Stress, Music, and Thoughts

If our lives were easy would our music sound the same? Could a world without stress hear a requiem and be affected the same way that you and I are affected?

One of the reasons I feel in love with music is because it allowed me to express my inner-most emotions without fear of being criticized. When I played a solo, I would relate each part of the music to a part of my life, making the music my own. More often than not, the best part of my performances were those that I could relate to times of extreme stress in my life, and the more real I could make each memory at the time of performance, the more effective the passage was. At the same time, the "sad" parts didn't feel right without the "happy" parts. You can't have one without the other, so the more pronounced you can make one, the more pronounced the other will become.

Is this basic idea at the center of all music? A good composer can sit down write a piece of music without the spark of the inspired, but how much more effective is the music when the composer becomes intimately familiar with and develops a deep emotional connection to the music? As musicians and teachers, we often try to tell the students what the composer wanted and was thinking, but in reality, we can't know for sure. A composers thoughts on their music should merely be a guide, the first step on the journey of discovering the piece of music

Music is a very personal experience and no piece of music will affect everyone the same. We have to look beyond what the composer was thinking and feeling and discover what the music means to us as individuals.

Some people claim that older music is losing it's spark, that it has passed it's prime and we need new music for today. But I say that all we need to do is to pour ourselves into the "old music" and it becomes new. So when you listen to music, either classical or contemporary, do so with an open mind. There is musical value in everything from chant to rap. Anyone can complain about how music has changed, but it takes a true musician to find something worthwhile every time they turn on music.