WHAT DOES MUSIC HAVE TO DO WITH HAPPINESS?
July 26, 2007 by Lynne
What does music have to do with happiness?
The simple answer is that music is part of our DNA. When we don’t make music, we are incomplete and unhappy.
The more complex answer is that music has power to connect us to our deepest selves, our greatest sense of purpose, and transcendent beauty.
Music is a democratic art, available to everyone. Even tone-deaf people love music. Even deaf people can feel the vibrations of music in the reverberations under their feet.
Think of human life without music. You can’t.
The awareness of music’s–and other arts’–central importance in our lives opens up many areas of possibility that we want to explore in these pages.
For example, how do different types of music affect us and why?
How can we use music to enhance our moods in more than temporary ways?
What questions would you like us to explore for you?
MUSICAL TIME AS MEMORY
July 23, 2007 by Josh
All music, the world over, unfolds within some kind of time frame, ranging from a few seconds to several hours or more. To make sense of what we are hearing, it’s essential for us to notice how musical patterns are organized within a time frame.
This is a basic skill to develop in order to truly enjoy a piece of music or perform it or dance to it with some degree of accomplishment.
Here are some key questions to think about as you listen:
What patterns repeat?
What provides contrast?
Is there some kind of development?
Is the music static? What makes you say yes or no?
How does time feel to you as you listen to a certain piece of music?
What role does memory play in helping you recognize musical “time”?
MUSIC AND DEEP FETAL MEMORY
July 23, 2007 by Josh
Our knowledge of embryology tells us that by the second trimester of pregnancy, a fetus begins responding to the sound of the mother’s voice, the music she is listening to, and her heartbeat. In short, we hear long before we can see.
We have eyelids, but no earlids.
And at the other end of the life cycle, patients in a coma have been known to respond by arm twitches or eyelid flutters to a familiar sound.
All through life, we are part of a vast vibrating, pulsating world, affected by changes in the weather, the seasons, day and night.
But it all starts with the heart beat and the rhythm of breathing itself in utero, which later becomes magically transformed into the beat of a drum and the many rhythms of music–and even the subliminal messages communicated by the music of commercials.
What do you feel when you let yourself become aware of certain rhythms in your body or in nature? What do you want to do?
MUSIC AND SOCIAL OR RITUAL MEMORY
July 23, 2007 by Josh
Music is an integral part of many of life’s rituals.
Who doesn’t have the urge to dance and sing at a wedding ceremony or certainly the reception or a special birthday party?
Is there a country without a national anthem? Is it ever possible to watch or attend a major league baseball game without hearing “The Star Spangled Banner”? July 4th and fireworks without Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”? Impossible!
For some, singing “Amazing Grace” is a must at every family reunion.
For those in the Civil Rights movements and many liberation struggles, the rallying musical statement was and is “We Shall Overcome.”
Is the celebration of Christmas complete without hearing a performance somewhere of Handel’s “Messiah,” or Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker,” or having our listening space saturated with Christmas carols?
What are some of your favorite pieces of music that belong to the social and ritual parts of your life?
MUSIC AND PERSONAL MEMORY
July 23, 2007 by Josh
Stardust strain, beautiful refrain
I hear you ringing in my ears.
“That’s my kind of music.”
“They’re singing our song.”
Is there any form of human expression more personal than music? How rarely, if ever, do we hear someone say, “That’s my kind of poem” or novel or play or painting?
Musical memories define so much of who we are and the many stations we pass through on life’s journey: your high school graduation, your first real love, your courtship, the first Broadway show or concert you attended, your loss of a loved one, your connection with your parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren.
For starters, think of such standards as “Memories of You,” “Memory Lane,” “Laura,” “Unforgettable,” or “Memory” in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats.
Or how about the Hoagy Carmichael classic, “Star Dust,” which is “a richly layered statement about memory. It is not simply a conventional ballad of love lost, but rather a song about a song, and the evocative power of that song, as a lover, solitary and forlorn, gazes at the stars, humming it in his head all the while” (Joshua Berrett, Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004, 166).
The list goes on and on. How many operas, musicals, and movies depend on themes and motifs to recall or identify a situation or character?
Think of John Williams’ music for Darth Vader or Princess Leia in Star Wars, Verdi and his Ethiopian princess Aida, Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, Bernard Herrmann and his soundtrack for Hitchock’s Vertigo, James Horner’s “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic, and so many more.
What do you hear and feel when you listen to certain music? What music lives in your personal memory?