'unlike most money'

Sitting together on the stools, spoons sticking up out of the coffee mugs. Passing the time of day. And Al, rubbing down his griddle, listening but making no comment. Bing Crosby's voice stops. The turntable drops down and the record swings into its place in the pile. The purple light goes off. The nickel, which has caused all this mechanism to work, has caused Crosby to sing and an orchestra to play—this nickel drops from between the contact points into the box where the profits go. This nickel, unlike most money, has actually done a job of work, has been physically responsible for a reaction.

—John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

This Rhythm of What Passes Away

The final note is, at first hearing, the rhythm of what is passing away. To be sure, the creaturely is a "cascading torrent" ("a torrent...is gathered, overflows, thunders, runs and in running runs off," [Augustine]); indeed, one could even say that it only "was" or "will be," but never "is" ("before they might be they are not, and when they are they are fleeing away, and when they have fled they no longer are," [Augusgtine]). But it is just this "passing away" that gives the "whole" its particular resonance: just as a spoken work of art depends upon each verse, each syllable, each letter "passing away."...The only appropriate posture, then, is that of "flowing with what flows" to the point of an ever more rapid "trickling away."

But the final clarification of this "rhythm of what passes away" is based in this: that this rhythm is, more profoundly, a manifestation of the mystery of God: the God who works through and sustains this rhythm in its entirety; the God who hereby joins its "nothingness" to an "is"...

—Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis (1932)

'Music demands risk'

. . . she practiced unstintingly each day, the Beethoven, the Liszt, her beloved Chopin, and the Fantasy over which her fingers were gradually gaining control. Pianists will tell you that they practice in order to reduce the risk of catastrophe, but they know that to play with complete safety is an insult to their art. Music demands risk, a condition that Anna seems to have embraced with near-manic devotion, as if by engaging the demons inherent in her art she might destroy all claims they might have on her.

—Ben Fountain, "Fantasy for Eleven Fingers," Brief Encounters with Che Guevara (2006)

the past is not strictly unalterable

As Augustine correctly saw, one cannot imagine, and there could not be, any entirely discrete past event unaffected by what came later, just as, to use his example, a note in music is only situated and defined by its place in a sequence, such that the end of a musical composition still to be heard can change the nature of what we have already heard. Certainly there are limits to alteration, even though they cannot be specified: the note remains this note, however far the new relations it enters into may re-disclose it. Nevertheless, these reflections reveal that the past is not strictly unalterable and that the remembered past, although provisional and revisable, is not a sort of hypothesis that can never be confirmed, but is rather the ontologically real past.

—John Milbank, Being Reconciled (2003)

'however serious, however trifling'

... there was a company of little figures, whose sphere and habitation was in the mahogany case of his organ, and whose principle of life was the music, which the Italian made it his business to grind out. In all their variety of occupation—the cobbler, the blacksmith, the soldier, the lady with her fan, the toper with his bottle, the milk-maid sitting by her cow—this fortunate little society might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious existence, and to make life literally a dance. The Italian turned a crank; and behold! every one of these small individuals started into the most curious vivacity. The cobbler wrought upon a shoe; the blacksmith hammered his iron; the soldier waved his glittering blade; the lady raised a tiny breeze with her fan; the jolly toper swigged lustily at his bottle; a scholar opened his book, with eager thirst for knowledge, and turned his head to-and-fro along the page; the milk-maid energetically drained her cow; and a miser counted gold into his strong-box;—all at the same turning of a crank. Yes; and moved by the self-same impulse, a lover saluted his mistress on the lips! Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement—however serious, however trifling—all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous activity, bring nothing finally to pass. For the most remarkable aspect of the affair was, that, at the cessation of the music, everybody was petrified at once, from the most extravagant life into a dead torpor. Neither was the cobbler’s shoe finished, nor the blacksmith’s iron shaped out; nor was there a drop less of brandy in the toper’s bottle, nor a drop more of milk in the milk-maid’s pail, nor one additional coin in the miser’s strong-box; nor was the scholar a page deeper in his book. All were precisely in the same condition as before they made themselves so ridiculous by their haste to toil, to enjoy, to accumulate gold, and to become wise. Saddest of all, moreover, the lover was none the happier for the maiden’s granted kiss! But, rather than swallow this last too acrid ingredient, we reject the whole moral of the show.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables (1851)

'play the men into their last great fight'

Lee had come over the Chambersburg road from the west, riding up the long slope of South Mountain and then coming down to the clamorous plain with its great streaked blanket of battle smoke hiding the future and all its chances. Meade had come up the Emmitsburg road from the south to see the battle his advance guard had prepared for him, and they may have told him how the first Federal infantry, the Iron Brigade (wrecked now almost beyond repair), had left the road just below Gettysburg to go cross-lots over to Seminary Ridge, where the Yankee cavalry was trying to hold off the Confederate infantry. The Federal commander had sent the fife and drum corps to the head of the column to play the men into their last great fight, and it played "The Campbells Are Coming," the fifes shrilling out above the hard clatter of musket fire, the rattle of drums jarred off balance by the heavy concussion of artillery fire. ... There had been hard fighting that day of July 1, and harder fighting on July 2, and now it was July 3 and time for this bloody business to come to its climax.

—Bruce Catton, Gettysburg: The Final Fury (1974)

'Don't forget the fingers.'

[Ellen Burka] also choreographed part of the long program that helped Dorothy Hamill win the 1976 Olympics, as well as her short program. 

"Don't forget the fingers," Hamill remembers Burka telling her in her autobiography, On and Off the Ice. "The hands. The arms. Feel the music in every part of you. Let it flow out of your fingers."

—Beverly Smith, Talking Figure Skating: Behind the Scenes in the World's Most Glamorous Sport (1997)

'the seductions of variety'

[I]n general it is more satisfactory to proceed by similarity than by contrast. Music thus gains strength in the measure that it does not succumb to the seductions of variety. What it loses in questionable riches it gains in true solidity. 

Contrast produces an immediate effect. Similarity satisfies us only in the long run. Contrast is an element of variety, but it divides our attention. Similarity is born of a striving for unity. The need to seek variety is perfectly legitimate, but we should not forget that the One precedes the Many. ... Variety is valid only as a means of obtaining similarity. Variety surrounds me on every hand. So I need not fear that I shall be lacking in it, for I am constantly confronted by it. Contrast is everywhere. One has only to take note of it. Similarity is hidden; it must be sought out, and it is found only after the most exhaustive efforts. When variety tempts me, I am uneasy about the facile solutions it offers me. Similarity, on the other hand, poses more difficult problems, but also offers results that are more solid and hence more valuable to me.

—Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music (1942) (trans. A. Knodel & I. Dahl 1947)

'to the gifts of nature are added the benefits of artifice'

... I take cognizance of the existence of elemental natural sounds, the raw materials of music, which, pleasing in themselves, may caress the ear and give us a pleasure that may be quite complete. But over and beyond this passive enjoyment we shall discover music, music that will make us participate actively in the working of a mind that orders, gives life, and creates. For at the root of all creation one discovers an appetite that is not an appetite for the fruits of the earth. So that to the gifts of nature are added the benefits of artifice—such is the general significance of art.

—Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music (1942) (trans. A. Knodel & I. Dahl 1947)