Barstow, Stan: A Raging Calm
David Singerman in the UK has offered this book which he read many years ago while attending a university. He offers this quote from the book in which the narrator writes about going into a record store to get a copy of the Bruckner 7th that he had ordered. The description is of his reaction (when he listened in a record booth). "A crackle and hiss were the mechanical heralds of that glorious rainbow of sound. Old Bruckner, the peasant laughed at by many of his contemporaries; neglected for half a century and more for being long-winded and overblown. Bruckner dedicating the glory of his art to the Maker he believed in with simple fervour. And whether you believed in God or not, a love of this radiant music was surely in itself a passport to whatever heaven existed. Perhaps it brought it momentarily within reach here on earth. Here in a listening room in a record shop in Cressley on a cold November morning heaven lay briefly around him. But far from all-embracing, a hint of an unattainable state; beauty that in its very loveliness enfolded the heart in melancholy." |
