The Great Symphony: Delving Into the Reality of Music
“Without music life would be a mistake.” 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a controversial thinker, but it’s hard to disagree with this famous aphorism of his. In fact, I’d not only agree with his aphorism. I’d take it one step further. Life wouldn’t just be a mistake without music. Life wouldn’t be life without music.
Instruments and Venues
When we think of music, certain classic images (or sounds) come to mind: symphonies, rock concerts, piano recitals, radios playing, stereos blasting, and audiences dancing. Certain artists like Tupac, the Beatles, Mozart, Jimi Hendrix, Simon and Garfunkel, and Queen may also come to mind…as well as all the different types of instruments- guitars, trumpets, pianos, saxophones, flutes, violins, drum kits, and more. We may also consider all the different “rules” of music and the ways that musicians “plot out” their compositions.
Music Theory 101
Precise chunks of time (measurements) contain different tones (notes) that singers or instrumentalists execute with varying intensities, volumes, textures, and/or lengths. If we stack the notes on top of one another, we get chords. If we serialize them, we get melodies. Songs in major keys are generally cheerier and more upbeat; songs in minor keys are generally sadder and more serious. We’d describe combined notes that are pleasing to the ear as harmonious and jarring or unpleasant notes as dissonant.
Etymology
But let’s divorce music from arenas, concert halls, and stereo systems for a moment. Music ultimately boils down to vibrations, and vibrations underly the entirety of sentient life and reality itself. Consider the numerous classical examples of this—our beating hearts, our circadian rhythms, the various orbiting moons, stars, and planets. The famous ancient Greek thinker, Pythagoras, postulated that the universe was inherently mathematical, and he certainly wasn’t incorrect. But music isn’t merely mathematical. It exists inside a certain “overlap zone” between the quantitative and the qualitative. The word music, after all, is derived from the word “muse,” meaning to “inspire” or “breathe in,” and “breath” is one of the defining features of life. In fact, the etymology of the word animal relates to the “breath or spirit,” and, thus, music and animal life come full circle!
Classic Tunes
A lot of music can be catchy or fun. Pop artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, or Lady Gaga undoubtedly fall into this category. But the deepest music defies words. Je ne sais quois, as the old French expression goes. Frederic Chopin’s 1st Nocturne is hauntingly beautiful, as is Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria. Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit is less a work of subtle beauty and more of an action-packed, angst-ridden, 1990s-era classic. But it is, in its own way, uniquely profound! Meditative classics like Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water or Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind also certainly deserve a shoutout, as do power ballads like Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven or Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. There is something pristine and authentic about all these different famous compositions.
What gives these classics their fresh and alluring appeal is what gives all of life the same thing…a proper balance between order and chaos. Play the same four chords repeatedly and people will stop listening. Play a bunch of chords that follow no discernible progression, and no one will listen in the first place (unless they do so out of clinical curiosity). But…play the same four chords for a given duration before ingeniously switching things up, and you’ll have the audience hooked!
Bohemian Rhapsody basically does exactly that. It begins with a distinct choir. A gentle piano melody follows. Fitting sound effects proliferate. We are then treated to a single guitar solo that bridges us into the final act. The tempo turns more staccato, and, well, if you’re familiar with Wayne’s World, you know what comes next…the head-banging, hard-rocking denouement. The instruments soften. The chorus chimes in: “Any way the wind blows.” A cymbal clashes.
The Rhythms of Life
And, with that, we arrive where music and human existence collide. We all wish for the perfect work-life balance…the right amount of savings in our bank accounts…a marriage filled with enough genuine love and devotion to last but also enough “conflict” to keep things interesting! Children that grow up into thriving adults. A dynamic group of friends. Hobbies that don’t become dull and unenjoyable after a week or two. A clean bill of health. A well-functioning supply chain and political system. And, well…you get the point!
The clocks have their own rhythms, as do the freeways and restaurants and office buildings and theaters and gyms and coffee shops and everything else that does until it simply doesn’t. We sense this reality. But do we actually embody it? Our modern mind-set is primarily goal or “destination” driven. People do X so that they can do Y and so on and so forth. Is the “end of the song” really what we’re aiming for, though? And what is the “end of the song”? A peaceful demise on our deathbeds?
As 20th century philosopher Alan Watts once put it, this type of orientation towards music would seem very strange. Imagine, for instance, attending the symphony only to hear the final note. It’d be the shortest performance ever! Instead, life, as he viewed it, wasn’t about the “end of the song.” It was about the “song” itself, and it was about dancing and singing and playing along to that song until it finally ended…like some cosmic version of “musical chairs.”
The Head Conductors
This teleology-free existence may seem terrifying and unpleasant and nihilistic. That is…unless we put something fixed and transcendent above it. Religious people might call this “something” God, while secularists might think of it as the different higher natural forces (gravity, entropy, consciousness, and the like). In either case, though, that which is fixed and transcendent provides the very blanket of existential reassurance we crave…an assurance that propels us along throughout our conscious lives.
Another way of conceptualizing this fixed and transcendent “something,” though, is simply to call it what it really is- music! So long as the cosmos is filled with energy and vibrations, those vibrations will find and form patterns, and those patterns will in turn form greater and more complex patterns. At its core, that really is what music is. Just like any deity or divinity, though, music (and the patterns that underly it) can be good or evil. Good music is well-ordered but dynamic and compelling. Evil music is bad music…the type of music that we compulsively shut off as soon as it plays on the radio. We’re all very familiar with bad music!
Patterns, Patterns
In closing, it may seem easy to simply regard this entire analogy as just that…an analogy. Music shares a lot in common with the rhythms of conscious life and reality…but it is objectively different. Is it, though? Consider how often we integrate music into our daily lives. We listen to it while we cook…while we exercise…while we drive to work…while we visit the bar with our friends…while we…well, you get the point! Music, for all its abstract qualities, has a lot more reality to it than all its actual, concrete components. In the final act of Broadway’s Hamilton, the title character frames death as “No beat. No melody.” Life then, by contrast, is a “symphony,” and, yes, Nietzsche is right, without that “life would be a mistake.”
