No one knows who said it first, but everyone who has something to say about it now has to reckon with its mischief: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” While I’ve never seen anyone dance about architecture—and by “about” I mean “on the subject of” and not “in the vicinity of,” which I have seen—dancing about architecture seems conceptually doable; it may even have been done. Like a dog walking on its hind legs, however, such dancing might not be done well. But writing about music, though distinct languages, we do with considerable frequency and no little success. Whole industries depend upon verbal discussion of the art, music and music publishing and criticism. So, if the simile was first uttered by a musician to another musician to acknowledge some fundamentally elusive incommunicability of music by means other than music or to discourage that musician from writing anything other than more music, fair enough. But otherwise, it’s just silly.
Along with a culture’s words, one must become fluent with a culture’s music, its melody, its song, and its dance—on or about its architecture. The first word in the Polish musical tradition is Chopin. The Arthur Rubinstein Collection of Chopin arrived at the same time as the Kosciuszko Dictionary, so in one fell swoop, I’ve acquired most of the words and much the best of Poland’s music, about eleven hours worth, and begun listening in earnest.
Chopin’s Nocturnes (Op. 9, 15, 27, 32) ripple and run like the waters of a dream, a sad dream sadly, but a languid, liquid dreamy one no less. Trills and flourishes, for which the human hand would seem to have an insufficient number of fingers, bubble up and away with astonishing, even appalling virtuosity to a person who has tried to play the piano. The required touch of many opening and closing notes is so lilting delicate that you wonder how Chopin/Rubinstein can make a sound at all, as if both the note and its not being played were being played. The sadness of remembered childhood, of home, the sweetness and bitter sweetness, drips off the line, note by note, sometimes, drop by precious, hesitant drop, as if to sigh “Life has been all right, remember, dear? And it may be all right again.” This is as Polish as sound gets, and as human. I’ve ten more hours attend to.
