for a text on Texte Musicke
- what is a text?
- generally, a text is something to be read. occasionally, the concepts of
meaning and/or communication go along with the reading.
- "Here follows the text of so-and-so's speech:" -- how does this
differ from the speech itself, a transcription, a recording, etc. It's something
written, printed.
- A text in the above case is a translation into written language that
may or may not have been in that form originally.
- the text is often the body of a work, the corpus,
the corpse, left after the living, breathing, speaking creator has moved on.
The spire moves on and all that is left are remains and reminders.
- with change, another spirit -- a reader, perhaps -- will stumble across
these remains and take them up -- as a musician takes a dead wood tube -- and
breathes meaning and spirit in them. Not 'artificial resuscitation' -- just
combined respiration. Not 'artificial' because people have always done it.
- a text is useless without a reader -- meaning is only possible after
perception -- the perceiver sees what is there and/or what he thinks is there
- communication is only possible if the language is common enough -- the
world-views and experiences must have quite a bit in common
- the perceiver brings to the text all that he can and then, occasionally, is
amazed to find so much of it in the text. Sometimes it was put there
by the creator.
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