MUSIC CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

by Alan Morrison
http://www.healthyconcerts.com/artists/Sincerity/

There is one thing without which the world would become mono-dimensional: Music. Try to imagine a world without music — without birdsong, without any of the notes of the scale, without any harmony. See if you can visualise such a world. Surely, music is mysteriously woven into the very fabric of this universe!

Music is the most powerful of all the arts, reaching way deeper into the human psyche than any other artform. This is why radio stations which play soothing classical music have become so popular in many countries of the world. This is why vast lifestyle and fashion movements (not necessarily beneficially) amongst the young have developed primarily around a particular kind of music (e.g. acid-rock, punk, metal of many kinds, rap, emo, etc.). Music reaches deep into the psyche and has a profound effect on the soul.

Product advertisers understand this so well. With which product do you associate Bach's "Air in G", or the song "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing in Perfect Harmony". It is hardly surprising that so many pop and rock groups have been used to promote products through music in advertising (see, eg, http://www.techwebsound.com/playlist.cfm?promos=yes ). Music goes to the heart of the matter.

Music soothes the soul, stimulates the mind, and stirs the heart. Music can change circumstances (ask those advertisement-makers which have been their most powerful productions). Music can give meaning to events. It can provide hope to war-torn communities (remember the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony which make the letter V for victory in morse code — da-da-da-daaaah).

Music can lift depression, and bring joy into a life. A few years back, I was counselling someone on the phone about a distressing personal problem. At the time when she phoned, there was a Haydn piano sonata softly playing in the background of my room. She was so moved by what she heard that she asked what it was. She had no previous interest in classical music, but was so affected by the Haydn piece that she went out and bought it herself. When I heard from her many months later, I discovered that that moment had marked the beginning of an edifying love affair with the classical music repertoire which had performed its own therapy on her soul. (If you want to get into the Haydn Piano Sonata repertoire yourself, try the CDs by Jeno Jando on the Naxos label, starting with Vol.1, which has the sublime last four sonatas on it).

Even a simple love song can transform the thinking or even the worldview of others if it contains insights and revelations which are helpful to the journey of another. We are all each others' teachers.

My own life has been transformed through listening to music of diverse sources. I remember hearing Country Joe's ravishing "Thought Dream" for the first time and it was like a flower of knowing opening for me. Or Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia's "Stella Blue", which speaks in metaphor about the ephemerality of all things earthly - about how the song of death will come "crying up the night". Riveting stuff!

I have been changed too as a result of listening profoundly to the works of Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich. It was as if my whole being was taken to another, deeper, level of existence. In that music, you weep, laugh, gasp, sigh and touch the sky.

One thing which such moving music can do so easily is make you cry. Heaven knows that we all need to cry. It is the ultimate catharsis (exchanging badness for gladness). I'll tell you some things about people who cry cathartically on a regular basis. They are far less likely to fight. They are far less likely to go to war. They are far less likely to be abusive or violent. They are far more likely to empathise rather than criticise. They are far more likely to harmonise rather than ostracise. They are far more likely to fraternise rather than tyrannise. They are far more likely to energise rather than compromise. They know what it is to dance to the creative melody of melancholy. They rightly sense that behind all great music there lies an order which can change things for the better.

The undergirding feature of all music should primarily be one of cosmos rather than chaos — of consonance rather than dissonance — of concord rather than discord. There is a real centre to music — a stability and harmony which was designed to soothe the soul. The original meaning of the Greek word kosmos was "order" or "harmony". Later it came to signify the world or universe as an ordered system — hence our English word, 'cosmos'.

As an example of the way that music, by making cosmos out of chaos, affects the human psyche, take the extremely systematised musical development known as "sonata form" which came into being in the early eighteenth century. In many ways, this is a musical version of the sonnet in poetry, which has two parallel subjects stated at the start of the poem, followed by a developmental section and a coda at the conclusion. Similarly, in the sonata type of movement in music, there is an exposition of two musical subjects (one more aggressive than the other — a kind of yin-yang musical interplay), followed by a section in which those two musical subjects are developed in complexity, culminating in a recapitulation (summation by way of return to the original exposition, though transfigured in some way — as if lessons have been learned) and finally a coda.

As an expression of the harmony which lay at the heart of the baroque and classical eras, the sonata form was exploited to maximum effect in a astonishing variety of ingenious ways by many composers. It represents a supreme manifestation of order in music. The average listeners are not aware of what has happened when they hear a movement in sonata form but they have been taken on a musical journey which is a mirror of the development of their own soul life.

If we are open to it, music can change us. If it can change us then it can change our world. Recently, I had a dream in which a strange syllogism arose in my mind. It uses poetic licence and is steeped in metaphor, but it carries its own allegorical power. It has become one of my key mottos. It goes like this:

"If music be the food of love and love makes the world go round, therefore music can change the world".

The power of music and the power of love are indelibly interlinked. As musicians, we have a responsibility to exude the power of love through our music. Not a narcissistic love but one which is ultimately altruistic and destined to affect the minds, hearts and souls of the listeners. In this way, we can consciously heal the ugly, mendacious patterns of this world so that beauty and truth will prevail.

Some people will say that such an idea is naive and idealistic. To them I say that naiveté and idealism are infinitely more noble than cynicism and pragmatism.

Alan Morrison
mycroscope@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.healthyconcerts.com/artists/Sincerity/
www.myspace.com/sincerityfrance