I got home today and felt so tired, so just absolutely empty and wiped, that I decided that going for a brisk walk was just the right medicine. I grabbed my iPod, loaded with updated podcasts of shows that I listen to when time allows, and went to the multi-use trail that runs past the back of our house.
One of the first podcasts I listened to was new to me, a show called “Bookworm” from KCRW, the NPR affiliate in Santa Monica, CA, and home to many fine locally-produced shows.
The person interviewed on the episode I listened to was Oliver Sacks, author of the acclaimed book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. It was an engrossing half hour, one that I highly recommend you listen to. I’m planning on getting my hands on this book as soon as possible, it sounds like a must-read. The way that Sacks talks about the ability of music to trigger pathways in the brain that have been destroyed by disease, or how music communicates the incommunicable to us is truly profound.
I was thinking of this when I read Sam Bergman’s moving post about his most recent concert on the Minnesota Orchestra’s tour to the outer reaches of Minnesota.
Professional musicians are much like ER doctors or paramedics – we often suppress our emotions as we work to perform some of the most profound and deeply moving masterpieces ever conceived – but sometimes, either because of an external or internal event or trigger, we are unable to hold on to our emotional detachment, and we are powerfully reminded of awesome power of great music to transform our interior and exterior lives.
I recall playing the concert in memory of the victims of 9/11 just days after the attack, and in fact playing a concert in Salem on the night of the 11th – and the incredible impact of playing Nimrod from the Enigma Variations.
I remember playing the Barber Adagio at the memorial service for a fallen colleague.
I remember playing the John Adams piece On the Transmigration of Souls along with the Mozart Requiem, and feeling the tension in the hall as some 2,500 souls listened to the street sounds that begin the piece, and we all began the shared journey together back to that fateful, gloriously clear and blue, but ultimately tragic September day in New York City. I listened to a woman in the row closest to us weep at the first performance, and I struggled not to join her. I then felt, with the opening of the Mozart Requiem, the beginnings of healing, atonement, and closure that only music can provide.
One reply on “music and the soul”
What you’re saying is so true! I’ve often noticed that there is little relationship between how emotionally involved I am and how much the audience is moved, and sometimes an inverse one; some music just needs to be brought to life as sound to work its magic, it seems. The detachment of the performer seems even to be necessary in some instances. Perhaps we are projecting the emotional energy outward instead of holding the charge inside ourselves?