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Does music actually exist?
If some unfortunate soul were to lose the capacity for immediate short-term memory, he would lose track of the notes he had just heard. Without any concept of the “past,” he cannot perceive the melody. Conversely, one with a diseased mind, who may not be adept at recognizing the repetition of patterns, would not have the capacity to “expect” the next few notes in the melodic line. He could not tap his foot or “groove” to the music, or close his eyes and “feel along with the melody.” One component of listening to music is recognizing patterns, and feeling amusement at how a composer establishes a pattern, and then breaks the pattern through embellishment and variation:
We “groove” along with our comfortably repeating pattern: "little lamb, little lamb, little lamb," and then we get to go along for the ride as the composer daringly varies the pattern, with the wildly playful punch line: "whose fleece was white as snow." Well, maybe not so wildly playful by grown-up standards, but the predictability of a piece of music is highly subjective, and different listeners will always have varying preferences as to just how predictable they like their music. But whatever type of tune it is, we can see that it does not exist as an object in and of itself. It is a concept, an idea that exists solely within the mind.
Music is a function of definition.
I noticed in the more talented speakers among them (Jimmy Swaggert was really good at this), that they had woven rhythmic patterns into their speeches:
This pattern is like the architecture of a sneeze:
Back when I used to score television sitcoms, I remember the formula written into the show by the writers. The interspersed jokes were written in groups of 3 with increasing intensity: little giggle, medium laugh, hearty guffaw… little giggle, medium laugh, hearty guffaw…etc. This natural pattern was respected and enhanced by the editors, and then exaggerated further by the artificial laugh track mixers. That pattern simply “worked” and was a very successful formula for those shows. So musical patterns exist even where we would not normally define them as music. This calls to mind the question: “If a tree falls in a forest, and no-one is there to hear it fall, does it make a sound?” If I chant, repeatedly,
I can feel a rhythm pattern of strong and weak beats where “I”, “Not” and “Writ” are the strongest accents. I am feeling it like this:
This “DOWN-up, DOWN-up, DOWN-up” pattern is the same pattern of dualities that we see in our own vital functions within our bodies. For example, our heart must become empty to create a vacuum to suck in the next batch of blood, to then squirt it out through our blood vessels strongly enough to nourish our bodies. It must become empty to become full, to become empty to become full. Of course our lungs dance the same ageless dance. The inexplicable phenomenon of music is a performance of patterns that mysteriously sound logical to all humans young and old, rich and poor, intellectual and experiential, republican and democrat. But just like our pitifully limited perception of the infinite universe, we can only perceive a very narrow bandwidth of vibrations. If they occur rapidly enough, we perceive these patterns or “vibrations” as pitches or notes. If noise and silence are alternated at a rate of 20 Hz (that’s a frequency of 20 alternations, or “waves,” per second) we would perceive this as a very low note. Most humans can perceive notes from around 20 Hz to about 16,000 Hz, although some people can hear beyond this range. While very large objects, such as mountains, may vibrate at extremely low frequencies (some say once every 30 days or so) our finite spectrum of perception couldn’t come close to hearing this extraordinarily low pitch. It’s been said that the earth vibrates with a frequency of one cycle per YEAR. Now that’s a LOOOOOOW note. There’s a symphony going on that we cannot perceive. We cannot even imagine what level of being could perceive this Universal Song. But we all still sing along.
What music was playing a lot during the time of your life when you had your first romance? What was popular when you were a child? What feelings come up for you when you hear it now? Do we ever really listen with a “beginner’s mind?” A classical music lover in India would attend an evening-long concert with a studied knowledge of Indian Ragas (or Rags). These musical “modes” are associated with certain times of day and other traditions, and contain specific musical characteristics. The soloist might introduce the raga of the evening with melodic fragments of just a few notes here and there, separated by silence, to build anticipation in the listeners, and to playfully tease them to guess just what Raga he will delight them with for the next 90 minutes. It’s “name that tune” during the extended introduction, and then the listeners enjoy the soloist’s complex development of this Raga. These are educated listeners. When I hear the Philharmonic perform Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony, I feel as though all humanity has achieved an apex of expression, not unlike how a moon-landing is an apex of human scientific achievement. Each generation builds on the achievements of their ancestors, advancing their place into realms impossible for one person in isolation. When I hear such a performance, I’m in awe at the architecture of the symphony which has been communicated to me one note at a time (or one “chord” at a time) and re-assembled in my own mind. There is a certain preciousness about that moment. Perhaps in my love of the music, I am prejudiced as well. These highly refined musical languages are ultimately no more remarkable than very sparse, solo performances by expressive artists of any genre. Zen Shakuhachi solists communicate a universe of subtleties, rendering the notes themselves almost secondary to their highly refined expression. Somehow, as listeners, we understand the syntax and there is a shared experience.
Listening with a “beginners mind.”
We just call it music.
© 2007 by Steven Chesne |