Musicophilia
I’m keen on reading the new Oliver Sacks book, “Musicophilia”, a collection of vignettes about music and the brain. For all the power music can have over us (who of us hasn’t, at one point in life, been completely overcome by a musical experience, whether at a concert, at home with headphones, playing in a high school band, or singing at the top of your lungs while stuck in traffic?), it seems that the effects of music on the mind remains a mystery to neurologists.
It made me think about a couple of questions that I’ve often pondered; are we hardwired to innately grasp music? And why is there an almost universal attraction to certain kinds of music?
I’m reminded of a Young Peoples Concert I did here last season with the Orchestra – the show was called “Kid Power”, and it was all about the extraordinary accomplishments that kids can achieve. Of course, we had the requisite student concerto competition winner, a composition by a local teen composer and performers from Circus Juventas doing acrobatics while we played Kabalevsky. The kids who come to these concerts often write to me (sometimes entire classes send me notes), and while everyone loved the young acrobats (who really were fantastic), all the comments I received about the music indicated that of all the pieces we played, the almost unanimous sentiment was that everyone loved the very first piece the best.
The very first piece on the program was the first movement of Symphony #25 written by a teenaged Mozart. It was the most serious piece of music on the program - in a minor key and all Sturm und Drang - and certainly not the piece that I thought would end up being the most popular. It made me think about the idea of an underlying universality in music; this piece by Mozart had an immediate, innate appeal to listeners who had limited exposure to classical music and were probably watching and hearing a live orchestra for the first time in their lives. Is it something about structure, proportion, melody? Or something much less tangible?
A small example, I know, and a limited sample size, no doubt; but it makes me smile to think that Minnesota school kids are debunking the flawed and tired notion that symphonic music is “elitist”.
It made me think about a couple of questions that I’ve often pondered; are we hardwired to innately grasp music? And why is there an almost universal attraction to certain kinds of music?
I’m reminded of a Young Peoples Concert I did here last season with the Orchestra – the show was called “Kid Power”, and it was all about the extraordinary accomplishments that kids can achieve. Of course, we had the requisite student concerto competition winner, a composition by a local teen composer and performers from Circus Juventas doing acrobatics while we played Kabalevsky. The kids who come to these concerts often write to me (sometimes entire classes send me notes), and while everyone loved the young acrobats (who really were fantastic), all the comments I received about the music indicated that of all the pieces we played, the almost unanimous sentiment was that everyone loved the very first piece the best.
The very first piece on the program was the first movement of Symphony #25 written by a teenaged Mozart. It was the most serious piece of music on the program - in a minor key and all Sturm und Drang - and certainly not the piece that I thought would end up being the most popular. It made me think about the idea of an underlying universality in music; this piece by Mozart had an immediate, innate appeal to listeners who had limited exposure to classical music and were probably watching and hearing a live orchestra for the first time in their lives. Is it something about structure, proportion, melody? Or something much less tangible?
A small example, I know, and a limited sample size, no doubt; but it makes me smile to think that Minnesota school kids are debunking the flawed and tired notion that symphonic music is “elitist”.
Labels: music and psychology
posted by Sarah at
6:01 AM
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