On listening to music - plasticity, structure, images, multiplicity
"What is fascinating about music is the incredible fact that one cannot listen to the same piece of music twice in the same way, there are simply so many ways of approaching a piece of music, and there are two ways especially that exclude each other, as it were, one just has to choose the one or the other. Either one has to choose the kind of plastic form it takes, is it soft, for example, or does it remind one of a day in July, a hot day in July, or is there a melody hidden in the music that comes in some way from the depths of antiquity and is heading towards an uncertain future? One has all the time to focus on one or the other, and this mingling means that music will always be something completely new, at least if one is aware of one's own experience of it. In this way one discovers that one cannot lay down just how people should listen to a piece of music. One listens spontaneously, just as one looks at paintings, without making a conscious effort. People can see images, I myself sometimes experience spontaneous images or patterns of colour, and one can experience this as a cosmos, a Pythagorean pattern, a cosmic pattern. The possibilities are endless.
