The magic of a piece of great art work is that it elevates one to a higher level of consciousness, where day-to-day reasoning can never get close. To me, Pachelbel’s Canon in D major is one of these masterpieces. Right from the strike of the first note, Canon, with its flooding richness and aching beauty, reveals before the listener a pure process of ascending—emotionally, intellectually and aesthetically. At the same moment, past, present and future exist inconceivably together, as the music itself exhibits neither a start nor an end—it repeats to infinity, yet with new subtleties added every time. The overall effect is a stunning harmony, highly ordered, full of but without excessive emotion. In Canon, no opinion or central theme is stated—I tend to view it as a loaded “empty basket”, waiting for the listeners to take out their own understanding. Curiously enough, Canon always invokes seemingly disconnected images in me: from endless DNA helix rotating in space, to millions of stars floating in the Universe. I guess it is because the idea of infinity in the music itself somehow resembles the beauty of infinity in science. This is exactly why Canon is my favorite: it lifts my sense from daily triviality, and bestows me a boundless space—an “empty basket”—for intelligence to roam.
Indeed, a lot of my favorite art works possess this “empty-basket” quality. Bach’s Air on G String, Beethoven’sPiano Concerto 5# “Emperor” Adagio and Piano Sonata No.29 are all good examples of the type of music that inspires my thinking. In the realm of visual art, Bernini’s sculpture The Ecstasy of St. Teresa and Da Vinci’s painting St. John the Baptist also have the same effect. Even films like 2001: a Space Odyssey (especially its ingenious opening with Richard Strauss’Also Sprach Zarathustra) is tremendously simulating. The list of my favorite art work is still expanding. Maybe itself is just an “empty basket”, embracing any intellectual exposures to come.作者: masaduoduo 时间: 2014-2-18 16:02
thx a lot作者: ssky 时间: 2014-2-19 11:37
thanks for sharing作者: 密西密西 时间: 2014-2-24 11:13
thanks for sharing作者: Betterthanme 时间: 2014-2-26 16:12
