I recently read a most illuminating essay by the brilliant pianist, educator, presenter Sarah Rothenberg, called Reverse Immortality: The Memory of Music. Among other things, it is a profound reflection on the past and on music’s unique ability to transcend time. It more than repays attentive, uninterrupted reading, the kind that “allows us to concentrate on inner dialogue” (Hannah Arendt). Read it in full here, and below I quote the arresting final paragraph.
“Immortality is not about living into the future, it is about having access to the unending past. This is the magic of great art, this time capsule that comes to us breathing life. It is an error to view immortality as a forward trajectory. When I sit at the piano, the music is of a culture and the culture is of a time and when I live in it, which is often, I live elsewhere. We could call it reverse immortality.”