Echoes on the Road
“The performance of a play, like that of a ritual, cannot simply be detached from the play itself, as if it were something that is not part of its essential being, but is as subjective and fluid as the aesthetic experiences in which it is experienced. Rather, it is in the performance and only in it–as we see most clearly in the case of music–that we encounter the work itself, as the divine is encountered in the religious rite.”
– Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method