Personal Interests Archives

Anger and Courage

Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.

Saint Augustine

Language of soul

His music is the language of the soul, so we can never fully understand him.

Dietrich Fischer

Above human suffering

I needed Bach. Unlike Beethoven, who shakes his fist at the heavens, Bach could help me after everything I’d been through. His music is above human suffering.

Zuzana Ruzickova

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather… In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or is dehumanized.

Goethe

History in Brief: Age of Reason

Here is a good summary of the enlightenment period lasting approximately from 1685 to 1815. Enlightenment was founded on Italian and Northern Renaissance Humanism, which in turn gave way to Romanticism, Liberalism, Classicism, and Modernism.

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”

“Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own reason!”

The above three quotes of legendaries, Isaac Newton, Voltaire, and Immanuel Kant, capture the spirit of the age:

Harmony of the whole

Beauty: the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.

Leon Battista Alberti

Motivic Unity

His remarkable flair for text illustration is evident even in the early cantatas, particularly the two finest of them, the Actus tragicus, BWV 106, and Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4. We already sense a powerful mind behind the notes in the motivic unity of the early cantatas, in the use of reprise to bind their mosaic forms together.

Richard D. P. Jones