Universal Treasures

Music is ubiquitous. It accompanies the celebration of a baptism, a birthday, a wedding, an anniversary, a march into battle. It also sustains us as we grieve at funerals. And beyond the decisive moments, music is also with us in the everyday moments. It is part of worship in churches, mosques and temples. It is the lifeblood of a carnival, it is that ‘very personal’ song between lovers, it is the throbbing beat from spectators at a sporting event, the anthem we sing, the background score to the films we watch, the insidious, and sometimes, irritating ambient tracks in a lift or lobby, the live music in a concert hall, at a party or from a busker on the street, the bedtime song we sing our children, the whistling in the dark, the singing in the shower, the aerobics accompaniment, on the car radio, on home stereos, on personal headphones; in fact you can think of hundreds of different scenarios where music is part of our lives.

Music is also universal in that in some form or the other, it is created, performed and enjoyed across races and cultures. Afro, bhangra, bel canto, boogie, bolero, calypso, carnatic, celtic, cha-cha, flamenco, ghazal, hillybilly, hindustani, jazz, polka, qawwali, rumba, salsa, samba, swing…the exercise of simply listing out some music styles throws up a rainbow of impressions of each culture and geography that gave birth to each of these genres.

Researchers from McGill University and University of Montreal in Canada and Technische Universität Berlin in Germany played specific musical compositions to two extremely different groups - first, to forty Mebenzélé Pygmies in the Congolese rainforest and second to forty Canadians. The findings (published in the journal 'Frontiers in Psychology', 07 January 2015) showed that the music (including both western pieces and Mbenzélé melodies) elicited similar types of responses in both groups for key musical characteristics such as tempo, pitch and timbre.

If I were to briefly list a few of the memorable moments in cinema that I recall involving some form of appreciation of music, it becomes clear to me that art is indeed a universal language:

In ‘The Mission’, Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) scales the mighty Iguazu Falls in South America and, reaching the jungle above the Falls, he sits down and plays his oboe. The fearsome Guarani warriors who emerge from the jungle, ready to strike down the intruder, are instinctively captivated by the music and let him live.

In ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, prison inmate Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) (wrongly convicted of murder and serving time at Shawshank State Penitentiary, managed by a cold and brutal warden) does the unexpected when he locks himself in the room in which the warden’s LP record player is located. He then plays a recording of Mozart's ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ over the prison P.A. system. In a prison where not even basic human rights are honoured, the divine music wafting out to all the prisoners is a lifeline for many (although it results in Andy being mercilessly beaten by the prison guards after they break down the locked door).

In 'The Prince of Tides', football coach, Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte) is saying his farewell to the young violinist and football beginner, Bernard Woodruff (Jason Gould) at the train station. He makes a final request to the boy before the train arrives. He asks him to play the violin for him. The boy promptly opens his violin case, takes up his violin and plays with astounding passion and artistry in the midst of the bustling station. The coach is moved and says something to the effect that if he could play the violin like that, he would never touch a football.

In the end, when we respond instinctively to music, we are giving ourselves the opportunity of shared experiences with people who we may never have engaged with otherwise. This video of two strangers improvising together on a piano at a train station in France reiterates this truth in a disarmingly effective manner. Enjoy!

Why Art Matters: Dr. Linda F. Nathan at TEDx

Founding headmaster of Boston Arts Academy (Boston’s first public high school for the visual and performing arts), Dr. Linda F. Nathan speaks about Arts education as a foundation element in schooling. 

5 Inspiring Examples of Art for Real Social Change

Much has been said about art being an indulgence that only the very rich can take advantage of. But here are five examples of artists leveraging their art to make a decisive difference in the lives of communities without the means.

Alejandro Aravena: My architectural philosophy? Bring the community into the process

The El Sistema music revolution - Jose Antonio Abreu

Haas&Hahn: How painting can transform communities

Theaster Gates: How to revive a neighborhood: with imagination, beauty and art

eL Seed: Street art with a message of hope and peace

Taking imagination seriously

Inspiring story of the genesis of a new type of sculpture.

