Misura del canto

In the third work there is a passage that refuses to make measurement an appendage of counting. It treats measure as a relation: a motion that takes shape when caught by another motion. A note, held long enough, will steady a plumb-line; the plumb-line, once steadied, alters the note by the mere fact of listening. Neither yields wholly. The hand that offers the curve keeps a memory of its liberty; the curve that holds the hand acquires an insistence that was not in the hand alone.

That companionship — sound learning the law and law learning to sound — is not a metaphor but a condition. The crafts that brace a span are also those that attend to its timbre; the proof one produces is practiced by bodies as much as by symbols. On World Science Day for Peace and Development this is sometimes announced as an ambition. In the book it appears simply as a thing done: a plumb left swinging because to stop it would be to pretend the measure had exhausted the music.