Sometimes everybody could use calming down; sometimes people need to be pumped up; and sometimes they could use support for intensely demanding mental activity.

This particular office, like many, is made up of people of different ages and musical tastes.  Maybe you work in a similar setting. Or maybe you work alone in a home office. In either case, music can be a wonderful resource for fostering an optimal atmosphere to do your best work.

Are there any generalizations we can make that would be helpful in choosing your own “office music”?

Well, you know us. We’ve put on our thinking caps and come up with some ideas.

The audio portion of this post will give you our suggestions, along with a couple of musical examples.

You might have ideas of your own about music for your office, pieces that have calmed you. Please share them with us.

We want this website to become a treasure house of specific information about the power of music to enhance human well-being.  We need your help!

In our next posts we’ll bring you some ideas about music for energy and for concentration.

For streaming audio, click here.  To download to an mp3 player, click here.

Music has an ability to help us viscerally feel this order and stability…often, surprisingly, through very simple means.  Today we hope to give you a fuller understanding of how this happens.

For instance, did you know that some common pitch relationships–just 2 or 3 pitches a certain distance or interval apart–can evoke  strong positive feelings in human beings? Did you know that these sound intervals appear again and again in a broad range of musical styles, over many cultures and centuries? There is something about them that resonates profoundly in the ear, heart, and mind.

To give you a demo of this phenomenon, let’s start with Johnny Cash’s 1956 hit song, “I Walk the Line.” Even before beginning the first verse, Cash gets himself (and us) musically and psychologically oriented by humming in the pitch of F. Then we hear the bass line of the guitar oscillate between the 2 pitches of F and C, which are 5 steps apart. Here’s how it sounds in the song. This is a very basic interval in music called the Perfect Fifth.

It’s almost impossible to get the two pitches of the Perfect Fifth out of your head once you hear them together. They keep repeating, following the refrain “Because you’re mine,” solidly anchoring the song’s 5 verses, even though each verse is sung in a different key.  The Perfect Fifth actively embodies the comfort and stability this relationship creates for the singer.

Listen to “I Walk the Line” with this in mind.

What makes the Perfect Fifth so universally effective? One way to explain it is this: the Perfect Fifth (5 tones apart), its close relative the Perfect Fourth (4 tones apart), and the Octave (8 tones apart, as in C to C) are all called Primary Intervals. These are actually pitches (or overtones)  generated by any vibrating string, column of air, and the human voice.  These each vibrate as a whole and in sections.

Pythagoras, the great Greek mathematician (you may recall him from high school geometry) is usually credited with first demonstrating that precise numerical ratios define the relationship between the pitch and the vibrating length of anything making a sound. Try this with your own voice. Make an “m” sound first, then add an “o” to make “om.”  Hear the difference?

From the Middle Ages on, these discoveries of Pythagoras were developed into a theory poetically called “The Music of the Spheres” : a view of the entire cosmos that put the earth at the center of the planets and other heavenly bodies which moved around Earth in precise ratios, emitting their own individual musical sounds. Shakespeare uses this image in the world of his plays.  As the Shakespearian scholar G.B. Harrison explain, “It was believed that the planets in their motion each made a musical note, the whole forming a perfect harmony.” The natural order in general, and the fate of mankind in particular, was believed to be determined by these movements in the heavens.

While the earth isn’t the center of the universe any more, it is still profoundly true that something exists which we might call “the quiver of life”: there are universal rhythms or pulses in everything from the stars to our own heartbeats, which underlie and connect the micro- and macro- cosmos.

Richard Strauss draws on this connection with thrilling effect in his “Introduction” to Thus Spake Zarathustra (1896), inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s poem of the same name. You’ll immediately recognize the music from the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s class movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In his poem Nietzsche addresses a great human dilemma: the conflicting needs for solitude and for human community. When Zarathustra (aka Zoroaster, who becomes the founder of a religion) had the 30-something crisis, he went out to live in a cave in the mountains. But after 10 years of isolation, he has a change of heart and feels, in Nietzsche’s tender words, “a need of outstretched hands.” That is, he wants to return to life with others, without losing the wisdom gained from time spent alone contemplating the cosmic order of things.

Strauss conveys this burning desire to integrate the two worlds by calling on music to ask the big cosmic question posed by Zarathustra, who cries out to the rising sun: “You mighty star! What happiness would be yours if you did not have those for whom you shine?” With this  question Nietzsche underscores the crucial importance of  human life in the cosmic order.  This is expressed musically by the sound of four unison trumpets playing a rising three-note motif consisting of  a  Perfect Fifth (C-G) interlocking with a Perfect Fourth (G-C).  This powerful motif is stated three times. Listen to savor how much is conveyed by such simple means in about 2 minutes’ worth of music.

To help you understand overtones, Josh has added a brief explanation and piano demonstration which you can listen to here.

