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Hello everyone and welcome back.

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Today's episode is about the way music expresses the flow of time, particularly the flow of time that characterises those moments when time does not seem to pass, when time seems to be still.

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It's a particular musical place that I think a lot of musicians, composers have not just experience, but also try to represent or to communicate musically.

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This ties in with one somehow weird quality of music.

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Many, many accounts, last of which I heard a recent interview by Martha Argerich, she points out.

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Non surprisingly, how time somehow stops while music plays while we are listening to music?

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This connects with a broader idea of flow itself, which is the state of being in which we sometimes find ourselves when in when we are particularly focused, and we are perhaps.

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Conducting some task that involves our whole being our mind, our body, and it's a state that has been, let's say, studied and investigated by scientists, but also.

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Psychologists and philosophers. It's a beautiful place to be.

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Among the reasons there is the fact that in the state of flow we seem to lose track of time. What happens is that we are so present that we are one with the environment, but also one with our purposes.

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Actions and intuitions so much that the moment we become aware of it, we lose such alignment.

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And listening to music and performing performing music is a way to participate with this state of being, and is possibly among the most important reason, if not the main reason why most of us become passionate about music in first place.

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But notice what I did. I moved the attention from the way time flows to the way we perceive and keep track of time. After all, we don't really know what is the speed of time. We just perceive a certain.

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A certain pace, a certain tempo, we can say, depending on our state, we feel it's running fast or running slow and in music it sometimes fails. It stops.

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There are many pieces of music that explore our sense of time, essentially by challenging it. They lead us, or at least we can say the the composers or the performers lead us into a flow.

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Tempo then challenge our desire to stay in that flow or move away from it.

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The the first example that comes to mind is.

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Uh.

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A piece that so famous and but I find it perfect for this idea. It's called Spiegel in Spiegel by Arvo Part. We're going to listen to just the the beginning, which does the same thing it does what I was describing. It guides us into this gentle.

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Consistent flow that.

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In throughout the course of music does not really escape its route. Its main course, its main temple. It stays there. So we have the option to either refuse, reject to join, or if we join, we must enter the flow.

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Aligned with the temple and practically slow down.

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The length of this piece is around 9 minutes depending on the performers performance, but it suggests 9 minutes quite long suggested we have throughout time to adjust to its pace and indeed experience a completely different time.

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We're just going to listen to maybe one or two minutes. Here it goes ARVO, Part Spiegel, aims Spiegel.

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An exact opposite example.

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To be music that takes us away forcefully, dramatically, passionately and that will not allow us to stop the vortex. Like ride, not even for a breath.

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This reminds me of the pianist Kristian Zimerman, which I have quoted probably a few times in throughout this podcast already, and his interpretation of Chopin Sonata in B Minor, which I had the fortune to listen.

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Live in Milan around 20 years ago and the thought of it still shakes.

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My blood.

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Music that.

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Takes you passionately, forcefully away from any temple you were before and takes you for a for a vortex like ride without giving you time for breath.

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This is the.

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Last movement from the Sonata in B minor by Frederic Chopin performed by Kristian Zimerman live.

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What a performance.

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So in a sense, and this is the direction I'd like to take today, we see that music does not really portray time or the speed of time. It rather focuses on the way we engage or participate with time, whether it's low.

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Or far.

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Or passionate or contemplative as we have touched upon before in the podcast, music is a mirror to the human nature.

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So.

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The weight, best weight, best way I have entitled this episode the weight can art or music.

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Portray or suggest the idea of waiting.

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I'm going to offer two examples of music that in my opinion.

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Do so.

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Waiting is about time spending time in the more or less anxious desire of something to happen, someone to arrive, good or bad, news to be confirmed.

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As before, music accomplishes to portray time by spotlighting the way we humans relate with it. So this is Beethoven's Andante from his Pastorale Sonata.

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And I chose it because.

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UM.

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I'm going to play a little bit of it. I chose it because in there I hear exactly what we are talking about, a sense of.

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And.

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Time moving flow forward, but stillness of existence, and this is how.

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It goes.

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So.

