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Music allows our better instincts to flourish
By Greg Cusack |
May 14, 2011, Saturday
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Print Edition
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DEAR Wang Yong:
I am writing to tell you how much I enjoyed your article on the spirit of music ("Spirit of music nearly lost in result-oriented world", Shanghai Daily, May 11).
And, lest I forget, I wish to again commend your illustrator Zhou Tao for his superb talent in picturing the essentials. The lovely illustration of the guqin master Liu Yang was superb, both of the gentleman himself, and of his surroundings. Just wonderful!
You muse, "Music is the ultimate moulder of a beautiful mind, as Confucius saw it. The philosopher said that while poems and rituals nurture one's mind, one is most enlightened through music. In today's commercialized world, music has degenerated into a commodity that can be priced, bought and sold."
My parents introduced me to music as a very young child - they always had music playing, either via the radio or a phonograph, during waking hours. My mother loved to sing along, sometimes just whistle in accompanying familiar tunes.
As a young man in high school and college, my dad played in a jazz band (this would have been the 1920s and early 1930s) when such music was becoming all the rage.
Dad's instrument of choice was the trumpet - just about 90 years ago now he paid the precious amount of nearly US$100 for the instrument (and I still have it!).
It was a thing of beauty to behold and hear (well, "hear" if the right person played it!). Although he no longer played after he married Mom, he kept this treasured piece.
I used it myself in both the high school and college marching bands. The trumpet was a great choice for learning how to "work" with others in producing music. (Although trumpets can be solo instruments, they usually work best in tandem with other kinds of instruments.) It was a great early instruction for me on how cooperation with others allows for higher achievement!
I also took piano lessons when I was very young (beginning, I think, when I was but 5 or 6). Although I apparently had an affinity for it, I am embarrassed to say that I succumbed to peer pressure ("Come outside and play." "Only girls play the piano!") and quit formal training when I was about 8. I have regretted that decision many times since I matured.
My favorite solo instruments today are the piano, violin, and cello. I am so thankful that public radio in the United States (which is supported primarily by people like Karen and I who contribute money to keep them on the air) features so many classical music programs.
I can, in fact, listen to beautiful music from mid-morning until late afternoon each day this way.
Uniquely pleasurable
I envy your own pursuit of, and ability to play, guqin music on the zither. There is something uniquely pleasurable in participating in the creation of music - I remember.
Thanks to you, I now also can enjoy guqin music. Particularly on days when I am pondering something about which I want to write or otherwise comment, guqin is my music of choice.
You lament how too many Chinese children seem to prize more highly a certificate of learning, as opposed to the craft and spirit of music itself.
I think this is rather common for children everywhere (after all, except for true geniuses, such as Mozart, most of us require some acquisition of depth of life experience before some of the more subtle beauties of music and poetry really start to sink in).
But at least a lot of Chinese youth are being acquainted with music in the first place! In my lovely and currently confused homeland, where "cutting spending" is the mantra of the day (almost without concern for consequences), among the first things to be dropped are so-called extra-curricular or special arts activities. Music is considered one of these!
Where music lessons are still available, necessary subsidies for poorer folks (who cannot spare dollars from food, clothing and housing needs for the "luxury" of music lessons) have been drastically curtailed.
Pursuit of happiness
I share your conviction that music is NOT a "luxury." Rather, it is a "necessity." In the US, our official jargon is so full of "working to make a living" that we have almost totally forgotten about Jefferson's ringing phrase in our Declaration of Independence about the "pursuit of happiness." You and I know that happiness is not a corollary of "having or making money." Rather, it is an aspect of the spirit.
Without an appreciation for music and literature, those critical elements which convey historical and multicultural continuity to our limited current lives, we humans are less than fully "developed."
I concur with your musings about the spirituality of music. Yes! And it is within mature spiritual beings that our better instincts flourish and can be shared.
Enough about grubbing for ever more money to live! May we live in order that we may grow into life more fully, experiencing all of the joys and beauty of our lovely world.
Each morning I awake to the beauty of bird-song outside our house. The "sons and daughters of song" (as St Francis of Assisi called them) summon me to join in their celebration of the goodness of a new day.
