That is a good one, Murrill.....

Anyone else have a favorite quote so far????

Do you have one, Hesse?

This, from Chapter 1.....

"Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing......"

As a musician I can attest to this emphatically....

I liked, "the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books." It sums up my own beliefs.

I also am enjoying the references to music and its ability to bring people together.

Another good one. I reminds me of my own struggle for "perfect dogma," however much I abhor dogma, and my challenge to forgive myself for my frustration.

I am not quiet through the first Chapter yet. I just wanted to say that I am glad that I am a Musician. They throw out so much random music theory in the first chapter that I would probably feel overwhelmed if I did not know what they were talking about. I saw a few post saying that they were scared that they did not have a good grasp on what the glass bead game is. I don't either but I don't that it is going to be a big deal. It seems that the characters in the story don't really know what the rules are either.

Celawerd,
I see that you are new & a fellow North Carolinian at that! Welcome to the site and to this discussion. I have not been here very long, either, and this is my first book discussion here. I enjoy it very much.
I would hardly call myself a musician: I took piano lessons for many years, I can read the music & strike the keys, but what I really gained is an appreciation for talent. I know enough to understand.
I agree that it may be unnecessary to learn the rules of the GBG: I think that may be the essence of it. I suspect that the mystery is by design: The Order remains cloaked in secrecy and ambiguity. I believe that the gist of it is that the GBG is a synthesis of concepts that transcends the precise application of a specific discipline. I don't know that it has value beyond its appeal to cloistered scholars.

Murrill,
I agree. See the link to the Foreward that was posted (I think by DL Hesse). The author says that the game never was meant to be real.

Celaward,
Welcome to BookTAlk and the discussion

Welcome Celaward!

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players: (Shakespeare said that)

What Shakespeare failed to mention, however, is that the production being staged is a musical...( hesse said that)....

It does seem like something of a dance, doesn't it?

One thing I liked in the chapter on The Call was how the visit of the music master is built up in Knecht's mind as a big public event that other people will care about, but when it happens it is just for him. It illustrates how in imagination Knecht as a child projects his own interests upon the wider world, assuming that people think the same way as he does. Finding that the rest of the world is indifferent to the visit of the Music Master is part of his learning process about the distance between the life of the mind and the life of the world.

You make a good point, Robert. At his young age it is easy to believe in the universiality of one's small piece of the world. It really comes down to perception, I guess.

Robert, I agree with your statements. That episode also stirs in me some sense of Hesse's background, i.e. his strong self reliance at such an early age, by virtue of the fact that regardless of the town's lack of celebration he remained steadfast in the belief that this visit was a 'big thing'....