"That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions"
About this Quote
Caldwell slices through a comfortable lie musicians like to tell themselves: that technical mastery automatically equals artistry. Rehearsal, in her framing, isn’t a pre-performance treadmill where you perfect “notes” the way you might debug code. It’s where you manufacture meaning. The sting is in “abstractions” - a word that treats notes as clean, self-contained units, detachable from breath, tension, color, and risk. Caldwell is warning that a rehearsal culture obsessed with correctness can end up producing a kind of sonic bureaucracy: accurate, disciplined, dead.
The intent is practical and philosophical at once. Practically, she’s telling players what to listen for: balance, phrasing, pulse, the emotional geometry between lines. Philosophically, she’s insisting that music isn’t stored in the score like data waiting to be retrieved. It’s an event, assembled by human decisions in real time. That’s why “making” matters. Making implies craft, friction, revisions, negotiation - not mere execution.
Context matters here: Caldwell wasn’t just a conductor; she was a builder (notably of Opera Company of Boston), a leader who had to coax coherence out of limited resources and big ambitions. In that world, rehearsal is where an ensemble becomes a single instrument, where interpretation is forged under pressure. The subtext is a critique of prestige systems that reward virtuosity as optics. She’s arguing for musicianship as responsibility: you don’t rehearse to avoid mistakes; you rehearse to earn the right to move people.
The intent is practical and philosophical at once. Practically, she’s telling players what to listen for: balance, phrasing, pulse, the emotional geometry between lines. Philosophically, she’s insisting that music isn’t stored in the score like data waiting to be retrieved. It’s an event, assembled by human decisions in real time. That’s why “making” matters. Making implies craft, friction, revisions, negotiation - not mere execution.
Context matters here: Caldwell wasn’t just a conductor; she was a builder (notably of Opera Company of Boston), a leader who had to coax coherence out of limited resources and big ambitions. In that world, rehearsal is where an ensemble becomes a single instrument, where interpretation is forged under pressure. The subtext is a critique of prestige systems that reward virtuosity as optics. She’s arguing for musicianship as responsibility: you don’t rehearse to avoid mistakes; you rehearse to earn the right to move people.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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