Symphony No. 2, "The Imp Of The Perverse"
The Imp of the Perverse is the title of Jeffrey Ching's Second Symphony. It is in a single fantasy-like movement lasting about fifteen minutes. The title comes from a story by Edgar Allan Poe, from which these lines serve as epigraph to the score:
I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution… In the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.
Read more about Symphony No. 2, "The Imp Of The Perverse": Composition, World Premiere, Instrumentation, Programmatic Content
Famous quotes containing the words symphony and/or perverse:
“The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man—that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense—has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil—far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind, and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word “human” disappears from the race.”
—Jill Tweedie (b. 1936)