Music

It Will Cost.

In light of the tragic events that occurred last week in Paris, I feel a burden to write the following.  I’m on an airplane, heading home, catching up on the latest news on the BBC app.  I have so many mixed feelings and thoughts and questions.  It’s all swirling around and I don’t know how to process it all.

First and foremost, I feel heartbroken for the victims and their loved ones…for the city of Paris…and really for all of us.  I hope there will be a way for moving forward and healing and peace.

I also have feelings about the fact that one of these terror attacks targeted a concert.  I haven’t been able to process them fully.  I think that Bono mentioned recently that in the “War on Terror”, this is the first attack on music.  Wow.  I think that’s something that has weighed on me heavily.

On this same flight, I read a BBC article (A Point of View: The Tyranny of Pop by Roger Scruton) in which the author discusses “pop music” and the constant barrage of sound that we have in our culture today.

While the article hits pop music pretty hard (hey, I like some pop music, so lay off), I agree with the overarching thought as it applies to all music in general.  Here are some phrases that I’m currently trying to process:

“For our ancestors music was something that you sat down to listen to, or which you made for yourself.  It was a ceremonial event, in which you participated, either as a passive listener or as an active performer.  Either way you were giving and receiving life, sharing in something of great social significance.”

“For many people music is no longer a language shaped by our deepest feelings, no longer a place of refuge from the tawdriness and distraction of everyday life, no longer an art in which gripping ideas are followed to their distant conclusions.  It is simply a carpet of sound, designed to bring all thought and feeling down to its own level lest something serious might be felt or said.”

A language shaped by my deepest feelings.  Either giving or receiving life.  That’s what I want my music to be.  That’s what I want all of our music to be.  I confess that, too often, I’ve been distracted by opinions and acceptance, dollars and bills waiting to be paid.  There are times that performing and writing music have been solely about paying bills or trying to look/sound cool.  Not at all a language shaped by deepest feeling.

C.P.E. Bach said it this way:

“We must play from the soul, not like trained birds…Since a musician cannot move us unless he himself is moved, it follows that he must be capable of entering into all the affections which he wishes to arouse in his listeners; he communicates his own feelings to them and thus most effectively moves them to sympathy.”

I guess what I’m getting at is that if my music, or your music, was the last thing someone would hear…would we be proud of it?  Don’t we owe it to each other to pour our entire being into this music?  Composers, writers, performers, audio engineers.  I believe this is our profound responsibility.

So often after tragedy (personal or global in scale), I feel helpless.  There’s nothing that I can ACTUALLY to do to make things better or easier for those affected.  What can I do to make the world a better place?  What I DON’T have mixed feelings about is that composers and musicians have an incredible and weighty responsibility in this world.

Leonard Bernstein said:

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

That is my desire.  And my promise.  My music, composed or performed, will cost me.  It will have taken time and intention and money and investment and thought and tears and pain and joy to create.  It will mean something and have value.  I hope to honor you in that way, and hope that you will have grace for me in the times I fall short.