The melodic lines themselves are expressive to me. Take, for instance, the works of J S Bach: in most of what I have heard in the interpretation of other pianists, I feel that too much is imposed upon the music. The very direction of the lines, the moving lines of notes are inherently expressive. Without the consciousness of what these lines really represent, one may feel that it needs an expressive addition. In my composing, too, I try to find something which expresses itself without adding.
The pianist Keith Jarrett, from the liner notes to his recording of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier. The link between music and my view of speaking text is clearly laid out here.
The actor, in fine, must think of the dialogue in terms of music; of the tune and rhythm of it as at one with the sense – sometimes outbidding the sense – in telling him what to do and how to do it, in telling him, indeed, what to be.
Harley Granville Barker, from The Purpose of Playing, R. Gordon.
You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation.
you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object-look.
W H Auden, from Horae Canonicae. I love the spoken word, but not to the exclusion of everything else. Auden is right – you can see thought. And if you can genuinely get that 'eye-on-the-object-look' up on a stage or in front of a camera, the world will catch its breath.