Quotes from Alex Ross

Don't make it new; make it whole.

For at least a century, the music has been captive to a cult of mediocre elitism that tries to manufacture self-esteem by clutching at empty formulas of intellectual superiority.

It is one thing to get all the notes right; any number of unsocialized conservatory prodigies can do that. It is another thing to play the thoughts within the notes, the light around them, the darkness behind them, the silence at the end of the phrase. That is what inspires awe.

And suddenly…there was a wind. No, not a wind. A blur of motion… Bending the steel of their weapons and changing the very course of the might river below. Even before the bystanders freed themselves from the cable car, they know. We all did. We knew… and remembered.

There is much to be said for the artwork that answers horror by rejecting or transcending it.

O melhor tipo de interpretação clássica não é um recuo para o passado, mas uma intensificação do presente

Histories of music since 1900 often take the form of a teleological tale, a goal-obsessed narrative full of great leaps forward and heroic battles with the philistine bourgeoisie. When the concept of progress assumes exaggerated importance, many works are struck from the historical record on the grounds that they have nothing new to say.