Classical Music and You

Music is a form of art that sometimes brings out more , in us, that we thought existed. It is direct: music is a form of art that makes a physical change within its audience - your physical, inner ear reacts to a piece of music in a way unlike seeing a piece of artwork - fluid rises and falls within your ear, and touches cilia that result in sensation of sound.

And then. It is gone.

We can experience music on hold, while we are waiting on the telephone - in an elevator, through an mp3 player, by way of our cellphone, and even in the middle of the woods as we listen to the symphony of sound that encompasses the area around us. A bird , if earmuffed, will change its song when it can no longer hear its own. Its song will degrade. Disappear. Wherever we experience music, it is there only for the time that we hear it. That moment in time is traversed by a pattern of sound, and then we are elsewhere and it is gone.

Classical Music has a tendency to be more rigid and focussed than other music - its elements are usually fairly challenging. Bach, for example, asks us to climb , escher-like up a series of the musical equivalent of stairs - only to find that we are in fact descending as we arise. The contradispunctus of Tocatta and Fugue in D minor, is both at the same time entertaining and alarming. One could say that Bach's immortal song is contained emotion. Fear, or the shock of awe, or perhaps even anger.

Classical music is also known for a miminalist stance regarding words and 'message'. Where popular music is, at times, cartoon-like and deeply illustrated - classical music can be black and white. It can bring out stark contrast.

When we listen to classical music, it is our soul to keep. We follow the music and in its note and signature, find our own imagination at play. These visualizations can be deeply enjoyable. Listen to Beethoven's 6th symphony 'Pastorale', and you may find yourself flying over the spring hillside.

Classical music brings out more, in us, than other forms of music. And then, like them all - it disappears. Have you noticed that at certain moments of your life, you can still hear it?

There is a wave, I remember. That I rode. Where I heard the sound of Bach as it rose up to me.. and as I rode it. All the way around an entire island. My legs tired from walking the quarter mile back home.

Salt upon my skin. The sound of the ocean from below the cliff. The wind whipping the palm trees across the darkened sky.