3/15/08

Tom Hanks, We Need You!

If Tom Hanks could decipher Da Vinci’s puzzles, he could surely solve this riddle, penned by Chicago Sun-Times critic Andrew Patner.

Brendel [...] plays these works as he hears them and as he imagines the authors themselves heard them...

But this is how they hear/heard them, which is the reason why I’d like to employ Tom Hanks:

--clear expressions of direct lines made mobile, regardless of complexity, by an animating, forward-moving spirit.

Just let that soak in, Tom. Get back to me in a week or two when you’ve figured this out. I’ll even pay for your therapy afterwards.
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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gee, was it *that* hard?

;-]

And "ferociously witty" -- that's a pretty high bar to clear!

Thanks for reading the Sun-Times.

Andrew P. -- Chicago

Sator Arepo said...

I think, and I could be wrong, that the 19th-century image of "animated" music and its Goethe/organic growth metaphor is thorny. The question of implied agency is very tricky and can lead in...directions.

Anonymous said...

At least S.A. got the implied agency idea. ;-]

Murderface said...

On a different note, Tom Hanks rides a Cock-Horse.

Sator Arepo said...

I don't think that Empiricus missed the implied agency issue.

I think he doesn't like that you're asserting that that's the way Brendel imagines that the composers imagined the music. That is a long chain of assertions, assumptions, and implications. To assert.

(Glad you're reading, as well as taking us in stride, as it's meant to be.)

Anonymous said...

In stride's about the only way to take things these days, isn't it?

It was, perhaps, a funny (as in funny strange/odd) review -- as there was something that was hard to put one's finger on at the same time as one wanted to summarize a history of Brendel performing. Only got odder Tuesday when it was announced that he actually had been ill and with a fever when he gave the recital and then canceled his Pittsburgh dates.

See:

http://viewfromhere.typepad.com/

And, hey, you spelled my name right!