{"id":548,"date":"2007-11-14T23:13:21","date_gmt":"2007-11-15T03:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/?p=548"},"modified":"2007-11-14T23:13:21","modified_gmt":"2007-11-15T03:13:21","slug":"music-and-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/music-and-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Music and mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gardner,<\/font> <\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thought you might find this 15 yr old young man’s music and mind amazing. <\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

Mary-Kathryn at Surviving Winter<\/a> emailed me the link to this story: “Driven to Music–A Prodigy at Age 15<\/a>.” She was right about my response. Jay Greenberg<\/a> is obviously an extraordinarily gifted young man.<\/p>\n

There’s much to comment on here, but right now I have time for only a few passing observations.<\/p>\n

The article says that Greenberg composes on computer. It gives no details, but I infer from what’s here that Greenberg not only writes the music on computer but plays the music back on the computer as well, just as I can write and read at the same time as I type these words on the screen. I’d be surprised if he didn’t, actually. Computers have made it possible for orchestral composers to realize their work, at least in a kind of rough sonic draft, with much greater ease than back in the day when all that they had was either a piano reduction or a hired orchestra, the latter at great expense and not at all conducive to any kind of editing or 50-bars-at-a-time spurts of inspiration of the kind Greenberg is prone to.<\/p>\n

Later we learn that Greenberg can also write music on staff paper, so he’s obviously got his bases covered as far as technology is concerned.<\/p>\n

I’m also struck by this bit:<\/p>\n

Whose music does he like to hear? “In chronological order, Bach; Mozart; Beethoven; a little bit of Brahms, some of his later pieces, maybe; Prokofiev; Stravinsky; Bartok; some Copland; Ives. You can look at my iPod, there’s a lot of stuff in there.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes: an iPod is a profile. That’s part of why it feels so intimate. Hey, mister, that’s me on that there iPod.<\/p>\n

And amid all the other riches of this story, including a haunting photograph and a wonderful, uncanny self-awareness in which I detect depths it would be presumptuous to explore, I’ll close with a final highlight: the image of this young man shaking hands with the prodigy who played his violin concerto at Carnegie Hall: Joshua Bell, whose experiments in subway sublimity<\/a> so captivated me and my Introduction to Literary Studies class last spring.<\/p>\n

Listening to “Seven Stones” from <\/em>Nursery Cryme as I write. Nearly undone.<\/em> Don’t tell me beauty is only power in disguise.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

May you be granted stamina, Jay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gardner, Thought you might find this 15 yr old young man’s music and mind amazing. Mary-Kathryn at Surviving Winter emailed me the link to this story: “Driven to Music–A Prodigy at Age 15.” She was right about my response. Jay … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bHwM-8Q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}