When Does Music Replace Religion? Options

[quillion]

I have realized that music is my religion. I was watching these fundamentalists once praying on the sidewalk in front of some place they were picketing for who knows what, and they were like having this experience--this way of melding spirits, I guess you'd say. So they reach this sort of ecstasy.

I've heard pagan rituals involved a lot of this emotive stuff. And these people seem so happy and all. I got kind of envious of that--like they know something I don't. But once I learn what it is, there's no possible way that I could be happy with that. What seems to buoy them up so much I find completely uninteresting and devoid of personal value. I'm not knocking anybody--it's just not for me. I don't believe in that kind of thing. I could never make myself believe it.

But I realize I do have a buoyed spirit nonetheless and I realize I get it from music. Music is ecstasy. If I ever went to church (I never have in my entire life), I would leave after singing the hymns. I would snooze during a sermon. Music holds me enthralled but I'm kind of like that Greek fellow who lost his power when his feet were off the ground--Antilles, was it? When the music's over, so am I.

There's a place where notes have shape, texture, finish, character, gender, some have angular momentum while some don't. They often shift these features endlessly or just once or anything in between. Horn notes are burnished gold. Strings are bright silvery. Revolving in opposite directions. And there's radiant purple in between with infinite facets. It's a robe and when you get lost in the folds, it is ecstasy. And there's no time. All the music happens at once but you can hear and analyze it or any part of it for as long as you want to. You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? I'm not really sure either. I think it's the universe as it really is.

But that's what music does to me. It opens a door, a portal--I don't know. It takes me back to ages in which I never lived. But, it would seem, I actually did.

Did you ever get this weird feeling when you're listening to music that you lived at another time? Like I get this odd feeling when I hear medieval chamber music of standing in a stone colonnade with a vaulted ceiling and its dark except I'm holding a torch and I'm wearing a brown robe and I had a fringe of hair but was tonsured on top. I've been haunted by this since I was a young boy. As I got older, I realized I was a monk in this "vision" and that I was standing alone in the colonnade because chamber musicians were playing and I wanted to hear the bass notes. I knew if I moved far enough away, the bass notes would carry and higher frequencies would recede. The colonnade was a big stone chamber and would allow the bass notes to be amplified and I could hear them better because I was very interested in bass notes. I think I was writing my own pieces and was trying to hear how to structure them. I wanted so badly to be a composer but I was just a monk and no one cared about my dream.

Nothing else evokes these "memories" except music. I can't get glimpses of the real universe unless I do it through music. It's my religion. I find I don't need or want anything else. Nothing else works anyway.

[Holz Gedeckt]

If I ever went to church (I never have in my entire life), I would leave after singing the hymns. I would snooze during a sermon.

You sound ideal material to become a church organist! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[lucky045]

Yes - we were reading Wordsworth the other day in English (I hate his poetry, but none the less...) and it was all about nature, and how perfect nature was, and how you could only get this feeling of peace and satisfaction and wholeness when you're surrounded by nature... and I thought "that's not true... I get it from music..."

Listening to music, and singing, if I'm doing it well, and I really get into it... it sounds clichéd and pathetic, but it really transports you somewhere else. Into a story, and into the lilts and the rise and fall and everything... I even love long car journeys, because I can just sit back, and listen to music and gain this great sense of peace.

Another thing from another Wordsworth poem - "Expostulation and Reply", he talks about not just spending your time reading books - but sitting and thinking in quiet contemplation... and again my English teacher said "unless you're at one with nature, none of you will have ever felt that", and I said "that's how I feel and think when I'm listening to music with no distractions"... He said it didn't count as thinking if I was listening to music... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

All this and I don't even like Wordsworth... but you're right... and I'm not particularly talented at music at all... but it still gives me this same sense.

[lizbun]

Did you ever get this weird feeling when you're listening to music that you lived at another time?

That's what music is about...

Only a great player can make you feel that way.

[quillion]

You sound ideal material to become a church organist!

Except my organ-playing would leave much to be desired. I have a synth that I compose with but synths can make even someone as mediocre as me sound like I know what I'm doing.

Another thing from another Wordsworth poem - "Expostulation and Reply", he talks about not just spending your time reading books - but sitting and thinking in quiet contemplation... and again my English teacher said "unless you're at one with nature, none of you will have ever felt that", and I said "that's how I feel and think when I'm listening to music with no distractions"... He said it didn't count as thinking if I was listening to music...

