Compos Mentis

If music be the food of love, then why am I not fat?

I've been sitting here for the past half an hour or so listening to a string of Bach's fugues. It's been a while since I've a had a chance to listen to them. I love so many different kinds of music, but there are only a few that seem to reach deep inside and touch my soul in a way that seems to make me a better person. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D is one, and one that affects me even more is Barber's Adagio for strings.
I was worried, last year, that taking music theory would make music dry and boring for me. I thought I would be stuck analyzing the music that went through my soul, and it would be just like eating sand. Well, I have to admit, my fears came true. I can't help now but analyze what I can in the music I listen to, but, amazingly and fortunately, the music has become even richer and fuller to me now that I know more about it.
(This may be more about me than about music, though, because I find now that I like finding chemical formulas on lists of ingredients and figuring out exactly what is in them. Yes, I'm weird. But you know that already.)
I believe music is fundamentally connected to all aspects of human existence. It's just so similar to life. First, while our brains may pay more attention to what we see, what we hear is just as important because it's the only sense that is attached to time, which we also inhabit. This is why two live performances are never quite the same, even while a painting is the same one visit as the next. The painting is a flash, a moment of the human condition. The composition is an allegory that takes on a life of its own, a life created by the cooperative geist or spirit of the musicians. Another parallel music has to life is the idea of rhythm. Nature especially is fond of the idea of rhythm. There is Spring, and Summer, and Autumn, followed by Winter, always new, always the same. Rhythm follows the rule of undulation; there are peaks which are followed by troughs. In nature, there is the dry season that prepares the earth for the wet season. In life, there are times of excitement and action which are balanced by times of rest. In music, there are the beats, and then there are rests. There is tension, which is then resolved. There are antecedents, then there are consequents.
No one really understands, technically, why people find pleasure in some harmonies, but not in others. We like major triads, but don't like augmented sevenths. But I think it appeals to our sense of order. We love the idea of logical thought because it all 'fits' together, and we love harmonies because they also satisfy our need for order. On the other hand, we love melodies because they are unique and independent of the harmony and rhythm, and make things interesting and different.
All art is meant to tell a story of some kind, to explain something about what it is like to be alive and to be a part of this odd thing we call humanity. But I think only music fulfills so much of our contradictory aesthetic nature.
I've been discussing music in its artistic sense, but music is also wonderful in its role as a connecting point to the rest of human nature. It is an important aspect of basic physics with the description of the motion of the sound waves. It is fundamentally connected to mathematics, the core of what we would consider the other end of human knowledge, scientific and logical knowledge. With singing, it is connected to language and poetry. With dance, it is connected to kinesthetic beauty and knowledge. (I wonder if Howard Gardner, when he formulated his idea of multiple intelligences, realized how connected all of them are. Perhaps they are like legs on a starfish, different aspects of one thing.) And, the thing is, I know that knowing more about, say, the physics of music would also not make music more cold and dry, but only add another aspect of beauty to appreciate.
Because that's what it comes down to, really. I can write and write about music, and what music means, but I'm not really going to add anything to music's essential nature. While finding out more about something may extend it's beauty, don't get so wrapped up in finding out things that you forget the original wonder that made you fall in love in the first place.
So Ciao. I need to go practice my guitar.

posted by Emmett @ 14:29