When you get right down to it, the essential reason I am following a thread deep into the workings of music is that I sense the connection between music and spirit. I have even said in recent memory that music is spirit. Before the pandemic, my spouse (Vivian Montgomery) and I had a conference all planned, called Music and Spirit. We invited people to submit activities that they felt fit the rubric, and the range was great. Of course, in May 2020, everything was canceled, so it didn’t happen. We’re starting to think again about reviving it, finding a new location to host it.
So many ways of using music directly address the spirit of our life, and the very spirit of our lives has recognized parallels in music. A wide range of exploration is underway to understand scientifically the causes of this connection. From the physics of hearing, which branches into psychophysics by the time we’ve accounted for the full processing of sound as it enters the brain, there exists a traceable linkage from the purely physical, precisely located processing in the inner ear to widely dispersed, memory-influenced processing within the brain. That connection, from the physical to the psychological, is of great interest to me, certainly involving the metaphor-based thinking on which we so depend.
As regular readers of this blog will suspect, I believe that the whole issue of repetition and resonance is at the core of the connection. Even for the perception of pitch in the first place, quite numerous repetitions of a stable waveform are necessary. And the music that has developed in all cultures features repetition: of rhythmic cycles, of melodic patterns, of formal units. Life itself is bound up in repetitive cycles: years, days, breathing, sleeping… virtually every kind of meaning depends on repetition! Think of how we remark on something that “has never happened before”, like a flood or heat wave, only to find out that our range of reckoning was simply not expansive enough to include the previous occurrences. For something to repeat, it must have a recognizable pattern, and the repetition of that pattern creates other patterns.
I’ve read that the human mind is the ultimate pattern-detector. That points to the fact that all living things function to decipher patterns in their environment and prosper by adapting. In music, our theory has been so dominated by pitch, and therefore especially melodic patterns, that the large number of pattern-makers operating in the music we hear slide by beneath our consideration. I am on a campaign to remedy that, and establish just how important the patterns of other parameters are in creating impact, or meaning.
Through the patterns created – especially the more obvious aspects of music, like dynamic level and articulation – large groups can be influenced for good or ill. It is quite necessary to realize that while saying “music and spirit” tends to make us think “touchy-feely”, the reality is that the power of music to influence groups can be used to galvanize negative as well as positive energy. It matters a lot what we repeat! Mantras, religious texts, daily affirmations: the border between music and non-music hardly matters, but it is incredibly important that many of the world’s religious texts have been preserved over extensive periods through musical intonations, repetitions. And we see more and more these days the impact of repeating falsehoods.
For my part, I find that honoring each individual’s “lived experience” by simply accepting that what they hear is what they hear is incredibly empowering. No need to correct someone’s “mistake”. Given the opportunity just to hear others state having heard something differently and then listening again is usually enough for self-correction (if that’s in order), while telling them they’re wrong can indeed crush an emerging spirit. And when we get right down to it, what is “hearing it wrong”? The number of great improvements made in various disciplines due to someone getting it wrong compared to the status quo is quite high and very important. (Think: emperor’s new clothes.)
Music is spirit.
I forgot who said it–“Music begins where words leave off.” And we tend to seek repetition to those works that move us. The response is familiar, but never an exact replica. Sometimes it’s the performer as much as the piece–hence we go to films that star our favorite actor more than anything else, seeking a return to the pleasure we once received. Infatuation? It’s an eternal quest.