At Home In A Wordless Language

Two excerpts from The Periphery And The Centre by Manfred Eicher.

IV

Music is the focal point of my life, its essential core. It is from there that everything else grows, and to there that I always return: to the concert halls, chuches and studios. Music is my vocation: the atmosphere produced at a recording session should be inimitable and awaken the desire to make changes or, where necessary, to improve and perfect. For instance, to question things, to be prepared to abandon concepts worked out during rehearsals or even ones that were successful in concert - concepts that, in the privacy of the recording studio and with different people listening, change and require transformation.

We experience a sense of joy when we can express and give acoustic reality to music through a single gesture, a single intake of breath. These are the moments when something is set in motion. It is like breathing on a mirror: within seconds the surface is veiled in an evanescent mist that, moving inwards from the edges, as quickly disappears again. What remains is the question: what was there - was it anything at all?

The crucial thing is for a tone or mood to be created - an atmosphere that sincerely expresses what one wishes to convey of oneself and one's emotions. Music is the art that speaks directly to the soul.

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