If you listen closely to your own favorite great music, you’ll start to notice that many pieces employ the Perfect Fifth and Perfect Fourth for precisely the same reason Johnny Cash and Richard Strauss do. Pay attention to the effects on your nervous system and imagination. This is one of easiest ways to increase your awareness of  how music  moves us so profoundly for the better.

If you have questions or comments, leave them in the box below and we’ll gladly respond to them there.

Written in the mid-1930’s for George Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess, it’s sung very early in the opening scene as Clara, one of the poor residents of Catfish Row,  soothes her baby with a lullaby.

What’s amazing is how often–and differently–this song has been recorded over the intervening seventy-plus years.  It’s one of the most widely performed numbers in The Great American Songbook and is available on iTunes in over a hundred different versions. You can find vocal renditions by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Sonny and Cher, Mahalia Jackson, Janis Joplin, Willie Nelson, Jerry Garcia, Paul McCartney, Booker T, and on and on; as well as purely instrumental treatments by Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, John Coltrane, to name just a few.  So look up your favorite artists and see if “Summertime” shows up on their playlists.

What is it about this song that touches us so?

To learn an answer and hear the original version of “Summertime” as well as two other gorgeous treatments by Miles Davis and Jascha Heifetz, click here or download to your mp3 player here.

What music do you think of as your own “classics”?  Send us your lists and we’ll feature them in future newsletters and posts.

Great music can also help us laugh, a vital ability to cultivate especially as we age.  Recently in a New York Times interview, Lorin Maazel, the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, who has just completed his final season with the orchestra at 79, talked about Giuseppe Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, which premiered at La Scala in 1893 when Verdi, like Maazel, was nearly 80!

This comic opera, adapted from parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor, is a major accomplishment for any composer, let alone one so advanced in years. (Verdi died at 88.)

Verdi’s own life was filled with both tragedy and transcendence. Married in 1836 at 23, he lost his wife and 2 children to sudden illnesses all within the next 4 years. Devastated, he found it hard to keep working, but music ultimately helped him not only to survive but thrive.

In 1842 Verdi’s career suddenly took off with the opening of his opera Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar), based on the biblical story of the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. The premiere was an electrifying event, since it came at a time of growing Italian nationalism.  Italian patriots of the day immediately identified with the enslaved Jews and reviled the detested Hapsburg rulers of Italy as tyrants like Nebuchadnezzar and his court.

The stirring chorus from that opera, “Va, pensiero, sull’ ali dorate,” (“Go, my thoughts, on golden wings”) quickly became an anthem of the patriotic movement and helped make Verdi a national hero.

To learn more about Verdi’s achievements in his later years and hear the grand finale of Falstaff–his celebration of laughter  in old age–listen to our audio or download it here.

Did you know that in addition to Vivaldi’s beloved composition, music inspired by the four seasons has also been composed by Haydn, Tchaikovsky, and others, including the legendary master of the tango, Astor Piazzola? Today we offer excerpts of, and commentary about, Piazzola’s “Spring,” from his “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” for your savoring.

P.S.  We realize that Argentina is in the Southern Hemisphere, but allow us a little poetic license?

Listen and tell us your reaction to the music.
To hear the audio via streaming:http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/W4lvZ1Ns or via download: http://tinyurl.com/dnf2mx

If you’d like to hear all of Piazzola’s Seasons, a recording we like is “Eight Seasons.” It combines the original Vivaldi and Piazzola works, performed by Gidon Kremer and the Baltic Kremerata on Nonesuch #79588

Here in New York we’ve had a pretty brutal winter along with equally hard economic news.So we’ve been listening to music that bolsters our spirits.

How about you?

Two character strengths that can help uplift us are VITALITY, which includes zest, vigor and energy, and HUMOR or playfulness.

Vitality is defined in “Character Strengths and Virtues”(Peterson and Seligman) as

“the subjective experience of energy and aliveness”; it has both physical and psychological connotations.”

Humor is described there as

“a composed and cheerful view on adversity that allows one to see its light side and thereby sustain a good mood.”

It might seem strange to choose the “St Louis Blues” to illustrate zest and humor in music, but humor us and read on. As Josh says, “It’s all in the interpretation.”

Listen to the sample on the audio and tell us if you agree with him.

Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton made this recording in 1954. On the audio, along with the music, Josh makes some comments to help you get full enjoyment of the samples we have chosen for you.

Suggestion: Make a habit of listening daily to at least one piece of music that makes you smile and move. Add your favorite pieces to the Comments section below.

To hear the audio via streaming:

http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/W8KLh2RQ

or via download:

http://tinyurl.com/daf7wd

If you’d like to get a recording of the 1954 version, you can find it on Louis Armstrong and his All Stars:
“Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy,” Columbia CK 64925

Think of France’s “La Marseillaise,” South Africa’s Nkosi Sikelel i’Afrika” (God Bless Africa), and the U.S.’s
“God Bless America.”

At Barak Obama’s inauguration Aretha Franklin turned “God Bless America” into a powerful gospel hymn of hope during a time of troubles.The reminder of the commitment to liberty and freedom, the echoes of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, all came together beautifully in her performance.

