganini violin piece that most of us agree shouldn't be called a masterpiece. I think of composers as setting up possibilities, not creating objects. There's no such thing as Beethoven's Seventh. It's only a hypothesis.' Spano was silent for a while, then he said, 'Pieces of music are wormholes, which we can enter to escape our normal experience of time.'"
from "Measure for Measure: Exploring the Mysteries of Conducting" by Justin Davidson (here talking to Robert Spano, conductor of the Atlanta Symphony):
"I mentioned a couple of world premieres that I sometimes fantasized about attending: Beethoven's Seventh; Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring.' I wondered how clearly the first listeners and performers had perceived the violent originality of those works, or understood that they were hearing future classics.
'I have diminishing interest in posterity,' Spano said, 'I no longer feel that the test of the value of something is time. What's much more important is the power of a musical experience in a given moment. And that can happen with a Paganini violin piece that most of us agree shouldn't be called a masterpiece. I think of composers as setting up possibilities, not creating objects. There's no such thing as Beethoven's Seventh. It's only a hypothesis.' Spano was silent for a while, then he said, 'Pieces of music are wormholes, which we can enter to escape our normal experience of time.'"
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