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The wording of your institute’s
constitution
implies an effort to present the arts as a counterbalance to science in
today’s life. And though I am sure you do not imagine that there is not
a lot of science, knowledge, and skill in the art of making music (in the
calculation of sound qualities and colors, the knowledge of the technique
of instruments and voices, the balance of forms, the creation of moods
and the development of ideas), I would like to think you are suggesting
that what is important in the arts is not the scientific part, the analyzable
part of music, but the something that emerges from it but transcends it,
which cannot be analyzed because it is not in it, but of it. It is the
quality which cannot be acquired by simply the exercise of a technique
or a system: It is something to do with personality, with gift, with spirit.
I simply call it magic—quality which would appear to be by no means
unacknowledged by scientists, and which I value more than any other part
of music.
Benjamin Britten
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