(The author was a member of the Iowa state House of Representatives. He also served in the Iowan executive branch. He retired in 2004. His email: gloster@iowatelecom.net)
I am writing to tell you how much I enjoyed your article on the spirit of music ("Spirit of music nearly lost in result-oriented world", Shanghai Daily, May 11).
And, lest I forget, I wish to again commend your illustrator Zhou Tao for his superb talent in picturing the essentials. The lovely illustration of the guqin master Liu Yang was superb, both of the gentleman himself, and of his surroundings. Just wonderful!
You muse, "Music is the ultimate moulder of a beautiful mind, as Confucius saw it. The philosopher said that while poems and rituals nurture one's mind, one is most enlightened through music. In today's commercialized world, music has degenerated into a commodity that can be priced, bought and sold."
My parents introduced me to music as a very young child - they always had music playing, either via the radio or a phonograph, during waking hours. My mother loved to sing along, sometimes just whistle in accompanying familiar tunes.
As a young man in high school and college, my dad played in a jazz band (this would have been the 1920s and early 1930s) when such music was becoming all the rage.
Dad's instrument of choice was the trumpet - just about 90 years ago now he paid the precious amount of nearly US$100 for the instrument (and I still have it!).
It was a thing of beauty to behold and hear (well, "hear" if the right person played it!). Although he no longer played after he married Mom, he kept this treasured piece.
I used it myself in both the high school and college marching bands. The trumpet was a great choice for learning how to "work" with others in producing music. (Although trumpets can be solo instruments, they usually work best in tandem with other kinds of instruments.) It was a great early instruction for me on how cooperation with others allows for higher achievement!
I also took piano lessons when I was very young (beginning, I think, when I was but 5 or 6). Although I apparently had an affinity for it, I am embarrassed to say that I succumbed to peer pressure ("Come outside and play." "Only girls play the piano!") and quit formal training when I was about 8. I have regretted that decision many times since I matured.
My favorite solo instruments today are the piano, violin, and cello. I am so thankful that public radio in the United States (which is supported primarily by people like Karen and I who contribute money to keep them on the air) features so many classical music programs.
I can, in fact, listen to beautiful music from mid-morning until late afternoon each day this way.
Uniquely pleasurable
I envy your own pursuit of, and ability to play, guqin music on the zither. There is something uniquely pleasurable in participating in the creation of music - I remember.
Thanks to you, I now also can enjoy guqin music. Particularly on days when I am pondering something about which I want to write or otherwise comment, guqin is my music of choice.
You lament how too many Chinese children seem to prize more highly a certificate of learning, as opposed to the craft and spirit of music itself.
I think this is rather common for children everywhere (after all, except for true geniuses, such as Mozart, most of us require some acquisition of depth of life experience before some of the more subtle beauties of music and poetry really start to sink in).
But at least a lot of Chinese youth are being acquainted with music in the first place! In my lovely and currently confused homeland, where "cutting spending" is the mantra of the day (almost without concern for consequences), among the first things to be dropped are so-called extra-curricular or special arts activities. Music is considered one of these!
Where music lessons are still available, necessary subsidies for poorer folks (who cannot spare dollars from food, clothing and housing needs for the "luxury" of music lessons) have been drastically curtailed.
Pursuit of happiness
I share your conviction that music is NOT a "luxury." Rather, it is a "necessity." In the US, our official jargon is so full of "working to make a living" that we have almost totally forgotten about Jefferson's ringing phrase in our Declaration of Independence about the "pursuit of happiness." You and I know that happiness is not a corollary of "having or making money." Rather, it is an aspect of the spirit.
Without an appreciation for music and literature, those critical elements which convey historical and multicultural continuity to our limited current lives, we humans are less than fully "developed."
I concur with your musings about the spirituality of music. Yes! And it is within mature spiritual beings that our better instincts flourish and can be shared.
Enough about grubbing for ever more money to live! May we live in order that we may grow into life more fully, experiencing all of the joys and beauty of our lovely world.
Each morning I awake to the beauty of bird-song outside our house. The "sons and daughters of song" (as St Francis of Assisi called them) summon me to join in their celebration of the goodness of a new day.
(The author was a member of the Iowa state House of Representatives. He also served in the Iowan executive branch. He retired in 2004. His email: gloster@iowatelecom.net)
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