The Writer’s Position
Jonathan Dunsby · 1995
Abstract Here I put forward basic ideas about what the musician is probably doing. ‘Probably’ indicates that this is an earthy outset, not a deliberately philosophical one. In my experience many people come to music without having had the opportunity or encouragement to ‘think through’ what their engagement with this art may mean. Perhaps for the listener this is of no great moment, since life is too short to reflect on sheer enjoyment, earplugs or no earplugs (I shall return to this). Any technical entanglement with music, however, all the way from getting a sense of what ‘tonic’ might mean to mastering a Paganini Caprice on the violin, brings an inevitable pondering. Musicians think hard. Whether ‘think’ is quite the right word is debatable. We might prefer to say that they ponder on what they do as musicians, ‘ruminate’ and so on. The important point is that they do not usually work in some sort of unreflecting musical trance.