Ilkley Baptist

My first thought on the Late Quartets of Beethoven is that they sound very good! In Terry Pratchett's Discworld there is a person (the supreme governor of Ankh Morpork, I think) who reads music. He doesn't need to listen to it, indeed would rather not have some musicians' interpretation interfering with his pleasure, he simply sits down and reads it, hearing the music in his head. Having sat down with the score of the Late Quartets and looked at them, picked out the tunes on the piano, and read a discussion of the pieces, remembering the tunes the writer was referring to, I have to say that hearing the music is essential.

The sound is so much more than the memory or the imagination. It is alive and full of rich presence. It is far more powerful than the idea of the sound. I can read about the movement, study the score and hear it in my head, but when I play the recording it becomes real.

Is this like telling someone you love them? They know, of course, but hearing it counts. We might watch a film we've seen before. We know the story, but we can't have the emotional experience unless we follow it through again. In prayer and worship we rehearse very well know things - God is love, there is hope - but it's not about knowing them, but taking them into ourselves, and that means having them actually turn up for us to engage with.