Enjoying free visual art experiences

If at this point in time, I am only looking for ways in which I can enjoy art without any costs involved, a number of compelling options are available to me:

Obviously, I cannot go wrong with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the University Art Gallery.  Public galleries not only house great artworks that you can see in person, they are also hubs that provide the learner with the means of engaging with the art world in a number of proactive ways; through free celebrity talks, exhibition talks, guided tours, workshops and educational projects. And free admission to shortlist exhibitions of some of the most high profile art prizes in the country (the Archibald Portrait Prize, the Wynne Prize for Landscape and the Blake Prize to name a few). In fact, I do not have to restrict myself to Sydney CBD; with a number of suburban arts centres that have year-round exhibition programmes; for example at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.

Of course, there is terrific work on display at any of the many private galleries in the city. Good listings and details on exhibitions at these galleries are at Art Almanac, Art Guide, Art Collector and Art Monthly.

If I want to get up close and personal with public artworks without any admission fee, there are a range of permanent (monuments / memorials, sculptures / installations, fountains, street art / murals) and temporary works across the city. In fact, if I used this map, I could even fashion my own art tour, for nothing but my time and a good long walk and a quick commute.

I might also put the dates of free outdoor festivals into my calendar; the biggest in Sydney being, Sculpture by the Sea and Vivid. Even at festivals with paid programmes, there are often a range of free shows and activities; for example at the Sydney Festival in January.

If I am not too keen on getting outdoors, I might just decide to surf through the world art treasures online at any one of the massive open access art collections on the Internet including those by The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, The National Gallery of Art, the Getty Museum or the Google ArtProject.

Often art experiences without a price tag are available to us in unexpected situations and locations. My local library, the well-appointed lobby of a large corporate firm, the out-in-the-open work of a sidewalk painter; there are a multitude of scenarios that can provide an opportunity to learn from and enjoy great art. It only takes openness and a spirit of adventure to take us down paths that can enrich our lives well beyond our most ambitious plans.

LP Album Cover Art – Images that spoke as eloquently as the music

Amongst the most cherished possessions I recall from my childhood home is a superb collection of long playing (LP) records that my father had. This collection of vinyls opened up the world of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart to me. It also introduced me to ABBA, John Denver and Neil Diamond amongst many others.

To consider the music of this extremely diverse vinyl collection will require a book-length treatise. But in this article, I pay homage to the wonderful LP cover art that this collection had. Images of composers, instrumentalists, conductors, singers and bands that provided my young mind a visual reference point and launch pad into the music.

At the height of the LP format's popularity, great LP covers were art collectibles in themselves. The cover design and the liner notes for these vinyls were the focus of significant attention of the recording studios. This is understandable given the fact that the LP album packaging format provided the industry with 30 sq. cm. of real estate with which to entice and engage customers.  In fact, the LP cover as a cultural symbol drew the interest and involvement of a number of serious painters, illustrators, graphic artists and photographers, leading to the creation of some of the most iconic examples of album cover art. And those musicians with visual art skills invested much of their own time and effort in making their LP album covers a unique visual commentary on their music. A classic example is the great Canadian singer-songwriter, Joni Mitchell, who being a painter herself, designed her own album cover art right through a long and illustrious career.

Flicking through the LP collection at home in my mind's eye now, I must admit that some LP cover art there was ordinary. But the great ones remain for me indelible visual signposts of a world of music that has been a ‘changeless friend’ to me all these years.

The LP - as a recording format - died a slow death starting from the 1980s, by which time cassettes and later compact discs emerged as default formats for recorded music. The pleasant surprise though has been the resurgence of the LP in this age of digital downloads (even if the number of new vinyls released is negligible and mainly focused on catering to DJs and audiophiles).

