The Music of a Symphony

Since my travels abroad while studying conducting and music phenomenology, I've learned the deepest meanings of music can be found in the smallest elements that make it up. Back in 2020, I wrote an article about intervals and described them as the tiniest bits of tonal music. Can we zoom into this word for a moment to get a feel for my perspective?

music

When I say "music," I don't exactly mean “organized sound,” or something that sounds harmonious. Music is a coming together; it is a unification of body, mind, and spirit. What I'm talking about transcends ordinary experience, and that's exactly what music is. Music by definition brings us outside of the common world, and even this isn't entirely true because music doesn't do anything at all. Music is more like a state of being. It’s when the heart of who you are finds sacredness in the present moment, that's music. 

You might be thinking this sounds more like a definition of deep meditation, and that's precisely the direction I have in mind when I describe “music.” This sacredness—this quality of the world being entirely imbued with meaning—is brought about by tones and rhythms, the atoms of musical experience. A musical tone is so striking to us that when we hear one, it captures a special innate kind of attention. Its presence transforms us and the world simultaneously with its tune. When a tone, or a note, is followed by a different one, at last we're presented with an interval: an opportunity to transform ourselves into what we can call "music."

Say we heard one tone, and then another, the two floating there in the air, unrelated, then we wouldn't even call home about it. But if and when, in our ears, we overcome the two-ness into a singular whole—if we allow ourselves, the quiet deep regions of our soul and body, to be moved by the transformation of one note into the second, across time—then we will have been successful in temporarily unshackling ourselves from the tyranny of time and experiencing that which is most rare in the world of objects and things: our indivisible source of wholeness. 

The most important thing to consider when bringing this idea into action is that a musical interval is a process of transformation by one tone into the second (and not only the distance between the two). When an interval is “music,” each tone can be found inside of the other in some form, which is something only you, a unified being, can express. (So what if a machine can generate harmonious sounds?)

In a similar way, the music of a phrase is not composed by its notes and rhythms, but instead is found in the lived process of its beginning into its end. And likewise, the music of an entire sonata cannot be found in the many-ness of its microscopic parts—its melodies and sequences and what have you—but instead can be found in the lived transformation of its beginning out of silence, through its climax, until, exhausted, it ends. Ultimately, the music of a symphony is the movement of your soul and body unified by concrete relations contained in both you and the work itself.