The Language of the Soul
I seem to keep jumping back to this subject and I did post something on a similar vein nearly a year ago. But this one takes a different tack without serious repetition.
Forty-eight years ago, I gave an in-service presentation at the Lynchburg Training School and Hospital on the importance of music. My employment title then was “Music Teacher,” although working with severely and profoundly retarded adults, I was actually doing Music Therapy. No one there was “learning music.”
The points I put together for that assignment have never left me. People really need to understand this truth, that “music is the language of the soul.” A couple of decades ago, my adult daughter bemoaned that she hadn’t kept up her childhood piano lessons when she confessed, “I wish I could speak Piano!”
To “speak” piano or violin, or guitar, French Horn, banjo, harmonica, dobro, whatever… is considerably more than “playing” the instrument. I used to “play” the oboe, even taught it to students up to a certain level, but I cannot say that I ever “spoke Oboe” or any other instrument. To play an instrument is more like translating while reading a foreign book. Some are faster than others, but to speak it means you are translating nothing. Your technique on that instrument is so good that you don’t have to think about how your soul is telling you to sing all that the notes imply. And it doesn’t matter what your spoken language is. Music defeats the outcome of the Tower of Babel. The emotional impact is universal.
Think about movies that you’ve watched over and over and played the sound-track repeatedly to relive the impact of the movie. I’ll pick two; “Band of Brothers” and “Saving Private Ryan.” The stories are deep and devastatingly soulful, but consider how much of that depth comes from the dialogue and how much comes from the background music, the low rumbling of the tympani, or the building up from the string bass, cellos, and lower brass to the flash of the trumpets and upper woodwinds, the undercurrent of the violins and violas with a repetitive ostinato. Without words, this calls to you at the cellular level and communicates the shape of the situation and the colors of the hearts and minds of the characters involved.
As cogent as those stories are, without the expertly composed, arranged, and directed music, the overall impact might fall short of capturing the human spirit, and they might be only “bang, bang shoot-em-up” war stories like the old John Wayne flicks. The music has made them something much more.
When I was 18 and started college, I had several talents which I could have, and probably SHOULD have pursued. But I majored in music, not because I expected to become a professional performer or even a teacher. My motive was less practical and more basic. I loved belonging to the music, being part of the ensemble that produced it. It was a larger and completely creative universal “family” for me.
Other art forms can be universal languages. Painting, sculpting, dancing, and even photography can achieve that level without words. But, not everyone can paint, and far too many are afraid to dance in public, fearful of appearing uncoordinated and foolish. Except for the profoundly deaf, most people can appreciate and participate in music, maybe not Arnold Schoenberg or Zoltan Kodaly, but there are many forms and genres to enjoy. And if you don’t care to sing in public, there is always the shower.
I used to paint. Then I got into photography, and with my second earned degree in Commercial Art, I became expert in Photoshop and other electronic design programs. Unfortunately, they have spoiled the magic of painting. I can paint a scene and leave out the telephone poles and wires and enhance the colors in the sky or water, or I can take a photograph and do the same things through Photoshop before I print it. I can even run the photo through filters and make it appear to be an oil painting, watercolor, or pastel.
However, the magic of music seems to outlast new techniques and benefit from playing it time and again. Classic Rock and Roll is built on the same rules of harmony and melody as Mozart, Beethoven, or today’s John Williams, Michael Kamen, or Ennio Morricone, and so much of it is absolutely glorious! Even the introduction of digitally produced music doesn’t diminish its impact. It expands the possibilities and the fun. I admit to loving those silly rubber chickens screaming well-known tunes at us online. No, that’s not “high art,” but it is on the level of comedic art, creating smile-producing moments that are sometimes awesome.
Some of what they call “music” today simply isn’t, and that includes, I’m sorry to say, John Cage’s 20th century compositions. I don’t care what the experts say, Cage wrote performances, but they weren’t music. They spoke to no one’s soul.
Music is more than art, more than performance. It is a branch of the science of Physics, the “Chord of Nature” or natural “harmonics.” Its resonances at various pitches and harmonies are used in science, medicine, and psychotherapy. Genuine music is just awesome, and it needs no words, although words may be included.