What is “music”?

According to good old Wikipedia, “Music is an art form whose medium is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture.”

I don’t think it’s so simple. Or rather, I think it’s much, much simpler. I disagree that sound is the medium – I think sound is one of many tools we use, and that the true medium is time.

Since a huge part of musical experience lies in the perception of the listener, there is a limit to how much effect we can have as performers. Two people could be sitting next to each other at the same concert: while one is lost in a reverie, in a total state of bliss, unaware of time passing, the other is fidgeting, wishing it were over, and irritated by the experience. The various barriers to acceptance which exist in the mind of the listener can be manifold, and it’s easy enough to quite unwittingly do things to distract a listener from focusing and being drawn in completely. Also, to really allow yourself to be moved by live music is a very personal and private experience – it doesn’t necessarily happen so easily for everyone in a public concert environment. Still, though, it is the listener’s experience of time which is affected.

When we get it “right”, as performers, and draw in the audience thoroughly, we make time spin unbelievably fast for the listener. I remember being 9 years old and seeing Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi at the NCH. The concert was over almost before I realised it had started! I remember the whole concert as an intense rush of focused excitement. I’m sure that was not everybody’s experience of that concert. Some of the audience might have been distracted by Nigel’s outfit, maybe it took them longer to be drawn in. But for me, it was incredibly inspiring, and probably my first experience of the strangeness that can occur in seemingly everyday experience.

And when we get it wrong, we can make time seem endless. How is it that when time is such a valuable thing, it seems to stretch on stickily, back-achingly and sock-itchingly when we are not enjoying ourselves? It’s fairly hard to ignore music you don’t like when you’re stuck in a seat, in public.

It works the other way, too. Sometimes you sit on the stage and genuinely wonder whether you, and everyone else, have had a memory lapse and gone back to the beginning of a piece, because it seems at least twice as long as it should be. Or, as happened last week in the Beckett Theatre, everyone agrees that a certain piece seemed incredibly short – although it was no faster than in rehearsal, everything was repeated the same amount of times, etc. I always think that’s a good sign. And when Judith remarked on a specific piece and said I had played particularly well, I could not remember anything about it – I knew we had played it, I remembered the piece before and after, but it was like a miniature blackout. Musical oblivion and pure bliss!

It’s a funny old business we’re in, and continually full of pleasant surprises.

Unbeknownst to the beleaguered citizens of Europe, WWII is roaring to an end. Lebanon and Syria achieve independence, the 2-year Siege of Leningrad is finally lifted. Between New York City and Asheville, NC, Bela Bartók, ravaged by still-undiagnosed leukaemia, completes his Sonata for Solo Violin (Sz. 117, BB 124).

(I imagine him stuffing it into a manila envelope addressed to Mr. Yehudi Menuhin, gluing it shut, and strolling down to the mailbox on the street corner. This is what greets him at the newsstand where he stops for a stamp.)

New Yorker cover, March 1944 (c) the artist or publisher

Soon after, his native land, Hungary, is occupied by Germany.

Yurodny, Button Factory, May 29th '09

do come along.