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Welcome to "Ateljé 42", the house where profound classical music can be heard and experienced.
It will be our endeavour to attempt to create within our small concert hall an atmosphere (Stimmung) that will appeal to serious and discerning classical music lovers. We wish to centre our efforts on creating memberships (friends) so that they then have the knowledge that "Ateljé 42" becomes their home so to say, an island where they will have the opportunity to meet musicians, create new friendships and be able to discuss and share musical experiences.
We are very keen to encourage young people to attend and to this end shall call upon members to make every effort to bring at least one young person with them be it from family, friends, friends of friends, school mates, neighbors, in fact from every far corner where they can be found.
As we are an entirely non-profit making organization. The success of our venture will depend on the number of visitors, hopefully who then become members (friends) who attend our concerts. We have no private funding.
We shall centre our efforts on contacting and inviting young, gifted and hard working musicians together with a spattering of mature established players who desire to perform for an audience within an intimate ´Salong´ style setting where they can feel at home knowing that they will always be welcome.
It is our defined desire to lead both musicians and audience to a point where there begins to grow a deeper knowledge and understanding of the true meaning of profound music and the role that it plays in our lives.
To this end we welcome all those of you for whom music plays an important and central role in your lives and for whom the words of Zoltán Kodály have true meaning.
"There are regions of the human soul which can be illumed only through music."
Zoltán Kodály.
My writing here will consist of seemingly random words based on my musical experiences. These writings are personal and must be read as such.
"The composer translates into physical sounds the rhythms and harmonies which at night imprint themselves on his Astral body, (The feeling life). Unconsciously he takes his model from the spiritual invisibe world, he has in himself the harmonies which he translates into physical terms .
A tone lies at the foundation of everything in the physical world. Music, it`s source lies not in the physical world of matter but purely in the invisible spiritual world, the true home of the human soul, thus the musician stands closer to the heart of the world than all other artists."
Rudolf Steiner
As I am an Admirable of Albert Einstein I take the liberty of writing the following words as spoken by the great man.
"It occurred to me by intuition, and the music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception."
Albert Einstein.
When asked about his theory of relativity.
"The language of music" needs no literary explanation, indeed to attempt such an explanation leads one away from the musical world.
Gyspy Rey
"The notes I handle no better than many a pianist. But the pauses between the notes ............. ah, that is where the art resides."
Artur Schnabel
He might have added, "It is between the notes (the pregnant silences) wherein lies the true essence of music."
There has been a long pause since my last writing: perhaps it is because I wish to make clear to myself certain truth before putting pen to paper so to say. Anyway here goes!
In reality music does not exist that has as it's source the world of matter, the mineral kingdom, nor the kingdom of nature, nor indeed the animal kingdom. These Kingdoms are full of sounds, tones yes but not music. Why is it then that there seems to be a persistant need in certain quarters to imitate, mimic, and thus attempt to illustrate and read into music elements that are simply not there? Why this sickness which in truth has absolutely nothing to do with music, which is actually a totally unmusical concept. Many composers themselves have been guilty of this error by giving their Creations illustrative titles thus helping to intensify the illusion. Music is a creation out of man himself, and the imitation of Nature is a false musical path. Music belong to Man, not to Nature.
Another great illusion that persistence in our time and one that actually takes us away from music is the accent placed upon recordings in their various Guises, what Igor Stravinsky referred to as "Mechanical means." I should like to quote in length from his autobiography what he has to say concerning this subject, and these observations were written in the year 1929 some eighty years ago.
In the domain of music the importance and influence of dissemination by mechanical means, such as the record and the radio-those redoutable triumphs of modern science which will probably undergo still further development make them worthy of the closest investigation. The facilities that they offer to composers and executants alike for reaching great numbers of listeners, and the opportunities that they give to those listeners of acquainting themselves with works that they have not heard, are obviously Indisputable advantages. But one must not overlook the fact that such advantages are attended by serious dangers. In JS Bach`s day it was necessary for him to walk ten miles to a neighboring town to hear Buxtehude play his works. Today anyone, living no matter where, has only to turn a knob or put on a record to hear what he likes. Indeed, it is precisely this incredible facility, this lack of necessity for any effort, that the evil of this so-called progress lies. For in music, more that in any other branch of art, understanding is given only to those who make an active effort. Passive receptivity is not enough. To listen to certain combinations of sound and automatically become accustomed to them does not necessarily imply that they have been heard and understood. For one can listen without hearing, just as one can look without seeing. The absence of active effort and the acquired liking for this facility makes for laziness. The radio has got rid of the necessity which existed in Bach`s day for getting one out of one's armchair. Nor are any listeners longer impelled to play themselves, or to spend time learning an instrument in order to acquire a knowledge of musical literature. the wireless and the Gramophone do all that. And thus the active faculties of listeners, without which one can not assimilate music, gradually become atrophied from lack of use. This Creeping Paralysis entails very serious consequences. Oversaturated with sounds,
Blasé
even before combinations of the utmost variety, listeners fall into a kind of torpor which deprives them of all power of descrimination and makes them indifferent to the quality of the pieces presented. It is more than likely that such irrational overfeeding will make them lose all appetite and relish for music. There will, of course, always be exceptions, individuals who will know how to select from the mass those things that appeal to them. But for the majority of listeners there is every reason to fear that, far from developing a love and understanding of music, the modern methods of dissemination will have a diametrically opposite effect-that is to say, the production of indifference, inability to understand, to appreciate, or to undergo any worthy reaction.
In addition, there is the musical deception arising from the substitution for the actual playing of a reproduction, whether on record or film or by wireless transmission from a distance. It is the same difference as that between the
ersatz
(substitute) and the authentic.The danger lies in the very fact that there is always a far greater consumption of the ersatz; which, it must be remembered is far from being identical with its model. The continuos habit of listening to changed and sometimes distorted, timbre spoiles the ear, so that it gradually resolves all capacity for enjoying natural musical sounds.
All these considerations may seem unexpected coming from one who has worked so much, and is still working, in this field. I think that I have sufficiently stressed the Instructional value that I unreservedly ascribe to this means of musical reproduction: but that does not prevent me from seing its negative sides, and I anxiously ask myself whether they are sufficiently outweighed by the positive advantages to enable one to face them with impunity.
Igor Stravinsky
Something tell me that Stravinsky would be appalled were he here today to witness the progress that has been made in the musical mechanical field, and that his anxiety has certainly tests to be fully justified.
I have this image in my minds eye of the conductor Herbert von Karajan who in his later years had built what looked like an enormous concrete bunker below ground, and there he could be found sitting at his console where digital re-mastering, etc, took the place of many of his recordings. He was obsessed with the concept of his own immortality. However what he was actually doing in my eyes was creating a musical grave yard.
The great beauty of chamber music created in an intimate setting is the fact that the quality of playing is heard and experienced in conditions where the players are totally exposed as nothing escape the listener therefore the musicianship must be of the highest order. The combination of the musician and the audience and that which takes place and is experienced between them is for me a reality that constitute real and alive music making.
Fortunately music itself will live forever and remain pure despite the many attempt to manipulator and abuse it.
sic itur ad astra