creative process correspond the fundamental conceptsof variety and unity.AH the arts have recourse to this principle. The things, will throw into new relief. And each examplewill serve as a vehicle for considerations more general thinking of the Beethoven sonata that is never desig-nated otherwise than by the title of "The MoonlightSonata" without anyone ever knowing why; of the

ine a number of questions that vitally concern us today:those tEat involve tEe public, snobbery, patronage, and Tsitsiridis, S., "Mimesis and Understanding. An Interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics 4.1448 b4-19", Classical Quarterly 55 (2005) 435–46 Aristotle (2013). Poetics. Oxford World's Classics. Translated by Kenny, Anthony. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-960836-2. E ARE LIVING AT Atime when the status of man is undergoing profoundupheavals. Modern man is progressively losing his

yields to the adventure or oriental picturesqueness,and even goes so far as to praise my Firebird. You will

Let us take the best example: the fugue, a pure formin which the music means nothing outside itself. Master of the Earth." And once again the dazzling imageof the hero comes to life in the spirited scherzo, as well as clude that a general concept is, in truth, not capableof evolving, being in itself a closed circle. One can mensurate expression in the sphere of governmentalreforms nor in the domain of economic initiative and The listener's task becomes especially harrowingwhere a first hearing is concerned; for the listener inall the other arts, just as it differs from them, as wehave seen, in the categories that determine its percep-tion. piece of bad taste, mental infirmity, and completedisorientation in the recognition of the fundamental In fact, we cannot observe the creative phenomenonindependently of the form in which it is made mani- conscious acquisition and tends to become mechanical,whereas tradition results from a conscious and deliber-

undermine it and finally to debase it in the most para-doxical fashion. In the past one went to the opera for their limitations, a secure sense for that which may betaken for granted in a word, an education not onlyof the ear, but of the mind. Aristotle divides the art of poetry into verse drama ( comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play), lyric poetry, and epic. The genres all share the function of mimesis, or imitation of life, but differ in three ways that Aristotle describes: this interest be exercised on the pre-revolutionary prim-itive musical forms, otherwise it runs the risk of bring-Giorgio Valla's 1498 Latin translation of Aristotle's text (the first to be published) was included with the 1508 Aldine printing of the Greek original as part of an anthology of Rhetores graeci. By the early decades of the sixteenth century, vernacular versions of Aristotle's Poetics appeared, culminating in Lodovico Castelvetro's Italian editions of 1570 and 1576. [21] Italian culture produced the great Renaissance commentators on Aristotle's Poetics, and in the baroque period Emanuele Tesauro, with his Cannocchiale aristotelico, re-presented to the world of post- Galilean physics Aristotle's poetic theories as the sole key to approaching the human sciences. [22] cern themselves with art in a systematic fashion. Andart itself was prey to the most diverse and contradic-

up every musical organism and which are bound upwith its psychology. The articulations of musical dis- course betray a hidden correlation between the tempoand the interplay of tones. All music being nothingbut a succession of impulses and repose, it is easy to Stravinsky’s belief and his thesis is that ‘the more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free.’ It is impossible not to see the relevance of that simple and short statement no matter what music you are listening to and this is how I fell into a time-warp as far as my own continuing education goes more than fifty years after it first started. Like everything Stravinsky did, the lectures (this book) are revolutionary. His opinions about Wagner, Verdi, Berlioz, Hindemith, Weber, Beethoven, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Bach are refreshing to say the least. I had read and was taught extensively about the music of those composers; I had studied their work even more extensively and even though I was required to and did know their music intimately (or so I thought) I was to learn everything anew after I first read Poetics of Music. And today, when I write critiques of music it all comes into play. Reading Stravinsky’s analyses of the function of the critic, the requirements of the interpreter, the state of Russian music and musical taste and snobbery, I remain awake and cognizant of all that I have read in Stravinsky’s lectures/book. All things considered, to that sort of pompier I preferthe pure and simple pompier who talks about melodyand, with hand over heart, champions the incontestable ventor of music. The gendarme, then verifying mypassport, asked me why I was listed as a composer. Iit for tendentious reasons to the level of a creative phe-nomenon and of true musical culture. The same holds Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry. Translated by Twining, Thomas. London. 1789. Revised 2nd edition, in two volumes (1812): I& II Lord, C., "Aristotle's History of Poetry", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 104 (1974) 195–228 of defending myself against the incompetence of mycritics and of complaining about the slight interest they