Surely common sense as well as anthropological evidence documents the universal need to pray, to hope, and to lament or carouse through song.

As artists, are we quasi psychiatrists who mend the soul? Do we provide the consolations, escapes, and reassurances which enable us to survive? Or are we reporters of the truth, assembling the multiple shards of reality into intricate portraits which seek out the connections between misery and blessing, violence and wisdom? Do we protect or investigate the heart?

When we play music we describe the echo the tableau of natural forms, their shapes and arrangements, as uncovered by the composer's imagination, which yet must be filtered through our own. There is no other way. And in acknowledging this tableau, this revelation, we must "hesitate", we must doubt, as the composer doubted, for no valid creation can issue unscarred by doubt, by that vast flux of wonder which precedes the construction of being.

The work of art, though bound by its genetic markings and indelible fingerprints, is boundless in the infinite elaborations of its destiny, and therefore in the range of its interpretations.

A work of art expresses itself as a balance sheet pitting the spoken against the unspoken.

Art is a process of concentration. It is both the distilled essence and the commentary upon otherwise mundane activities and reflections. Musical notes must be charged, must gather more than one and the surface meaning, must reveal audible and "inaudible" connections to other notes, patterns, and meaning, either by way of affinity or contrast.

The context for music is varied and profound. If their fantasy is to be awakened-so that their sounds may be incisive or ravishing-then the menagerie of saints and dragons must be faithfully recalled.