On Music

...But in so far as the universe of the ear is concerned, sounds, noises, voices, timbres, belong to us already...

...We shall know how to transport or reconstruct everywhere the system of sensations—or, more precisely, of excitations —which any object or event may produce anywhere...

...Perhaps someone will accomplish still more, and find out how to make us see something which is at the bottom of the sea...

...Their immediate presence or their restoration at any moment will respond to our summons...

...We are still quite far away from having succeeded as well with the private distribution of visual phenomena...

...As in the case of water, or gas or the electric current coming from afar into our houses to fulfill our wishes, if we make an almost unnoticeable effort, so we shall be fed with visual or auditory images, appearing or disappearing if we do hardly more than lift a hand, or even give a sign...

...All the flowers exhaled melodies...

...It charms people, makes them dance, throughout the whole earth...

...like science, it has become an international need and property...

...I hope sincerely that we shall not go to these excesses of sonoro-magic...

...They will no longer exist in themselves alone, but will all exist where some person, or some apparatus, happens to be...

...But it will be marvelously pleasant to change at one's will an empty hour, a never-ending evening or an infinite holiday into prestiges, tendernesses, spirituel movements...

...And will give more...

...But the astonishing growth of our powers, the elasticity and precision they attain, the ideas and habits which they introduce, assure us that there will be quick and very profound changes in the antique industry of the beautiful...

...Neither matter nor space nor time has been, since twenty years ago, the same as they had always been...

...Such are the first fruits which the new intimacy between music and physics proposes to us—the immemorial alliance between which has already given us so much...

...Whether there be question of marching or speaking, of waiting or action, of the routine or surprises of our careers, it knows how to seize upon, combine, transfigure, the charms and sensible values...

...ON MUSIC By PAUL VALERY OUR fine arts were established, and their types as well as their practice fixed, in a time quite distinct from ours, by men whose control of material things was insignificantly small compared with that which we now possess...

...It remains to be seen if these remarkable novelties will transform the whole technique of the arts, then secure an influence upon invention itself, and even possibly modify in an extraordinary manner the very concept of art...

...This will come...

...A door which opened struck up a thin or pompous fanfare...

...Or which I think I saw...

...Already one cannot eat or drink in a cafe without being disturbed by concerts...

...We can evoke them when and where we please...

...Just as we are accustomed to, if not dependent upon, receiving in our homes energy under diverse forms, so we shall find it very simple to obtain or receive there those very rapid variations or oscillations with which the organs of our senses, which gather and combine them, do all that with which we are familiar...

...Music, of all the arts, now comes nearest to transposition into the modern mode...

...At present we are rid of a servitude so contrary to pleasure and therewith so opposed to the most exquisite understanding of works of art...

...There are murky days, there are persons utterly lonely, and it is not infrequent that old age should closet people with selves they know too well already...

...Its nature and the place it occupies in society have destined it to be the first to be modified in its formulae of distribution, reproduction and even production...

...If one sat down on a hassock, the choking hassock muttered some polite remark...

...2) how to reproduce at any point of the globe, and at any moment, a musical composition one wishes to hear...

...Doubtless only the reproduction and transmission of works of art will be affected immediately...

...One grows accustomed to it, one gives oneself to it with the same delight as one might to those "just, puissant and subtle" substances which Thomas De Quincey celebrated...

...To be able to choose the moment of enjoyment, to be able to indulge when that is desired not only by the mind, but insisted upon and as it were already prepared for by the soul and the whole being, means offering the best possible chance that the intentions of the composer will be realized...

...Formerly we could not enjoy music when we wished and according to our tastes...

...I do not know if any philosopher has ever dreamed of a society for distributing sensible reality to the home...

...They will be nothing more than kinds of sources or origins, and their good effects will be found—or found again— whole and entire, where one wishes to find them...

...A sunset on the Pacific, a Titian at Madrid, will not yet come and hang on the wall of our rooms with anything like the efficacy and verisimilitude of the symphony to which we listen...

...Of all the arts it is the one most in demand, the one most intercalated with social existence, the one nearest to life which it excites, or the organic functioning of which it accompanies or imitates...

...These problems have been solved, and the solutions are growing increasingly perfect every day...

...This circumstance, combined with recent progress in the methods of transmission, suggests two technical problems: (i) how to make heard everywhere on the globe, at the same moment, a musical composition executed no matter where...

...Our enjoyment had to adapt itself to an occasion, a place, a date and a program...

...The work of the artist, musician, composer or virtuoso, finds in recorded music the essential condition of the highest form of aesthetic rendition...

...How many coincidences were required...

...Works of art will take on a kind of ubiquity...

...There is a physical part in all the arts which can no longer be regarded or treated as it formerly was, and which cannot be shielded from the influence of modern science and control...

...These vain and mournful eras, and those beings who are destined to yawns and bleak thoughts, behold them now in possession of ways and means to adorn or vivify their vacuity...

...for it permits his creatures to live anew in a living atmosphere very little different from that which had surrounded their creation...

...There comes to my mind now a fairy-scene which I saw as a child in a foreign theatre...

...Color and relief are still rebellious enough...

...In the palace of the magician, the furniture talked, sang and participated in the action with poetry and mockery...

...Since it is derived directly from the effective mechanism with which it plays and works at its pleasure, it is universal in essence...

...It weaves for us a period of false living by expanding portions of our real living...