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It's the second movement from Sonata that is established in major key it's quite energetic and positive. The the first movement, but this one of course it's in the same key but minor which is not very common.

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Thing to do already still at the time of Beethoven, this is in D minor versus the D major of the.

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Of the first movement, the things that we obviously hear are a it's kind of a intimate March, soft spoken March type of music, and so why?

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Why would that be related to?

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A sense of waiting or a sense of time staying still. At least I hear that there are. There is so much that we can probably hear in it as well. But the idea of of a March is something like time that.

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Moves forward moves.

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Solemnly i without taking a break without allowing us to to, to, to stop somehow makes us feel that we are completely at its mercy and the sense of inevitability which.

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And.

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Often found in the music of Beethoven is given exactly by this tik toking of the accompaniment. It's obviously much more than an accompaniment is is character is flow of inevitability.

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Better companies, whichever.

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Human emotion of whichever human decision we will take, there is another aspect to it that I find particularly interesting, and if we take the first statement, it's the first section, or probably we can call it. Technically the first period, which is 8 bars and we hear.

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This is the end of the first period and there is some little crescendo diminuendos you can hear, even slow or andante. It's not music that drives forward like the typical Beethoven that is most common to here.

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Overall, however, the dynamic is quite contained. Is on a piano.

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And then at the very end, in the very last part, just before the whole section repeats.

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So.

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That seemed to be this very last note, which are notes which are probably so easy to underestimate the their importance actually give perspective to this whole long.

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Proceedings this whole long string of.

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Intimate March that we just heard, it seems to me that this crescendo.

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What?

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Gives drama and.

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And profundity to this little quiet March, after all, we heard it for.

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8 bars. Yeah. OK. We are waiting. We are waiting for something to happen. We are waiting. It sounds dramatic. It sounds there's something important is about to happen, but we don't know what happened. We don't know what is about to happen. So.

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Here. Here it is.

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This is what we are waiting for.

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The the sense that the end is near.

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That's that's why do.

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This music is capable of hitting right at the core of what waiting means. Anxiety, perhaps desire, perhaps even.

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Hope and in this case, maybe even realising we we should be hopeless. We should lose all hopes cause this. The inevitable is about to happen.

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Right after Peterman goes in, in one of his typical devices, the harmonic pedal, which is given by this note.

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And what if not an inevitable clock ticking? This might be representing.

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And on top of which we have requests for a change of direction that don't that are not responded.

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So.

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This whole 4 bars actually 8 bars. Pardon me, 8 bars long suspense given by this TikTok in the left hand allows us to give much more meaning to the melodies.

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That that we hear. So each little motive is a request.

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That does not get satisfied.

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And again.

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And again and again.

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Never satisfy, so we must accept our fate.

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And it doesn't. The March has this quality that Beethoven employs very often and and.

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Somehow exploits I would say fully the March has this quality of.

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Hinting at something formal official that is happening at its own pace, a sort of authority that cannot be question challenge. You have to accept it and it's a symbol for all of that, the March.

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For Beethoven is a symbol for all of that, and the melody that we hear.

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Is perhaps? Well, it goes up and down.

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That doesn't seem to be a very original or individual development in a sense. In such simplicity it is constricted.

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The we can say the the human condition we are bound to fall in the same manner as this melody falls and.

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We can try to fight it.

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You can hear how there is inevitable fault and the last attempt of fighting is dramatic.

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Right.

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But.

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Like every other one.

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We know already we have talked about already in the past.

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This conflict, staged by Beethoven in his music, he comes out in many different ways in forms, and this is just one of the one of the examples certainly.

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His attention to the pace of time to how fast things happen is one of the probably greatest qualities of his of his writing, a great theme, a great harmonic sequence, great development. Of course, this is the.

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Mark the signature of.

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Talented composers and he has it all, but the ability to pace things so much so.

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Well, that we by virtue of just following what's happening by engaging with the music, we participate and feel the weight of such such tension, tension. Just notice this.

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Music this movement is 4 pages long. There is a counter counter, let's say theme. Much lighter, but it goes like this.

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And this probably breaks the tension, but only for the purpose of creating more suspense, more questions. Very often the slow movements.

