Music

"Music soothes the savage beast"

Everyone knows this quote. But apparently this is considered to be a misquote of 

"Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak." William Congreve"

But some sources believe that this was not a misquote, but a translation of the Latin: 

"Musica delenit bestiam feram."

Either way, the main point is not to explore the murky origins of the quotes, but the exploration of the subject matter itself. Music is the greatest thing in the world in my opinion. How do you define music? No one knows. People when asked just say music is music. It's too much of a simplification to say that music is a string of notes or a variation in frequency ,as those could just as easily be noise. What makes music and not noise? Music is so hard to define because it is a subjectively perceived phenomenon. Music is different for every individual. Some might consider the waves along the shore to be music. Yet there are others who remain unmoved by that very same sound. 

I was reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's final book - The Valley of Fear from the Sherlock Holmes series the other day, and there was a part which struck me.  It was a portion insignificant to the story itself, and more of a general description. One of the protagonists was describing a band of feared murderers whom he was forced to associate with for certain reasons ( read the book - it's good ) and he remarked on their love of music - 

"Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears."

Be it the savage beast or the savage breast, there will be some form of music that moves them. Not only humans, any living thing is susceptible to the power of music. There are stories where characters are able to tame or lure animals by playing various instruments. What is the reason music has such power - to make people cry, to make them smile, to make them melancholic, to lift them out of the melancholia, to make them angry, to make them excited, to make them patriotic, to make them nostalgic, to make them pious? Almost any human can be influenced by the different types of music. And what a variety there are - a religious chant is music, and a heavy metal song is music too. 

I was watching this documentary on The History Channel, about Stonehenge, where they were discussing the rituals that Stonehenge might have been used for thousands of years ago. There was discussion about human sacrifice, but that's another topic altogether. What is relevant though, is the fact that they used drums to induce a trance while the rituals were conducted there. When archeologists attempted to recreate the drum beats to investigate the effect on brain activity at a structure in Maryland that looked similar to how Stonehenge would have looked thousands of years ago, they discovered that there were some frequencies of beats which were able to reverberate and echo all the way to the outer area of the structure. They recorded these sounds, and played them to a test subject while measuring his brain activity - and found that his brain fell into a relaxed state when he heard the rhythmic beats. It was believed that music was used to put the people into a trance and make them believe that a presence was present in their ritualistic circle (probably their version of a shaman wanted to make them believe that he had called a divine power down - there's amply evidence for usage of hallucinogenic drugs being used for this purpose too). So there's probably some scientific explanation about the sound waves affecting the electrical impulses in the brain or something. 

But I don't think my relationship with music can be justified or explained fully by just cold objective scientific jargon. I've listened to piano music before and cried without knowing why. Certain songs that will immediately bring back a certain memory to mind when I hear them. Certain songs which soothe me when I'm angry,depressed or sad. And yet others that I listen to when I'm exercising. Sometimes  I think that my memories are attached to some songs. And when I listen to them I see all the memories in flashback in my mind. And certain songs have lyrics resonate with events in my own life, or my thoughts, or my situation and that affects me when I listen to them. And there are yet other songs, like instrumental pieces, that put me a state of melancholia and make me ponder my past and future just because. There's no concrete reason that I can pinpoint on why I like some pieces of music and why I don't like others. Maybe music is one of those things that you appreciate without analyzing. Just be thankful that you have it your life.