| The essay entitled
Keller's causes by Robin Holloway includes
the following paragraph.
The trouble lies in Keller’s poor view of what the listener
can take out from music, as well as what the composer can put
in. High-calibre composing in any idiom is achieved by an artist’s
intensive concentration, however subconscious, on his own procedure,
even when the Schubert, Rossini, Wolf in question is habitually
in a burning hurry. A specified clot of material is in play,
much of it stereotyped and formulaic. Naturally it will be germane
to itself, and throw up contrasts (if contrasts are needed—they
aren’t obligatory) that are pertinent, not arbitrary. ‘Unity’ can
be laid on with a trowel, but is more often supple and organic,
and sometimes evasive, even fugitive. Its appreciation is a matter
of intuition as much as knowledge—one feels ‘this
is right, here; that’s a good twist; that’s really
neat’ (etc., etc.—gormless phrases for complex processes
of pleasure and perception). It can be interesting to have such
delicate apprehensions explored and confirmed by sensitive analysis;
though if they are not already nascently perceived, the music
is not being fully heard. But of these intimate relations between
composer and listener, Functional Analysis shows not a trace.
A very few elementary connections are underlined with crashing
obviousness, while the subtle truths escape. In all cases the
original work flings its contrasts around more freely and integrates
them with greater audacity, disdaining pun and paradox except
where they, too, have aesthetic and expressive value.
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