Gavazzeni: “Music worsens the man”
Alberto Sinigaglia (“ttL”, La Stampa, insert)
Minima Musicalia, https://heinrichvontrotta.blogspot.com/[🡕]
Translated from Italian by me (WTFPL).
A sip of his favorite American and a thin Rothmans between his fingers: Gianandrea Gavazzeni, eighty-five, […]
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What is music for you?
Neurosis. It arouses the worst feelings: the shady, the carnal. It is not true that it improves man; and whoever practice it, is deteriorated, in character and morally. It reveals the unconscious. A Dionysian, romantic idea of music… I am the opposite of the moralists. I am against beautiful souls, those who thinks they have Beauty and Truth in their pocket. Better put: I’m not against; I just don’t participate. I am about infinite possibilism: I even remarried at the age of eighty-two and have not regretted it. I regret nothing. Faced with my nullity – said Paolo Grassi – Russian nihilism becomes optimism.
Are you a skeptic?
Not at all. I believe in life and in God. I’m a huge mess, my friend Gadda would have said. I am a believer. When I have time, I go to Mass: because I’m part of a story, I feel less alone, less defenceless. I’m less afraid when I’m in church. With age, fear increases. Loneliness increases, maybe. And I pray… I missed my dad and my mother very much; more in old age. I also feel the weight of my dearest dead friends. I live with them… I have been a great lover of words among friends, especially in trattoria. Food not as an element of gluttony, but as an occasion for conversation: a pheasant with Toscanini, truffles with Mila, an afternoon of chugging whiskey with Bernstein…