Fortunately for all fans of album cover art, the age of digital music has not meant abandoning visual packaging entirely. Album covers remain - only no longer on a physical product and certainly without the luxury of the 30 sq. cm. canvass.

There is a lot that excites and inspires in cover art across genres – rock, pop, jazz, folk, country…virtually every type of music. Some shock with their in-your-face bravado both in image content and design. Some astound with the brilliance of their imagery. Some speak to us in subtle and hushed tones. But to celebrate the amazing power of great LP cover art, I have selected for this article a few examples from the catalogue of just one artist - Herbert von Karajan. These are examples from LPs recorded by not only one of the greatest conductors of all time, but an artist who instinctively understood the power of the visual in the world of music and used it effectively on his way to becoming the most successful recording artist in classical music history.

Art underwater!

Have just returned from business trip to Hobart; a meeting with Marinova, a Tassie-based manufacturer of seaweed extracts used in medical, nutritional and dermatological products.

Apart from the great hospitality of Paul Garrott, CEO & Managing Director and Kevin Krail, Business Development Manager, another pleasant surprise was a gift they gave me. A book by Tasmanian landscape photographer, Ian Wallace which is in fact a collection of images from the exhibition 'Seaweed - art meets science'.

The image above is not from that project (it is actually a photograph that I took some time in 2008 during a day out with family at one of Sydney's many beautiful south coast beaches). But do check out Ian's breathtaking underwater images and I'm sure you will agree that something as simple as seaweed does have this wondrous mystique that is so far removed from the depressing hard lines of most of our built environment. Enjoy!

And finally, here's another 'underwater' artist - Jason deCaires Taylor - who is creating amazing sculpted forms deep in the ocean.

Recognizing and responding to the peak experience

Article published on Ignite Me

Nirvana... the ‘aha!’ moment... the peak experience – different people use different ways to describe that summit of the aesthetic experience. What is common is that it can be character defining, soul nourishing and in many cases, life changing. More...

What happens when you tell Bach that a violin has its limitations!

The facts are these: When Bach was composing his Partita in D minor for solo violin (BWV 1004), he created a concluding movement called the Chaconne (an old, slow and stately dance form) which lasts longer than the collective duration of all the preceding four movements in the Partita.

A type of theme and variations, Bach opens the Chaconne with a four-measure theme and that same theme is incessantly changed, transformed and transfigured throughout the entire 13 to 15 minutes of the piece, without any literal repetition. And mind you, (1) all the variations remain four measures long and (2) there are no other resources on hand to hold the listener’s attention but those four strings of the violin.

Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann, said about the Chaconne: “On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”

Yehudi Menuhin called it the "greatest structure for solo violin that exists" In fact one of Menuhin's childhood dreams was "that peace might be visited upon the earth if I could only play the Bach Chaconne well enough in the Sistine Chapel."

On the emotive scale, its yearning theme is able to transport the listener to places and feelings, worlds and worldviews never before experienced. In terms of form, the grandeur of design and the strength of its structure leave you marveling at the ambition with which Bach conceived it. It is almost as if Bach, himself a decent violinist, having heard the best compositions and performances for unaccompanied violin of the day, decided to show composers and players exactly how it ought to be done and what the possibilities were. Technically, the piece is tremendously formidable even for the most dexterous of violin virtuosos. Musically and spiritually, it is unsurpassed in the entire violin repertoire.

The theme is varied through ingenious elaboration, inversions, fragmentation, transposition, time diminution, implied counterpoint (a suggestion of 2, 3 and 4-part counterpoint with the single violin!), scale modulation and much more. And yet, the result is a coherent whole. In fact, the testament to the breadth and richness of this work is the number of successful transcriptions of this same work for multi-voice instruments such as the piano and organ and ensembles such as the full orchestra.

