Music for the soul

I ran acorss this yesterday and it really touched me. Thought I would share it with the rest of you. I also attached a song I wrote a long time ago in honor of this if you care to listen...Welcome address to freshman class at Boston Conservatorygiven by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division atBoston Conservatory"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would notproperly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had verygood grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and theyimagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might bemore appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother'sremark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said,"You're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents werenot sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. Andthey LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They justweren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a littlebit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts andentertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind yourkids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do withentertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk alittle bit about music, and how it works.The first people to understand how music really works were the ancientGreeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music andastronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the studyof relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and musicwas seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hiddenobjects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces insideour hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things insideus. Let me give you some examples of how this works.One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet forthe End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany.He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in acattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and aplace to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, aviolinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with thesespecific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousandprisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famousmasterworks in the repertoire.Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, whywould anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playingmusic? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water,to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone botherwith music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we havevisual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many peoplecreated art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused onsurvival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art mustbe, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope,without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they werenot without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit,an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which wesay, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reacheda new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat downat the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; Idid it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover onthe keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took myhands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter?Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given whathappened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless.Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs apiano player right now? I was completely lost.And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey ofgetting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact Icontemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. Andthen I observed how we got through the day.At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. Wedidn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, wemost certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that Isaw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang aroundfire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang Americathe Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was theBrahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New YorkPhilharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our firstcommunal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was thebeginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured theairspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, thatvery night.From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not partof "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe.It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of ourbudgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basicneed of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives,one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a wayfor us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heartwrenchingly beautiful piece Adagiofor Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know itas the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, afilm about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, youknow it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can makeyou cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath ourconscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a goodtherapist does.I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely nomusic. There might have been only a little music, there might have been somereally bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something verypredictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds ofemotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of thewedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even ifthe music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple ofmoments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to movearound those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides sothat we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can youimagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialoguebut no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the rightmoment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactlythe same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the musicstripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is theunderstanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert ofmy life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousandconcerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought wereimportant. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; itmade me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have playedfor people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers,foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life tookplace in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began,as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during WorldWar II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who wasshot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about thepieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written programnotes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, wedecided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come outand play the music without explanation.Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near thefront of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, wasclearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair,square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life inthe military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved totears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn'tthe first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with theconcert and finished the piece.When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talkabout both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstancesin which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downedpilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he hadto leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again,but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was inan aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watchedmy friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planeswhich had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chordsso as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend dropaway into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought aboutthis for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, thismemory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. Ididn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you cameout to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lostpilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that?How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships betweeninternal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I haveever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect,somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lostfriends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This iswhy music matters.What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman classwhen I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will chargeyour sons and daughters with is this:"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicingappendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you wouldimagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into youremergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, myfriends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall andbring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul thatis weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well youdo your craft.You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sellyourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musicianisn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not anentertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescueworker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, aspiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who workswith our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can comeinto harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; Iexpect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on thisplanet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, ofequality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, amilitary force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from thereligions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much waras they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there isto be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fittogether, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do.As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are theones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

Copy_of_yigs_song.mp3

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How perfectly beautiful. I know the Barber peice and actually downloaded it a few days ago along with Alegri's Mesierer Mei, Deus, which is just as moving. Music has been so bastardised by sex and money. I've been a musician all my life and been trying to work on my first album for the past 4 or 5 years. (I've made 2 singles, but back in the early 80's and mid 90's before my Awakening.) I lost the lot of my fledgling album (it's a blend of electronica and classical which I make on my Mac) a few weeks ago when the Mac crashed and now have to start again. I have the unfinished peices on cd, but the seperated tracks are all gone. For some reason I'm having difficulty with it. I've written the beginning with new stuff, but various things have gone wrong with my equiptment which has made it near impossible. I never learnt to write or read music, so I can't even do it that way!! I almost feel like I'll never write again, but there's also this feeling that stirs inside of me to write that makes me almost itch to get on with it, but when I try, it leaves. Somewhere in the ether.........Thanks for posting this. It was all true. One Love in the Light (and the dark.) Seb.

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Replies

Don Baaska November 15, 2010 at 5:06am

HI Yig

I was browsing some back posts and yours jumped out at me

Very inspiring post

I originally became a professional musician to meet girls, get high and avoid a day job---not as dedicated as you

Really loved your song--so simple and sweet and loved the intention with which you played it.

I am a musician. My first love is jazz, but I have played all kinds of music and so far have successfully avoided a "day job" for 84 years. I have recorded a lot of Latin stuff as this pays the rent

Check out my story, pics and CDs on http://www.donbaaska.com

My wife is a singer and we are currently working on an album of spiritual stuff.

The lyrics to this songcame to me as I was walking on the beach and hearing the slow movement from George's "Concierto in F" in my head and wondering why no one had ever put lyrics to this haunting theme. I then constructed a new melody and harmonization as all those # 9's were a bit heavy for what I wanted to say

Attaching a song "Before the Beginning"

Hope that you stil monitor this site as I haven't seen your moniker on recent posts

Love, B
Before the Beginning.wma

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Seb May 5, 2009 at 10:26am

How perfectly beautiful. I know the Barber peice and actually downloaded it a few days ago along with Alegri's Mesierer Mei, Deus, which is just as moving. Music has been so bastardised by sex and money. I've been a musician all my life and been trying to work on my first album for the past 4 or 5 years. (I've made 2 singles, but back in the early 80's and mid 90's before my Awakening.) I lost the lot of my fledgling album (it's a blend of electronica and classical which I make on my Mac) a few weeks ago when the Mac crashed and now have to start again. I have the unfinished peices on cd, but the seperated tracks are all gone. For some reason I'm having difficulty with it. I've written the beginning with new stuff, but various things have gone wrong with my equiptment which has made it near impossible. I never learnt to write or read music, so I can't even do it that way!! I almost feel like I'll never write again, but there's also this feeling that stirs inside of me to write that makes me almost itch to get on with it, but when I try, it leaves. Somewhere in the ether.........Thanks for posting this. It was all true. One Love in the Light (and the dark.) Seb.
Martin Askey May 5, 2009 at 8:29am

The most touching story I have read in many years.Oh beautiful soul that you are, how immeasurable love and light you have brought to us this day.

God Bless you.

Love and light

Martin
yig May 4, 2009 at 12:02am

lol where it says upload files or attach files usually below the comment box... try that!
yig May 3, 2009 at 11:19pm

lol thank you for that... actually Im a bit of a old rocker myself... I actually wrote that when I was 12, so the old classical tunes were pretty much forfront in my lessons. Im quite sure though, they could teach me way more then I could for them. That song just sort of came from my own soul and has been following me around a long time! I am pretty much a die hard engima fan as well so maybe that explains a bit of my mellowness... Thanks for the compliment though!
Upload some of your stuff, would love to hear it
yig May 3, 2009 at 10:02pm

lol I make a quess... a babies cry... or ohm