music

To listen to music has not practical purpose

To listen to music or to sing a chant is to do something that has no practical purpose; it is just celebration and praise; it is just tasting the joy and beauty of life, the glory of God. Listening to it, even in the midst of a very purposeful day, reminds us to add the other dimension to our experience, the dimension of meaning, that makes it all worthwhile.

What is the formless?

The formless, what is that? As a pianist, I can best begin to understand through the study of piano music: notes on a page, each one to be taken hold of by the fingers and made to sing. One learns to listen, to seek the composer's intention, to try to recapture the tempo; to give attention to every note, however small, and to love each silence... Music is a transmission from one person to another, a deepening of understanding, and an awakening to the sense of beauty and order which lives deep inside us.

Let it come through you like something that doesn't belong to you

When I used to compose music, I'd sit for ages squeezing it out of myself; I made a huge effort, drove myself. But there was nothing like that this time. It was like music pouring out by itself. It was like the desire to sing – and I sang, the desire to pray – and I prayed. Do you remember?

The abbot said: "Let it come through you like something that doesn't belong to you."

Erase the din of noise and hear the music

The rock vibrates, the air is riven
Like ripe fruit splayed on a summer's day
The bird's song is used to call a mate,
Warn of danger, find a nest...
If you listen you will hear our
Universal music on the street, in the air.
It is not the splitting of reeds,
The thrumming of strings,
The thrusting of air, or tambour of skins.
It is the passion and yearning to fully
become that which we already are.
To reach out and express...
to become connected and more whole.
Erase the din of noise and hear the music.

Silence is my music now

One of the things he liked most about the hermitage was the silence. "Silence is my music now." He could pick up the small sounds of insects and animals. Sometimes when the wind was strong, it blew the sound of the traffic to him. He liked to think of all the people going on with their lives and to think of himself as in a sense staying where he was for their sakes, "like a lighthouse keeper."

Hearing him play, he knew there was a God

Nadia Boulanger once described a Menuhin recital: He gave a number of encores, and the last was the slow movement of Brahm's Sonata in D minor. What happened then was part of an indescribable completeness. The whole house found itself in the grip of the same mute emotion, which created silence of an extraordinary quality. Everyone understood, felt, participated in what he himself must have been feeling." Menuhin has always possessed this quality. Even as a child, his playing had an innate innocence (which is still intact) that made Einstein declare that, hearing him play, he knew there was a God.

The reason we are singing to one another

I think, to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, and love of the other birds.

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