Making Music: Together and Apart

Despite the lonely process associated with songwriting, its end product can unite individuals into a chorus, sharing one mind and heart.
Making Music: Together and Apart
"A Village Choir," 1847, by Thomas Webster. Oil on canvas. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Public Domain
Raymond Beegle
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It is remarkable that art, the surest way of communicating our deepest thoughts and feelings, is born out of solitude.

The great writers of music and word speak of this. Mozart told a friend that music came to him when he was entirely alone and added, “Where it comes from I do not know.” The Russian poet Anna Akhmatova wrote about sitting alone in her room, awaiting the arrival of her Muse: “My dear guest, with her little flute in hand. She comes, wrapped in her shawl, looking at me intently.”

Raymond Beegle
Raymond Beegle
Author
Raymond Beegle has performed as a collaborative pianist in the major concert halls of the United States, Europe, and South America; has written for The Opera Quarterly, Classical Voice, Fanfare Magazine, Classic Record Collector (UK), and The New York Observer. Beegle has served on the faculty of the State University of New York–Stony Brook, the Music Academy of the West, and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. He taught in the chamber music division of the Manhattan School of Music for 31 years.