Paradoxically, the first recording I heard of the Chaconne was not in its original form for solo violin, but rather in a version of Stokowski's famous orchestral transcription. I have over the years listened to different legendary recordings of this piece; the most memorable being those by Nathan Milstein, Henryk Szeryng and Yehudi Menuhin. And among the virtuoso's of today, the best rendition to my ears has been that of the young American violinist Hilary Hahn.

The ‘G’ in ‘Music’

We live in an age of extreme political correctness and expressed belief in God is considered ‘uncool’.

For the classical music fan though, God is a recurring theme. Not just in the masses and requiems, the cantatas and chants. But also in so many of the so-called secular works that express a spirituality and a ‘God encounter’ as intensely as any obvious scared masterpiece.

This may in part be explained by the commonly held belief amongst many great composers that their inspiration came from a divine source.

Bach was known to initial blank manuscript pages with the letters ‘INJ’ (‘In Nomine Jesu’ or ‘In the Name of Jesus’). It was almost his unsaid prayer for inspiration and his way of sanctifying his every composition. Taking another example, Haydn was known to write the phrase "Praise to God" at the end of completed scores. Elaborating on the arduous gestation of his great oratorio 'The Creation', Haydn said "I fell on my knees each day and begged God to give me the strength to finish the work."

Apart from the conviction that God (to borrow an expression from Aquinas) was “the first cause” (in this case) of music, many composers also felt that music was the purest tongue in which to communicate with and about God. This again is not difficult to accept when we realize that music is perhaps the most elusive of all art forms and it is precisely because of this formlessness that music can be used intuitively to express the inexpressible. The great conductor Leonard Bernstein said it simply: “Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”

Do you see the ‘G’ in ‘music’? Which particular composer or composition has spoken of God the most compellingly to you?

Lasswell's Formula: Making sense of the listening experience

There is a formula I learnt decades ago, when we studied the mechanics of human communication at college. Propounded by Harold Lasswell, this approach to understanding the communication process is actually beautiful in its simplicity.

Lasswell analyzed any communication by asking:
“Who says what, to whom, in what channel, with what effect?”

It seems an appropriate way of looking at the process of appreciating classical music as well!

We could freely translate that formula to:

Who (the composer/performer) says what (the music), to whom (the listener(s)), in what channel (the medium), with what effect (the impact).

Does this simple model of communication help to make more sense of that mysterious process of listening to and enjoying music?

The ‘Peak’ Experience

I have always believed that great classical music helps us transcend our own limitations. This is most obvious in the state of rapture that some listeners reach when completely immersed in the music they are listening to. But there are some thoughts I wanted to share on this by first deconstructing the most common myth surrounding the ‘peak’ experiences in listening to classical music - that the peak experience is akin to some sort of spiritual orgasm or nirvana that takes you well and truly out of this world. That it is a tried and tested method of jettisoning your mind out of reality.

Listening to classical music is not escapism. It is not an aid to forgetting, to dodging the pain or confusion of our everyday lives, or to numbing ourselves to the cut and thrust of life’s challenges. Classical music is not some drug to induce a temporary ‘high’.

If that qualifies what the peak experience is not, then what exactly would we say this experience is? I would suggest that the peak experience in listening to great classical music is one that stirs the mind, heart and soul to a new level of awareness.

Let me elaborate.

If you notice, I have inserted the word ‘great’ before classical music. That implies some distinction between shall we say, run-of-the-mill music and the truly enduring and significant works in the repertoire. While run-of-the-mill works can engage and excite for sure, I would suggest that in most such cases the weakness of the piece either in inspiration or organization precludes the ability to ‘throw’ the listener to a new level of awareness.

Secondly, the operative word is to ‘stir’. The implication is that the peak experience results in not only a mixing up (re-organizing) of some of the emotions and thoughts in us, but also an awakening or rousing-up that takes us to a new level of awareness. This stirring is not something we may recognize on a conscious level, but it is I would think an intrinsic character of the peak experience.

