Plays, Acting and Music: A Book Of TheorySymons, Arthur
Philosophy
Plays, Acting and Music: A Book Of Theory
Symons, Arthur
Actors; Music -- History and criticism; Theater
It has been complained that Pachmann's readings are not intellectual,
that he does not interpret. It is true that he does not interpret
between the brain and music, but he is able to disimprison sound, as no
one has ever done with mortal hands, and the piano, when he touches it,
becomes a joyous, disembodied thing, a voice and nothing more, but a
voice which is music itself. To reduce music to terms of human
intelligence or even of human emotion is to lower it from its own
region, where it is Ariel. There is something in music, which we can
apprehend only as sound, that comes to us out of heaven or hell, mocking
the human agency that gives it speech, and taking flight beyond it. When
Pachmann plays a Prelude of Chopin, all that Chopin was conscious of
saying in it will, no doubt, be there; it is all there, if Godowsky
plays it; every note, every shade of expression, every heightening and
quickening, everything that the notes actually say. But under Pachmann's
miraculous hands a miracle takes place; mystery comes about it like an
atmosphere, an icy thrill traverses it, the terror and ecstasy of a
beauty that is not in the world envelop it; we hear sounds that are
awful and exquisite, crying outside time and space. Is it through
Pachmann's nerves, or through ours, that this communion takes place? Is
it technique, temperament, touch, that reveals to us what we have never
dreamed was hidden in sounds? Could Pachmann himself explain to us his
own magic?
He would tell us that he had practised the piano with more patience than
others, that he had taken more trouble to acquire a certain touch which
is really the only way to the secret of his instrument. He could tell
you little more; but, if you saw his hands settle on the keys, and fly
and poise there, as if they had nothing to do with the perturbed,
listening face that smiles away from them, you would know how little he
had told you. Now let us ask Godowsky, whom Pachmann himself sets above
all other pianists, what he has to tell us about the way in which he
plays.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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