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Quote by Reed Arvin

“There is a great divide between good playing and great playing. The worst musicians are unaware that this distance exists, and they fumble their way through magnificent literature, oblivious. Most players sense this divide, however, and they know which side of it they are on. A few of these determine to struggle their whole musical lives to reach the side of greatness by practicing and working harder and harder. They end up impressing their friends and colleagues with their machine-like mastery of difficult pieces. But they know that they are not great. They know it because for a few moments, moments that they will remember and cling to for the rest of their lives, they have actually crossed that divide. For a shining moment they understood, and they wept and played and believed in their greatness. But they were cast out again, and no amount of struggling would bring them back across. No one crosses the divide by struggling, and no one passes through it by practice. There is only one bridge across. It is the bridge of abandonment, and it is built of helplessness, and of courage. Great playing is given over to the music utterly and completely. It is abandoned and willing. It is calm and it is shrieking. It is weeping and laughter, and more than anything else, it is love.”

Quote by Reed Arvin

Book:The Wind in the Wheat
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The Wind in the Wheat

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Reed Arvin

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“Jazz is a strange music. Jazz is where you find it. You dig all day in the mine, handling those big lumpy dead rocks; that’s the popular music, the dead stuff. And then all of a sudden you come on a bright gleaming streak embedded in the dead rock; it’s alive, it’s gold. That’s how you find jazz. So many people have never heard jazz, because they’ve found nothing but the slag, the dead ore in which it’s cased. They hear the raw material, the nondescript popular song; they may never be lucky enough to be present when inspired musicians strike away the lumpy death and bring out the life. The trumpet states a theme; it isn’t a hell of a good theme and in the song it means little or nothing. He strips it down to its bare chords, throws its thin line of melody out there for a start. The clarinet invents a counter-melody for himself, an invention as carefully wrought, as musicianly, as anything Bach ever wrote down. And then the trombone sings; there is a complete perfection, coming close to the unbearable, in the addition of that third voice to the polyphony of true jazz. Out of nothing something of beauty has been created; you have heard jazz, and you are lucky. You are even more lucky if you have created jazz, if you can sit with the gut-searing vibrations of a trombone mouthpiece kicking back against your face and feel the music down into your feet.”

MusicJazz
Book:Dupree Blues
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“I might disagree with them, but accept that they have some purpose to play in God’s larger plan, Then Iluvatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that he smiled; and he lifted up his left hand, and a new theme began amid the storm, like and yet unlike to the former theme, and it gathered power and had new beauty. But the discord of Melkor rose in uproar and contended with it, and again there was a war of sound more violent than before, until many of the Ainur were dismayed and sang no longer, and Melkor had the mastery. Then again Ilu´ vatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that his countenance was stern; and he lifted up his right hand, and behold! a third theme grew amid the confusion, and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Iluvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern. In the midst of this strife, whereat the halls of Iluvatar shook and a tremor ran out into the silences yet unmoved, Ilu´ vatar arose a third time, and his face was terrible to behold. Then he raised up both his hands, and in one chord, deeper than the Abyss, higher than the Firmament, piercing as the light of the eye of Iluvatar, the Music ceased. Then Ilu´ vatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’ Then the Ainur were afraid, and they did not yet comprehend the words that were said to them; and Melkor was filled with shame, of which came secret anger. But Iluvatar arose in splendour, and he went forth from the fair regions that he had made for the Ainur; and the Ainur followed him.”

MusicGod S PlanMelkorAinurDeus VultIluvatar
Book:The Silmarillion
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