The most recent New York Review of Books contains a brief but excellent essay by conductor Daniel Barenboim. The writing style is slightly awkward--perhaps blunt is a better description, which is to say that it doesn't include such niceties as limpid paragraph transitions--but it's nonetheless a startlingly clear discussion of Beethoven's music. When I read the following excerpt to Paul, who's fifteen, a singer and a piano player but no classical devotee, his response was "Well, that's exactly true." The passage clarified for me why I've found it nearly impossible to write about music, which, alongside literature, has been the central artistic expression of my life.

Although the focus of this essay will indeed be Beethoven's music, it must be understood that one cannot explain the nature or the message of music through words. Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life. It might be poetic, philosophical, sensual, or mathematical, but in any case it must, in my view, have something to do with the soul of the human being. Hence it is metaphysical; but the means of expression is purely and exclusively physical: sound. I believe it is precisely this permanent coexistence of metaphysical message through physical means that is the strength of music. It is also the reason why when we try to describe music with words, all we can do is articulate our reactions to it, and not grasp music itself.