Another song that immediately comes to our minds, when we think about music that has helped people transcend pain is “We Shall Overcome.”

Its history shows its great staying power. Apparently it started out as a Sicilian mariner’s song in the 18th century. Over the next 2 centuries multiple composers –many anonymous–adapted, reshaped, and refined the basic melody, adding bits and pieces from other songs to both the music and the words, until the final product became the compelling version we sing today.

Those of us who remember the early days of the Civil Rights Movement can recall the thrill of hearing it sung by Pete Seeger at Carnegie Hall on June 8, 1963, in front of almost three thousand people. A few months later it was sung by hundreds of thousands during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.

In South Africa, during apartheid, it was sung by political prisoners on the gallows.

(A personal note:Josh left South Africa in December 1959, just before apartheid became a national policy, but he is very proud of the night he stood alone in front of the South African Parliament Houses as a college student to protest the proposed segregation of the University of Cape Town.)

BTW, did you see the placard at the Inauguration which proclaimed, “We Have Overcome!”? What a moment!

What makes this song so memorable? Well, the words are an affirmation of a collective determination to resist oppression. Both words and music are simple in the best possible sense: most people can sing
them with ease because the voice range is comfortable; the music is made up of assertive chords that underline the strong words; the key Pete Seeger sings in (B major) is warm and just a half step down from C,
the key connected with light, truth and justice from Beethoven on.

At the concert, in fact, Pete Seeger introduced the song with these words:

“If you would like to get out of a pessimistic mood yourself, I’ve got a sure remedy for you”;

everybody began to clap and whistle because they knew what was coming. And they began to sing along with him.

Another magical moment.

You can get a sense of this historic moment and also hear the Soweto Gospel Choir’s stirring rendition of God Bless Africa on the audio recordings below:

To stream: http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WRWbv2wQ

To download: http://tinyurl.com/clo245

What do you think about our choice of music for a time of adversity? Does this music speak to you too?

We’re aware that those sentiments can sound overly simplistic.On the other hand, there is real virtue in simplicity, as Leonard Bernstein demonstrated in a beautiful little song he wrote for his dramatic piece, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers.

Mass was performed twice in New York City recently as part of a year long celebration of Bernstein’s 90th birthday (unfortunately he died at age 72). You can read an enthusiastic review here.

We think you will find “A Simple Song” as appealing and powerful as we do.

Please take a few moments to listen by clicking on one of the links below:

For Streaming Audio: www.audioacrobat.com/play/W7rLNrBQ

For Downloading to an mp3 Player: tinyurl.com/3q5alu

Note: If you would like to buy a recording of Mass, Josh recommends the 2 CD box set on SONY (Amazon Standard Identification Number B0000029XM). Alan Titus is The Celebrant, with The Norman Scribner Choir and The Berkshire Boys Choir; Orchestra Conducted by Leonard Bernstein. He strongly recommends this over the more recent, more expensive version conducted by Kent Nagano.

For Streaming Audio:

For Downloading to an mp3 Player:

Directions for Your Experiment With the Music of Silence:

Find a block of time when you can be undisturbed for at least 5 minutes. The particular time and location are completely up to you, but you need to be able to focus on your surroundings.

Create a listening chart by labeling a narrow column on the far left TIME LAPSE and the much wider column on the right SOUNDS HEARD. Now simply describe what you hear during 5 minutes.

For example:
TIME LAPSE SOUNDS HEARD

0:00 It’s around 10 PM on Monday evening. I’m in my kitchen making tea. The wind is whistling through a small crack in the window—high pitched, ghostly
0:10 The tea kettle starts to whistle too. A shriller pitch than the wind
0:15 I hear voices from another room. Sounds like the buzzing of bees.
__________________________________________________________
At the end of 5 minutes, write a paragraph around these questions:

1. Did the same sounds keep repeating (wind howling, dogs barking, furnace rumbling)?

2. Or did they change, evolving into something new?

3. Would you describe your environment as a hi-fi or low-fisoundscape? Why?

4. How was your mood affected by what you heard?

5. Where there any surprises from this experiment?

We’d love to hear about your experience. Leave a comment here!

For streaming audio:

To download to MP3 player:

Leave us a comment or two.

We also like to give you specific information on the pieces we play and discuss each month. We choose recordings that Josh considers to be outstanding. Here they are:

1. I’m a Cockeyed Optimist comes from Rogers and Hammerstein’s SOUTH PACIFIC, new Broadway cast recording on Sony BMG Entertainment 88697-30457-2.

2. Scherzo comes from Beethoven’s ARCHDUKE TRIO, from a compilation of complete piano trios on EMI 0777-763124-2.

3. Struttin’ With Some Barbecue is available as an iTunes download or as part of  1923-3The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1923-34, Columbia/Legacy 57176

We think you’ll enjoy hearing these classic performances of the whole works.