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Beethoven are long and.

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If you're not used to them, you might find them tiresome at the same time, they are so deep and intense. So when I first started appreciating them, I realised how much music there is and.

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How much?

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Emotional content there is at a slow tempo. As I was saying, this is 4 pages long and this theme, the March, comes back with variations with some variations later without having.

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Changed.

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Without without any actual important change in the character so.

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Imagine 6 minutes, something like that of such emotional tension. So the the next piece that I wanted to discuss with you to present and.

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Is probably a more complex example since many of the listeners will have known this piece before, maybe for long, and probably would probably come up with different interpretations than mine.

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This is the very famous second movement from the last Sonata for piano by Schubert. This is the.

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D960.

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In before major by Franz Schubert, I mean.

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Books could be written about this whole Sonata and have probably been written already. The second movement in particular is so.

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So unique in each other.

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So if if you don't recall which one it is, I will play the beginning for you.

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So yes, if the title did not say much, I'm sure you many of you have recognised this. The immense, profound dity and.

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The layers of meaning one can trace in it make it.

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Master work.

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I want to point out how, among the things we might hear in this, we can attend to its slow and painful sense of waiting.

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Perhaps in the beginning is a it's a questioning one's an intimate questions about life.

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Those kind of questions that in the most important moments of our life, we probably ask directly to life and and we attend its silent response, for which we must respond.

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With patience and and a sort of probably hopelessness to we will not have a much better answer. How does Schubert accomplishes this? First of all, it's in Minarchy.

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Which of course adds a bit of drama, but then most importantly, it's.

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It's heavy. Bar is filled with this once again sense of clock.

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Right.

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So this is not really an accompaniment, but what is it it symbolically. It's can be a clock ticking a a thrill coming from another dimension.

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An obsessive little.

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Reminder of something quite dramatic. It's like.

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You know, if if death had a way to remind us that we are about to join her, well.

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Probably this will be the sound and.

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For as long that Schubert keeps the melody, this this sound still persists.

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It kind of feels like it is following whichever direction the melody goes in in this manner, the melody in the beginning at least seems to be suspended.

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It doesn't really gone anywhere.

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I mean there is.

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Every attempt to develop.

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Are tragic. They end up nowhere.

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So.

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If we think of this melody as the romantic hero facing the challenges of existence, well, what better example of the the the fate, the limited and dramatic fate is waiting?

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For for him at the end of the story, then this one.

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The melody, the main story doesn't reach cannot, it seems to be incapable of reaching its own full development. Its whole full potential, but seems to be challenged by this.

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Innocent sound. But by that sound, being relentless and.

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So patient then it it looks appearing that it appears that the the the tragedy not only looms but also takes over. However, Schubert is able to do a little magic.

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Because when he repeats the melody, it's fundamentally the exactly the exact same melody.

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Exact same notes, but he manages to make it sound.

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Hopeful like this.

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In one of his books, the philosopher Roger Scruton points out how.

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Uh.

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This is a perfect example of music that is able to stay exactly the same. The melody doesn't change its its notes, but.

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Has a completely different sense, a completely different sound, a completely different meaning.

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So if we wait long enough, perhaps this is the story the waiting for an answer that won't come might transform in acceptance, opening its way to perhaps gratitude and grace.

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This is what I wanted to share with you today. In a sense, music certain pieces of music have this incredible quality by portraying either time or the way we relate with time. Somehow they're able to.

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To teach us how to deal with the greatest challenges that that we might face in our own life.

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Beethoven shows how to.

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Look.

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Into the inevitable Schubert among the many things that this beautiful Sonata and this beautiful movement tells could be that if we wait long enough, we might be able to accept the.

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The.

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Sorrows of existence. All right. I hope you found this episode inspiring. Of course, you will have a link to all the music you heard and.

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Of of the entire Sonata, I was particularly fond of brand's interpretation of this, and you will find a link to that. Thank you very much for being with me today. And as usual, if you'd like to comment or suggest.

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Alternative topics for future episodes, please do so on your favourite platform and I will see you the next time.