the power of music

I think the quote above is so potent. As NZ music month draws to a close, I can't help but write the post on music that I never got around to before. Personally, I don't consider myself a particularly musical person. Compared to all the amazing musicians I know, I'm worse than an amateur.

When I was 10, having just been accepted to St. Cuth's, my mum had this idea that everyone there would be able to play a musical instrument. So, she made me start learning the piano so I wouldn't be disadvantaged when I went there in year 7. I didn't particularly like it at first; I hated the practice... but over time it really grew on me. As the songs I could play got more complex and better sounding, not so juvenile and simple, I began to like it more and more. Over the next 6 years, I had lessons with 3 different teachers and sat a grade 5 music theory exam. I never took any formal performance grades. It came to a point where I no longer had time to invest so much time in piano, so I stopped taking lessons. My once perpetually short nails were left to grow for weeks before I had to cut them, and the piano grew a layer of dust over its cover. But, I still printed sheet music to play around with. If I try to play any of them they are never perfect and I can't be bothered to practise them until they are. That's why when I hear performance pieces played by people at school I'm always so amazed that they can get through the whole thing without making a single mistake. Even when I had lessons and we had concerts, I would always have at least 1 slip up in every performance. Maybe I'm just not suited for playng music?

Apart from the piano, I also own 2 guitars that I play around with sometimes. I have no idea about proper strumming techniques and my fingers are nowhere near calloused or well trained enough to play for long periods of time. Plus my fingers are short so bar chords are really hard for me. But it's nice to have that minor hobby. Being able to play some really basic chords is enough for people to think you know how to play tbh... when I was younger I really wanted to learn the violin as well. There was something attractive to me about its elegance and the serene aura of someone playing it. A lot of my friends played the violin as well, which made me jealous. My mum wanted me to play cello at one point as well, but I thought it was a little big for me at age 10 haha. Hmmm, and lots of people have told me I seem like a flute player. I find flutes very elegant as well haha. Mannn I wish I was more talented.

Leopold Stokowski's quote really does ring true to me though. As an artist, I can relate to painting on a canvas. I can't help but think how much harder it is to paint on silence; painting on a canvas is simply transforming 2 dimensional space. Sculpture even is just a permutation of 3 dimensional space. But music.... being able to manipulate the 4th dimension, time, is amazing. Once you play a note, that note is forever trapped in the past. If it's the wrong note, we can't go back to change it whereas on a canvas we can simply cover it with something else. The whole musical piece is like a painting that can only be experienced over a period of time. However, where in art we can spend hours staring at a work studying all its intricacies, a piece of music is ephemeral and has a fleeting nature that makes it all the more elusive and precious. Music seems to be the only everyday way for us to master 4 dimensions. Listening to a piece of music over time is stirring as we react once and only once to every note, and we react differently when all these notes are strung together. With only 12 notes, music has the power to anger, placate, stir happiness or melancholy. Even with billions of shades of colour, art simply does not have the same power. One is more likely to be moved to tears by a piece of music than a painting. Each time music is played, something is different. The air moves differently, the pluck of a string leaves a different vibration, the feeling invoked is not the same; music is forever changing. Would it not be a miracle to see a painting that changed every time we looked at it?

I'm really inspired by music, even if it is not as big a part of my life as it is of others. Music's beauty in an aural sense intrigues me; to someone who deals with visual aesthetics mainly, the idea of something that can also be 'beautiful' that we cannot see but still detect with our other senses is fascinating. There's just something precious about the untouchable quality of music suspended in time. Each arpeggio, staccato, acciaccatura... once played and heard, disappears into the past, never to be experienced again. Are you listening? Music is transient. Don't just look at the world around you, remember to just stop sometimes and take in all the sounds as well; otherwise, you'll miss that beautiful harmony that will never be played ever again.