Well that's absurd. I agree that we can get too wrapped up in the written word but I'd rather spend my time reading than watching television. There is a oneness with nature that is quite profound but I combine them. There is a place about 40 to 50 miles away from my home, it's called "Horse Country" because a lot of horse-owners live out that way. It's very wooded and the roads are unpaved. The houses and ranches are hidden from the roads by the woods. There's a big swamp out there and I sometimes load up my fiddle and guitar and drive out there when the missus is working. I'll spend 4 or 5 hours out there playing songs while walking around the swamp. I'll hear an interesting bird call and try to imitate it on the instrument I'm playing.

That's like two for the price of one. After a while, I'll stop playing and just stand there looking across the swamp or up at the sky or treetops. I'll listen to bug sounds and birds and occasional splash as something leaps in or out of the swamp--usually a frog. And you kind of lose yourself in the moment. That's the whole point of it: to lose the sense of self and just blend with nature. We spend too much time inside our "selves" and need a bit of an escape every now and again. Free from thoughts and just "feel" the moment--become a disembodied bit of consciousness--a pure receptor--temporarily breaking off from the whole in order to experience itself. Then I realize that's really what we are anyway.

That's what music is about...Only a great player can make you feel that way.

I suppose this is true. But it's not a living in the past. It simply makes the past a present moment. It's not like looking at a medieval painting. It's actually living in the moment the painting depicts. A very different experience. All there really is is the present and it doesn't exist. I mean, past is done, over, kaput. You can't live it. And future is just potential and you can't live that either. You can only live in the present, this instant. But it doesn't really exist either. Like when you take a step--you divide space into two distinct segments: 1. Space that has been traversed, 2. Space that has yet to be traversed. There really isn't any space being traversed. Every step divides space into those two segments and there are no others.

Likewise, every instant that you exist, you divide time into two segments of past and future--that is, 1. Time in which you have already existed, and 2. Time in which you have yet to exist in. There is no time being existed in. The present moment is a mere instant that is annhilated as soon as it arises. And yet it is the only point in which we are truly alive--the present moment. If this doesn't compute, that's okay, because life and consciousness is a complete mystery to us. We don't really get it. When we think we do, it's only a small, distorted, inconsequential part. The totality of existence and consciousness is beyond comprehension.

What has struck me since I was a young lad experiencing myself as a medieval monk is that I'm not really me. Or, to put it another way, I am a succession of me's--none of which are really me. And this body I'm in is not me either and I've had a succession of those also. The real me isn't a me at all because it has no sense of self. It's the same me that is also you and everyone and everything else. It looks out all of our eyes, you could say, but does not recognize itself because it is not a self. We are a mere, very imperfect reflection of it.

[stevensfo]

If music is a religion, then I guess ###### is a Gorecki violin quartet used as inspiration for a Phillip Glass opera.

Heaven is a Vivaldi oboe concerto played in a marble hall, closely followed by Dire Straits.

Steve


Er... the word that got deleted (#####) is the opposite of heaven.

Quite why the moderators feel that this word is worthy of censorship when far, far worse is heard in pre-watershed soaps is completely beyond me.

Steve

[quillion]

What a strange coincidence that the Ancient Greeks had a system called isosephia where each letter of the alphabet had a certain numerical value and that when one spells out the Greek name for Apollo, which is Apollon in Greek, the value is 1+80+70+30+30+800+50 or 1061. Another title for Apollo is Pythias and that has a value of 1059. So these two names average out to 1060. The number of Apollo is astonishingly close to the value of the smallest division of the 12-tone equal-tempered scale or the 12 equal divisions of the octave—the half-step—the value of which was determined by Zhu Zaiyu in 1584 to be the 12th root of 2 or about 1.0595.

We can safely doubt that the Greeks knew about 12-TET or 12-EDO and yet the coincidence is hard to explain when we remember that Apollo was the Greek god of music.

Some of the coincidences that arise in music theory that make me think that maybe Jung and Pauli were correct that things are connected symbolically as well as causally. This is not just a subconscious aligning but what appears to be sheer coincidence. But Jung and Pauli asking what exactly is coincidence anyway?

As a case in point, we can investigate the cent system that puts the ratios of the divisions of the octave into a linear progression. The system arbitrarily assigns 1200 cents to represent the octave. Hence, each half step has a value of 100 cents. A whole step is 200 cents. A minor third is 300 cents and so on.