Finally, the peak experience takes mind, heart and soul to ‘a new level of awareness’. This is not to imply that listening to the Bach’s B Minor Mass unlocks the secrets of eternity to the tuned-in listener or that listening to Beethoven’s late string quartets or piano sonatas reveals to us the meaning of human suffering. They might and they often do (far be it from me to set a limit to what the peak experience can do!!). But when we say ‘a new level of awareness’, it could simply be a greater mindfulness of our own spiritual nature, a better perspective on what matters most to and in our lives, a deeper appreciation of the beauty in life, a gentler view of ourselves, a more forgiving view of our world, a more optimistic view of our chances battling our own challenges, a renewed relationship with our God, a renewed relationship with ourselves, or simply a joy that heals. After all, the word ‘peak’ implies reaching a point from where the view is different!

These are the new levels of awareness that religious retreats aim to achieve, that self-development workshops and books promise and that every individual seeks in some way or the other. And this is the peak experience that listening to great classical music can achieve.

We mentioned ‘mind, heart and soul’. So let us be clear, the peak experience is not some emotional high that makes you tearful, delirious or ecstatic merely for emotion’s sake. Great classical music engages mind, heart and soul to take us to a new understanding. Like that view from the mountain top, it has a way of putting things in perspective. No wonder then that the Hindu Goddess of music, Saraswathi, is also the Goddess of wisdom!

The Classical Music Revolution

Venezuela is in the news now for admittedly the wrong reasons. President Hugo Chavez's widely-criticized referendum saw Venezuelans voting to lift limits on terms in office and so allow him to run for re-election in 2012.

Clearly, the promise of economic and political revolution in Venezuela seems less achievable now in the face of rampant crime (that accounted for 13,000 people in 2007), entrenched corruption and a 30 percent inflation rate in 2008.

But a dramatic revolution is already underway in the country’s classical music world. 'El Sistema' (The System), a music-education program started in 1975 by economist and musician José Antonio Abreu, is working miracles in the lives of disadvantaged and at-risk children in the country. The program puts musical instruments into young hands, trains and nurtures them, provides a sense of belonging (through youth orchestras set up around the country) and then lets the power of classical music do the rest. Countless stories have emerged of youngsters putting behind the despair of impoverished homes and the aimlessness of life-on-the-streets to excel and take pride in performing the music that was once considered the preserve of the elite.

And the beauty of the program is that it is not characterized merely by good intentions. The quality of their exuberant music-making and the conviction in their performances has turned world-renowned classical musicians into enthusiastic fans of the program.

• One Venezuelan Youth Orchestra performance brought Placido Domingo to tears.
• Simon Rattle considers the program among the most important initiatives anywhere in the classical music world.
• The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra made its Carnegie Hall debut in 2007.
• 27-year-old conducting prodigy, Gustavo Dudamel, a product of ‘El Sistema’, who leads the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra through stirring performances at concerts around the world, is set to take over as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He already has that most sought-after of trophies in the industry - a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. (Simon Rattle is believed to have called him the most prodigiously gifted young conductor in the world today).
• And perhaps, the most fitting tribute to the program has come from over twenty nations around the globe who have decided to emulate El Sistema's model and bring purpose and healing to youth in their own regions; through classical music.

For more information on this program, visit http://www.fesnojiv.gob.ve/en.html

José Antonio Abreu was awarded the TED prize in 2009. Click here (Jose Antonio Abreu: Help me bring music to kids worldwide) for his inspiring talk and his amazing story.

Please explain!

It seems to me that to understand the impact of classical music, we must arrive first at what it means to us.

That is a tough one! Ask people to verbalize their response to great music and you have phrases such as “truly uplifting music”, “music that transported me”, “a deeply moving experience”, “intoxicating beautiful”, “indescribably powerful”, “amazing”. But what do all these expressions imply? Perhaps the only conclusion you could draw from all these responses is that music is ineffable, inexplicable in its impact and meaning!

