image-necessity-stimulants

Updated: May 24, 2025

For example, a critic has to listen to a thousand concerts a year, in which there is much repetition, not only of the same pieces, but the same formal relations of tones, cadences, progressions, etc. There is present a certain routine series of image-necessity-stimulants, which he doesn't seem to need until they disappear. Instead of listening to music, he listens around it.

Charles Ives - Essays Before a Sonata