Music and Time
I've written in the past about "Music as Solace" and how there are times when even
music cannot sustain you. I've been going through one of those recently and it has caused
me to reflect upon the way music works.
For the last few weeks, I've been unable to eat solid food.
Well, technically, I can eat it, but doing so causes severe abdominal cramping,
which lasts for hours -- so I've found a few bland foods I can tolerate and don't
experiment much.
Man, am I getting tired of applesauce and Myoplex Lite.
But discovering a diet bland enough to sustain me took
quite a bit of trial and error -- and every error was definitely a trial. Within
minutes of making a mistake, I'd know that I was going to be writhing in agony for a looong
time. You can't write much with your head between your knees -- well, I can't --
and when your mind is reeling with spasms punctuated by relatively benign spells of
"mere" discomfort, television is just another irritation.
So you might think that, given my love of music, it would
be the natural analgesic at such a time. I was surprised to find that it wasn't -- and I
was even more startled when I realized why.
One of music's most essential building blocks is time.
In fact, the simplest definition of music I know is Sigmund Spaeth's: "Music is tones
in time." Like life, we experience music as a journey forward through time -- we
cannot even hear a single tone if it has no duration.
What separates one performance of a composition from
another? If we're speaking about classical music, where there is a score, the notes are
essentially the same, but there are changes in dynamics, perhaps, and, almost inevitably
there will be differences in phrasing -- the way the notes exist within the piece's time.
Even small changes in the way the notes relate to one
another temporally can completely alter your perception of a work. I remember hearing
Leonard Bernstein conduct Mahler's 3rd Symphony in one of his last performances in New
York and it flew by in a rush -- I was startled later to find that he had assayed it at a slower
pace than his classic 1960s recording.
Two performances can clock in at the exact same length and
sound completely different from each other -- one can whiz right along while the other
drags along seemingly forever.
Mess with your perception of time and you seriously affect
your perception of music. That's certainly something that bar owners have known for years
-- and it's the basis for the old joke about the Grateful Dead:
Q: What did one Deadhead say to the other when they ran
out of pot?
A: "What's that awful noise?"
If you really want to alter your personal
relationship to time, pain has to be at the top of the list -- all you can concentrate on
is now and now seems to last forever. How on earth can you appreciate an art that
is, at its core, a way of measuring time's progress when your personal clock is stopped --
or progresses only at its own herky-jerky pace?
Thoreau said, "When I hear music, I fear no danger. I
am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the
latest." When I first read that comment, I remember thinking, he's exactly right,
and I still think he's mostly right. When I'm functioning normally, that connection -- and
that sense of security -- are what I most value in music. I don't ask that the music be
pretty or nice or necessarily "great."
What I love about music is that sense of existing within
time's vast continuum -- of being immersed in it as I travel along with it. It was as big
a shock for me to discover that I could dive into music and not be a part of that
immensity as it would be to dive into the ocean and not get wet.
As to the causes of my current discomfort -- well, I have
some exploratory surgery scheduled that should get us to the root of it. And here's
something you can rely upon: As I recuperate from that, music will definitely figure
prominently in my recovery.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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