But that gets us nowhere. I agree that a piece of music does not mean the same to two different people. But having said that, it is impossible to ignore the fact that a good number of listeners will see the nobility of some themes in Beethoven’s ‘Emperor Concerto’ or the heroism of his ‘Eroica Symphony’ or the lyrical beauty of his Violin Concerto or the raw power of his ‘Grosse Fugue’. The implication is that specific characteristics of music elicit specific responses, but it is possible that there could be shared experiences in that several listeners “see” or “grasp” the same general essence in a particular piece. That is why you tend to find broad consensus on the general nature of virtually any piece, even if different listeners have not heard it before or know little about the background or context of the piece. That is why we tend to call one piece “boisterous”, another “melancholy”, another “ecstatic” and yet another “unsettling”.

Meaning in music is obviously easier to arrive at and share in a common manner when the music we are listening to is programmatic in nature (or music that evokes extra-musical perceptions such as a mood or a scene). Most of opera or ballet falls into this category, for the obvious reason that it “tells” a story. But famous examples of instrumental music that is programmatic abound. Beethoven's ‘Pastorale Symphony’ (No: 6) has descriptions for each movement that Beethoven himself penned. Clearly, reading these descriptions provides the listener with that much more imagery or mood-setting than he would have fashioned without it. The descriptions are:
Movement 1: Pleasant feelings on arriving in the country
Movement 2: Scene by the brook
Movement 3: Peasants merrymaking
Movement 4: The storm
Movement 5: Shepherd’s hymn of thanksgiving after the storm

Similarly, Vivaldi's enduring chartbuster the ‘Four Seasons’ has four concertos – one each for the four seasons in the year. Saint Saens’ ‘Carnival of Animals’ is a rich tone painting of various animals, Elgar's ‘Enigma Variations’ was the composer’s way of profiling some of his closest friends, Mussorgsky's ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, Rimsky Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade’ or ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’, Liszt’s or Richard Strauss' Tone Poems are all examples of programme music that, while not always being representational in nature, do evoke extra-musical associations.

But Tchaikovsky’s colossal passage ‘Fir Trees in Winter’ from his ballet ‘The Nutcracker’ can evoke the impression of mighty pillars, or soaring vaults in a cathedral, or giant canyons just as much as they would evoke the impression of fir trees in winter. That is why even in programme music, the specific meaning attributed to a passage or a movement depends on the listener and can vary significantly from one listener to the next.

It actually goes to show that there are layers to meaning.

Music, like all art, can be read on different levels.

There is the literal level; much like Rimsky Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’: a simple, but invigorating simulation of the whrrr and buzz of the bee, using music. No layer to peel off. What you hear is what you get.

The second level of reading music is on a figurative level involving some attributed or associated meanings. We know that when Beethoven was asked the meaning of the rapid hammer blow opening chords of his Fifth symphony, he remarked, "Thus fate knocks on the door." This metaphor provides that opening passage and indeed the whole movement (and the whole symphony) an extra-musical association that is not immediately obvious, but when considered, can be seen as actually quite emblematic of the music.

And finally, there is the peak experience of immersing oneself in the music; no reading or commentary or analysis of the music. Here we are talking of a transcendental state that only peak music listening experiences can induce.

Music: Elusive but Ubiquitous

Most of you will agree that music is one of mankind’s most dependable companions through life’s decisive moments. It certainly has been for me.

It accompanies the celebration of a baptism, a birthday, a wedding, an anniversary, a march into battle. It also sustains us as we grieve at funerals. And beyond the decisive moments, music is also with us in the everyday moments. It is part of worship in churches, mosques and temples. It is the lifeblood of a carnival, it is that ‘very personal’ song between lovers, it is the throbbing beat from spectators at a sporting event, the anthem we sing, the background score to the films we watch, the insidious, and sometimes, irritating ambient tracks in a lift or lobby, the live music in a concert hall, at a party or from a busker on the street, the bedtime song we sing our children, the whistling in the dark, the singing in the shower, the aerobics accompaniment, on the car radio, on home stereos, on personal headphones; in fact you can think of hundreds of different scenarios where music is part of our lives.

