According to Egyptian
legend, Osiris's body was divided into 14 pieces by his brother,
Typhon, who dispersed them across Egypt. Isis, wife of Osiris, set out
to gather the pieces of the body, put them together again and become
pregnant. Because of her suffering, she was led to create a new state
of being for her husband and for herself. The act of reconstructing a
body to be a site of regeneration makes a metaphor for the process of
rehearsing a musical work. THE
BRAVERY OF WOMEN concerns the causal
role of adversity. In reassembling fragmented phrases from a sonata by
J.S. Bach, the violinist echoes the actions of Isis when she reunited
her husband's scattered limbs.
If we think about music in terms of physical action and sound as the
consequence of that action, we may consider musical performance in
relation to the experiences of our daily lives. The violinist passes
through physical encounters with her instrument in the course of
performing. THe sounds she makes are enriched by the very resistance
she meets as she is compelled to move. Overall, those sounds are the
result of paths traced in moving from one state of being to another.
They are like the flickering of light that meets our eyes with the
changing frames of a film.
copyright © N.G.Brown 2007