Order or chaos

Music is so many things at once, an art, a science, a language, Goethe even said that “architecture is music frozen in space.” We can see and understand music through so many lenses, but here’s one I hadn’t heard:

“Music is the ultimate example of freedom through order.”

A former co-worker declared this to me thoughtfully one afternoon, and I wrote it on a Post-it, stuffed it into a coat pocket, to pull out later on a walk across the city. So far, this is my favorite summation of music. It honors the polarity inherent to the art form and celebrates the limitless potential of the medium within the bounds of physics.

Photo of Henrick Colding-Jorgensen’s Chaos: for instrumental ensemble. Notations 21, 2009, p. 9.