Most of you will also agree that music is universal, in the sense that in some form or the other, it is created, performed and enjoyed across races and cultures. Afro, bhangra, bel canto, boogie, bolero, calypso, carnatic, celtic, cha-cha, flamenco, ghazal, hillybilly, hindustani, polka, qawwali, rumba, salsa, samba, swing…the exercise of simply listing out some music styles throws up a rainbow of impressions of each culture and geography that gave birth to each of these genres.

Again most of you will agree that music finds a way to connect with people, through different forms or genre. It could be the chart-topping pop number that is the current favourite on the dance floor or the rock song that has ‘protest’ written all over it, it could be the monumental symphony in a classical music concert or the smooth and easy sound of a jazz band, it could be the raw and simple refrain from a folk song or the adrenalin-pumping soundtrack of a film score. (Please overlook the stereotyping implied in many of these phrases relating to various genres; they are only indicative of common impressions of various genres. By no means can they be taken to encompass the essence of each genre; the generalist adjectives used here are only in the interest of brevity of expression).

Finally, you will agree that music impacts us significantly. Human beings connect and respond instinctively to music. After all, the unborn baby hears long before it sees. And right through every stage of life, music exerts a mysterious, but real power to excite, arouse, enthrall, soothe, reassure, inspire and lift us.

But I think you may also agree that music’s impact varies based on the person and the context, and that impact itself could be of different levels and types. What is difficult to do is to actually understand this impact of music on our lives. This is because music is in itself a virtually formless force. It is not a painting you can appraise at a glance or a piece of sculpture you can touch, it is not a building you can walk through, it is not a culinary delight you can taste. In fact, if you think of it, music does not even exist in the moment; and what I mean by that is – at any given point in time, you are hearing one note or notes and the melody is experienced only by linking it what came before and what comes after that note or notes. You cannot hear a whole symphony in a second; unlike looking at and appreciating a painting in a second. So, if we did not have the faculty of memory, we would not appreciate the melody or the structure of a piece.

And the peak experiences in music listening are often characterized by their inexplicable nature. Ask anybody to describe exactly what and how they felt (when they experienced music in a deeply moving manner) and you are likely to get a garbled mix of expressions that do not clearly explain what the nature or meaning of the experience was.

Why bother with Classical Music?

Does classical music mean anything at all? Does it matter?

Of course, you may say, it matters. It matters that Beethoven wrote his last string quartets, it matters that Mozart wrote his ‘Requiem’, it matters that Bach wrote his ‘Art of Fugue’.

But let me rephrase – Does classical music matter in the larger scheme of things?

“What scheme?” you ask.

So let me elaborate.

Does it matter to a parent who loses his child to drugs that Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony’ is a ‘complete’ masterpiece in itself? Does it matter to a community grieving over a senseless act of terrorism, that Shostakovich penned his brilliant ‘Festive Overture’ in a matter of minutes while chatting to a friend and smoking? Does it matter to a war-ravaged village that Handel composed his ‘Messiah’ when he was blind and broke? Does it matter to a terminally-ill patient that Mahler left unnumbered his actual ninth symphony because no composer since Beethoven had successfully completed more than nine symphonies before dying? Does it matter to a country plundered by its ruthless dictator that Stravinsky’s ballet music ‘The Rite of Spring’ provoked a riot at its first performance because it was so far ahead of its time? Does it matter to investors, who see their life savings wiped out in a stock market crash, that that the fourteen-year-old Mozart first heard the ‘Miserere’ by Allegri on a visit to Rome, and wrote it down entirely from memory soon after hearing it (which the church at that time forbade anybody to transcribe)?

The larger scheme of things! The big picture! In that context, is music a ‘must-have’ or a ‘good-to-have’? When the most basic needs are in peril or unmet, what good is music?