Music has been a fundamental part of our early education—flute for me, and then acoustic guitar; piano, the most complete of instruments, for my sister. Later on it became the sound track to adolescence and youth.
It would have been hard to understand Plato fully without considering the philosopher’s unique conception of poetry, and therefore of music, which in Greek culture was intimately connected to poetry.
Far from being a spiritual entertainment of a predominantly aesthetic nature, in the ancient world, the function of poetry was formative. But, Plato believed that because poetry and music appeal to and influence the non-rational part of the human soul, their power must be protected from abuse.1
Before Plato, Pythagoras2 said that music can cure illnesses. Pico della Mirandola,3 Giordano Bruno,4 Marsiglio Ficino,5 Vincenzo Galilei,6 some of the most prominent thinkers of the Renaissance, all dealt with music and the effects it has on us.
I was very young when I discovered symphonic music and The Beatles, more mature when I explored international music, Gregorian Chants, and jazz. Like all my best encounters, I came across Stefano Bollani by chance.7
The artist’s multifaceted conception of the world and life offers a welcome respite through his work and thought. In particular, two things he said prompted me to want to explore further:
Humanity in the future is more spiritually evolved, which means they’ve given it more thought. I like his definition of ‘evolved.’
From the past, what has come down to us is dusty, gray, fictionalized dramas. The irony escapes us due to a lack of context. It must have been there, too. It’s human.
I didn’t know Leonardo da Vinci’s official job: court musician. The drawings and inventions for which the polymath is known were side gigs that got him noticed. But he began with music. Who would Leonardo have been without music? What would everyone else have done without Leonardo?
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Music is authentically beautiful only when it pursues what is best for humanity—truth—said Plato. For Bollani “in music, the goal is extremely vague; one enjoys doing his best,” and knows when he plays poorly. In both, humankind seems to be out of tune.
If only we could listen
To Bollani, the concept of mental freedom resonates a bit like harmonics, which linger in the air after the last note.
Music is the least conventional language of all, emotive by design, untethered to the ‘signifier-signified’ system that characterizes speech. Its basic rules vary from culture to culture, but it can speak without the mediation of study to people of diverse cultures, provided they’re open and sensitive.
The barriers, labels, and boundaries—mostly commercial—within which attempts have been made to confine music for two centuries are the limits of humanity itself, not of its language as such.
Bollani’s knowledge and practice of music is vast, and so his passion for it. Take for example this short introduction to variations on the theme of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ which I’ve seen as a show many, many years ago. After he fell in love with the atmosphere of the film, his approach became one of curiosity.
The forbidden love he describes breathes fresh air on a story known the world over, but perhaps not entirely felt. Like the insight about Leonardo da Vinci, it’s these unexpected connections that make his creative work valuable.
When he says that “Jazz and Brazilian music often meet because they are two great, hybrid musics that are hungry: and they are omnivorous, they find something they like and want to eat it, internalize it,” my mind goes to Antônio Carlos Jobim.8
If the music is hungry like our belly, the ability to listen is how we metabolize. There’s not much intellectual deconstruction that goes on when we eat, our senses are involved directly—vision, taste, smell. Through them we detect colors, texture, and flavors. They say chewing is useful to a good digestion. So is savoring with music.
Chewing in musical terms involves more of the body. Listening and being present are part of jazz—improvisation at its best is a form of flow we could experience in our everyday lives, if we only let ourselves. That is we could put our practices and knowledge at the service of a collaborative way of being, like the quintet below.
“The difficulty in relating to other worlds stemmed from the tenacious attachment to a single point of view: one’s own.”
Escape from the walls
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