Art thou troubled? Music will calm thee.

My dear friend harri3tspy has asked a question, albeit a rhetorical question, but one that begs to be attempted by anyone who has had the kind of experience of which she speaks. I have been singing since I have been sentient. Music has always been the focus of my creativity, to the point that I recall answering in my introduction to psychology class that, given a choice between going blind and going deaf, I would choose the former.

Since my first experience singing in a choir at elementary school until my most recent return to that medium this past fall, I can find no other activity which fills me with such joy and a sense of completion as that. Performing solo does not provide the same feeling of elation, the same release of endorphins, that comes with raising my voice in a group. It truly is difficult to explain. I never experienced that kind of joy when I played violin in the school orchestra nor with any other kind of activity except perhaps folk dancing. But there you are combining a physical activity with music again.

Music affects us on a visceral level. I dare anyone to listen to Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki and remain unmoved. (I think I�ll be performing that next year in an arrangement for organ, actually.) The recordings of African singing and drumming that accompanied the Fanshawe we just performed seemed to find a resonance in my very core, especially the call to prayer of the muezzin from the minaret. Music has been called �the most Romantic of arts�, probably because no one performance is exactly like another. It is a living, breathing artform, existing in time as well as space, and working directly on the rhythms of our bodies. When we sing, we become the music in the same way �it felt like the piece or the chapel itself was singing us rather than the other way around.� Thank you for that beautiful quote, Harriet.

|

<~~~ * ~~~>