Music is everywhere. It is on iPods, CD players, radios, televisions, computers, sidewalks and smart phones. It is in lobbies, elevators, living rooms, bars, orchestra halls, movie theaters, cafes and cars..
Yes, music is everywhere.
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At the fin de siecle (1900), George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was on his way to being an accomplished playwright and thinker in British Isles, Ireland (his native land), Europe and America. Over his ninety-four years, Shaw became known for delivering pithy quotes in conversation and writing memorable lines in his artistic works. One saying attributed to him "Do not unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same" was not only a brilliant inversion of the golden rule (Matthew 7:12 in the New Testament) but also a statement of cultural sensitivity that was lost on nineteenth century European imperialist nations in Africa and Asia.
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Another one of his lines, which is contained his play Man and Superman (1903), has raised more than a few eyebrows with respect to its meaning over the years. In Act three, Shaw wrote "Hell is full of amateur musicians: music is the brandy of the damned." What was Shaw suggesting? Did he consider music to be akin to an intoxicant for emotionally strung-out, wayward souls? Was music the antithesis of reason and something to be avoided entirely?
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If so, much of the world is hooked on that brandy. Music is an expression of the mind, the heart and the delicate place in between. It can move us to dance or soothe us in our anxious moments. Music is found in religious worship and in rowdy nightclubs on the edges of cities. Love is probably the most common theme of music - often written into both notes and lyrics. If Shaw indeed disliked music and the music of his time, he not only missed out on some brilliant compositions but he also failed to grasp a truly beautiful element of the human experience.
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Frederic Chopin (Polish composer, 1810-1849), Sonata No. 2, Op. 35
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Frederic Chopin was not given even half the years that Shaw received on the planet. Although he died a few months short of his fortieth birthday, his etudes, sonatas, waltzes, nocturnes and other compositions were masterpieces for the piano, and they have been adopted into the canon of classical music. In 1839, Chopin finished writing Sonata No. 2, Op. 35 - popularly known as 'The Funeral March.' Nearly everyone in the West is able to identify this song by the age of twenty. Although the piece is associated with death, Sonata No. 2, Op. 35 is incredibly poignant and can be listened to anytime. During The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, Chopin's sonata was played at the funerals of both US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1963) and Soviet Union Premier Leonid Brezhnev (1982). That was but one example on how music has been a powerful bridge between peoples and cultures.
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Richard Wagner (German composer, conductor, 1813-1883), Siegfried Idyll
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While Wagner is regarded as one of the most talented composers of the nineteenth century, his name was stigmatized to some degree after WWII due to the use of his music by the Nazis. That is unfortunate. Although he did hold some anti-Semitic and racist views common to his time, it cannot be said with any certainty whether Wagner would have subscribed to Hitler's diabolical plans fifty years later. For that reason, Daniel Barenboim (b. 1942), who is Jewish and is regarded as one of the most accomplished classical music directors in the world, has made a career out of conducting Wagner's works. Of all of Wagner's compositions, Siegfried Idyll, which was dedicated to his newborn son (Siegfried) and presented to his second wife Cosima on her birthday in 1869, is one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of nineteenth century music.
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Chancellor Olcott, George Graff Jr. & Ernest R. Ball, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling
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By the 1910s, vaudeville and popular music were in full swing. When lyricists Chancellor Olcott (1858-1932, b. Buffalo, New York), George Graff Jr. (1886-1973, b. New York City) and singer-songwriter Ernest R. Ball (1878-1927, b. Cleveland Ohio) got together to write and produce When Irish Eyes Are Smiling in 1912, they had a hit on their hands that would become a permanent part of Western culture. The opening lyrics are truly heart-warming:
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There's a tear in your eye
And I'm wondering why,
For it never should be there at all
With such pow'r in your smile
Sure a stone you'd beguile
So there's never a teardrop should fall.
When your sweet lilting laughter's
Like some fairy song,
And your eyes twinkle bright as can be;
You should laugh all the while
And at all other times smile
And now, smile a smile for me
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Could Shaw, who was Irish, have not taken a liking to this song?
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Music shows no signs of losing its popularity in the West. Whether the genre is rock, rap, classical, jazz, blues or the artist playing is Brahms, The Rolling Stones, Rihanna, Bob Marley, John Lee Hooker or Jay-Z, people around the world have overwhelmingly adopted music as an extended vibration of love, hope and as means to understand the human condition.
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Music is part of life, and life is inside music. And with that thought,
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You should laugh all the while
And all other times smile
And now, smile a smile for me
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And enjoy a long sip - of the brandy of the damned.
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(To listen to Sonata No. 2, Op. 35 (Chopin), Siegfried Idyll (Wagner) and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling (recorded by Frank Patterson), please click onto kleostimes.tumblr.com and check the postings for 8 April 2012)
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J Roquen