"Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings..."
"Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich
"When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich
"If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich
"I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music." ~ Dmitri Shostakovich
A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo,with or without rhythmic nuances,and it will still be great music.That's how music should be written,so that no one,no matter how philistine, can ruin it.
"I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich
"Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich
"What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich
"We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death...I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes." ~ Dmitri Shostakovich
"The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue."
~ Dmitri Shostakovich
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“Greek myth placed Pan as god of nature.His original place,Arcadia,is both a physical and a psychic location.The “caves obscure” where he could be encountered were expanded as the material recesses where impulse resides,the dark holes of the psyche whence desire and panic arise.”
“His habitat in antiquity,like that of Faunus was always dells, grottos, water, woods, and wilds-ever villages, never the tilled and walled settlements of the civilized; cavern sanctuaries,not constructed temples. He was a shepherd’s god, a god of fishers and hunters, a wanderer”
... Reflection seems the aim as we proceed further through the list of Pan’s loves. For another was Eupheme, wet nurse to the Muses... Finally, the one who fully reveals Pan’s intention is Selene, goddess of the moon...
What is resistant to light, obscure and driven... turns white and reflective, able to see what is going on in the night... The whitening is not an askēsis of the goat. It is not that Pan now knows and so does not act out, but the action turns reflective.”
— James Hillman
“I strongly believe in the importance of the scientific approach. Yet...the sciences have lost much of their vigor, vitality and curiosity. Dogmatic ideology, fear-based conformity and institutional inertia are inhibiting scientific creativity.”
~ Rupert Sheldrake
“With scientific colleagues, I have been struck over and over again by the contrast between public and private discussions. In public, scientists are very aware of the powerful taboos that restrict the range of permissible topics; in private they are often more adventurous.” ~ RS
“...science is being held back by centuries-old assumptions that have hardened into dogmas...The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers. The details still need working out but, in principle, the fundamental questions are settled.” ~ Sheldrake
Deconstructivism is a movement of postmodern architecture which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, continuity,or symmetry.
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Frank Gehry
Architects whose work is often described as deconstructivist (though in many cases the architects themselves reject the label) include Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, and Coop Himmelb(l)au.
Seattle Central Library
Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North in Trafford, Greater Manchester (2002). An archetype of deconstructivist architecture, it comprises three fragmented, intersecting curved volumes, symbolizing the destruction of war.