Subject:
Fwd: Have a Great Trip!
From:
Ernst Meyer <ernstmeyer@earthlink.net>
Date:
Sat, 17 Sep 2011 07:27:46 -0400
To:
undisclosed-recipients:;



-------- Original Message --------
Subject:     Have a Great Trip!
Date:     Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:23:06 -0500
From:     Marion Namenwirth <namenwir@umn.edu>
Organization:     University of Minnesota
To:     Jochen Meyer <ernstmeyer@earthlink.net>



Dear Jochen,  Thankyou for inviting me to feast at your groaning board of ideas.
Perhaps we could think of music as an invitation......an invitation to dance.  How will we allow this music to affect us?
If cultural experience has convinced us "Dass hat nichts mit mir zu tun", we'll reject the characteristics of this piece of music altogether..  But if we can provisionally open ourselves to it, then as the music unfurls, it reaches in to us, searching for responsive parts of our being.  Gentleness, sadness, curiosity, desire, love, fear, anger, loneliness, resentment, rebellion.........whatever characteristics are curled up inside us,  respond, inflate, develop in response to the invitation of the corresponding feature in the music.
In this way what happens when I experience music is a hybrid of the qualities in the music itself (whatever that could mean; is there music apart from a llistener?) and the qualities in me that are sufficiently formed to respond to aspects of the music, and that may grow and develop in response to the music.
Thus music changes over time, and is different in different sections of society at any one time, because of the evolution and oscillation of cultures, which shape the composer as well as the listener.
The congeniality and warmth of your e-conversation with Helmut is wonderful.
Marion