Being Inside Music

Music is a tacit thing. It is somehow inside of our very being. At times, it seems we are inside it. I’ve often heard it asked, “If a tree falls in the forest, will it make a noise?” Obviously, a being with a brain capable of hearing must be present for that to be true. Is that true for music? It would seem that a portable radio playing deep in the woods would be silent, left by itself; its waves of beautiful music simply waste away into space.

But herein is an opposite paradox. It would seem that a Beethoven could write a musical score even though he was totally deaf. So where did this music come from if he could not hear it? If his Ninth Symphony including all its choral parts was totally new, unhearing Beethoven created it inside his very being never having before heard it. This is the complete opposite of the tree falling in the silent forest. Here, music is silently created without any apparent source except the quiet genius of the human brain.

Franz Schubert was a prolific creator of music. He had completed several symphonies and had sketched out plans for a tenth. He apparently “wrote songs by the sheaf … over the whole range of his art—operas, cantatas, masses, symphonies, quartets, chamber music of all kinds” (MusicWithEase.com). In fact, one of the most stirring symphonies ever penned (The Unfinished) was partially written by Schubert but not completed. The final movements were within his being, but this musical genius passed into non-being at the age of thirty-one.

Incidentally, Franz Schubert, for the most part a pauper until his untimely death, was buried in a small Vienna village cemetery known only as Wahring Cemetery. Here he was laid to rest next to Beethoven (Schubert, Duncan, 1905).

So what is this strange thing called music? Attempting to find a definition is like trying to locate the exact spot in Beethoven or Schubert’s being from whence their music came. One definition often noted came from Edgard Varèse who claimed that music is “organized sound” (Goldman, 1961). Varèse, an American composer, thought of music as “bodies of sound in space.” He delighted in experimenting with electronic sounds (Britannica online).

Article Author: Regis Schilken

Regis Schilken's stories reflect his search for meaning in a very human but frightening way. Three of his books have been published: The Oculi Incident, The Island Off Stony Point, and a third, You Know When was just recently released. …

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