Without A Moses Poem by gershon hepner

To be reliable, tradition
must be transmitted by a process
that can restart, like cars’ ignition,
what has been parked. Without a Moses
to say precisely how the word
of God was spoken, we are forced
to reconstruct the words he heard
in ways he never had endorsed,
rekindling with imagination
the visions we believe that he
received, to charge each generation
with new traditions’ battery.

On KUSC this morning Denis Bartel played a recording of an interview Artur Rubinstein gave in 1959. Rubinstein pointed out that Beethoven had a few students, all of whom were musically challenged. Chopin had many, because his physical weakness prevented him from making money as a concert pianist. All Chopin’s students were rich young ladies without any particular talent other than their ability to pay for lessons with him. After he died, they tried to become Chopin authorities, declaring that people should play his music in the way that they recalled. “They were not Liszts recording the tradition of how Schumann used to play, ” he said. But they felt they had the authority to speak for Chopin even though they lacked any vestige of musical talent. Tradition, said Rubinstein (if I recall correctly) , but be rediscovered every generation.

1/15/08