Alexander J. Ellis developed the cent system in 1875. The formula for converting interval ratios into cents is:

n = 1200 log2 (a/b)

The string plucked open has a value of 1. A perfect 5th has a 3:2 ratio. So, n = 1200 log2 (3/2) = 701.9 cents or about 700 cents. A whole step has a 9/8 ratio and is represented by 200 cents (but is closer to 204). A half-step is 100 cents (but is sometimes closer to 90 cents). Since a half-step is the smallest division of our scale anything under 90 cents or so either added to or subtracted from a given tone is going to make it out of tune with other notes in that scale. Dividing a string in half produces an octave or a 2:1 ratio.

But since ancient times, musicians have found that the octave is not a perfect circle practically speaking even though it is in theory. For even though there are 6 whole steps in an octave, raising 9/8 by the power of 6 does not equal 2 exactly. Rather it equals approximately 2.0273 and that is enough for the human ear to discern.

If we go through all 13 intervals in the chromatic scale progressively multiplying by fifths, the final ratio is 262144/531441. It does not equal out to exactly 1/2 (0.5), but approximately 0.49327. A true full octave ratio should be 262144/524288 and so that discrepancy is expressed as the ratio of 531441/524288 and is called the ditonic comma (not “diatonic”). The value of the ratio is approximately 1.01364327. If we run that value of the ratio through the cent formula of Mr. Ellis, we obtain a value of 23.46 cents. So the octave is drifts by about 23 cents going from, say, C to C’ and so the two notes would be out of tune. We obtain the same value by running 2.073 through the cent formula which renders a value of 1223.46 instead of exactly 1200 which demonstrates to the 23.46-cent drift in the octave.

So the octave is a revolving circle thrown off kilter from its axis of rotation by 23.46 cents. Likewise the earth itself is a revolving globe thrown off kilter from its axis of rotation by 23.44 degrees. This tilt of the earth is what gives us the circle of the zodiac comprised of 12 constellations while 12 consecutive semitones or half steps comprise the circle of the octave.

I don’t think there was any way that Ellis could have planned that. Just one of them coincidences.

[freda_bloogs]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

[ad_libitum]

So the octave is a revolving circle thrown off kilter from its axis of rotation by 23.46 cents. Likewise the earth itself is a revolving globe thrown off kilter from its axis of rotation by 23.44 degrees. This tilt of the earth is what gives us the circle of the zodiac comprised of 12 constellations while 12 consecutive semitones or half steps comprise the circle of the octave.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif) Cool! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

That's actually really interesting - and spooky!

As for religion.... I think my views on that subject would take too long to put into words on a public forum... needless to say, I'm completely devoid of it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

[superflute]

I think music becomes religion quite easily. My dad died when I was 12, and the day before his funeral my piano teacher gave me a flute, saying "Whenever God closes a door, he always opens a window." I'm atheist, but I can honsetly say that music is the one thing which has kept me going over the past four years, because no matter how bad I feel I can always go and bash out some big chords on the piano or play the recorder or whatever. I guess music has done for me what religion does for a lot of other people when they are faced with very difficult situations.

[anacrusis]

Since I have no particular need for religion, I'm not sure I need a replacement for it.

Music is a very interesting facet to life, though - it's an intellectual exercise, a technical one, and yes, it does something emotional too; whenever I've played well enough, I feel really buoyed up by the experience, as I do as well when playing with others - and when I listen to outstandingly good musicians, the music does sweep me up and let me get totally involved in it all. My singing voice is no good, and I avoid singing in public as much as possible, but I'm aware, after a really good concert, that my vocal muscles are aching slightly, because I've been "singing" silently along with the music. Sometimes I let music wash over me, other times it demands that I listen in a different way, depending on how it is constructed - if there is prominent counterpoint, I can't help but admire the interweaving lines of music, if the music contains huge luscious chords, then I find myself appreciating the texture - I don't have a good enough ear to be able to pick out all the details in full. Either way, the effect is life-affirming and moving.

Those who are religious sometimes say that their beliefs give them their moral code for life - clearly music can't do that, but I don't see why religion need claim the monopoly on providing a personal philosophy for living. I also feel that it is possible to admire and be in awe of the complex interactions which make life possible, and to have a sense of the æsthetic without referring it to any other outside agency - again, although music is undoubtedly uplifting and a part of the beauty we find in the world, it's not all of it, just a manifestation of it.