Music & Narnia

Another great post from Jeremy Denk trying to articulate what it is that can make a bunch of notes (in this case, Beethoven's last violin sonata) so captivating. The funny thing is that in describing a particularly magical passage, he likens the experience of experiencing it to finding an entrance to Narnia. This made me kind of mad because I'd been working on my own less insightful Narnia analogy the past few days in the more general context of various entryways into the world of loving music. As I mentioned in my previous post, for me it was listening to Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini that sent me through the wardrobe. It's not a great analogy, because the wardrobe has no obvious logical connection to Narnia whereas Rachmaninoff obviously IS a logical way to discover music. I guess I just mean that there's something magical about the experience of suddenly hearing music differently - it's been there all along, but the Narnia moment is when you're drawn into it unexpectedly. I'm going to stop babbling about that, but I highly recommend Denk's more profound babbling. (And, yes, the fact that he let's himself babble is one of the things I like about his writing. It feels more honest than structured analysis. Maybe in another post I'll try to articulate why I'm becoming more skeptical of overly structured writing in general. It actually connects to what I like so much about the Sports Guy's writing. End babble here.)