S o n a t a
by
Manfred Clynes
I. Allegro vivace
II. Adagio molto, con intimisso sentimento
III. Scherzo: malevole, con soldi
IV. Rondo: a una planetta piccolla
I
Allegro vivace
(only human feet dance to music) |
There is music in the world -
How did it get there?
The birds that sound,
What does song bring to them?
To sing you need
ears to hear
made before song,
but maybe ear and song were made together,
as were, much later,
the sounds of laughter and their feeling.
Singing animals,
Whales and wolves
donkeys and lizards,
the cicada, male and female -
- they listen.
But we adore the nightingale,
whose name itself sings music
in our minds.
For us,
singing and dancing animal we are,
music is different.
The other animals do not dance
To their own music,
Nor to ours.
Music goes to our feet, alone among animals.
It can make us proud
Or sad.
And we are glad to be sad,
When we know it is music
that makes us sad.
Lets us feel joy
without a gift,
in the dark, as sunshine is withheld
- and feel terror
in a sunlit flower garden.
Its freedom lifts us, when we're depressed,
Relieves, when stressed
Makes us feel what never we have felt before
In our own private silence
At best, it tells us of things bigger than ourselves
How we are so small compared with the stars
At night. It teaches us to believe.
What things? We could not tell in words.
But that's what music's for.
Music is the food of love, it says, and is not far wrong:
Love and many other things.
Music is food: For our need to live
with feeling when there is none to have,
- and for our need, and longing to share
--- as there always is.
It tells us things bigger than ourselves
What things? We feel we know for sure.
And then, they say, there is the music of the spheres, the music in the ears of God.
But God has no ear
No frequency response, no DNA
He cannot hear our music
since he has no ear (nor two for stereo).
(he should have four at least).
Perhaps he can feel, without a nervous system
Perhaps he has taught us to feel, the best way we can
Perhaps when he invented love, he gave us part of himself
And put it in our nervous sytem to do with what we may,
With music shall give him thanks for it,
- more than that we cannot say.
|
II
Adagio molto, con intimisso sentimento
Immortal Beloved
(why there is music) |
In music we find
the forms of our being
reflected -
mirrored back unto us
we delight in
being
what we are.
How could we
not know ?
It takes music
to show us
the better world
in which we live
all the time.
It takes a Beethoven,
A Bach to show us
The foundation.
The foundation
we are in touch with
ignored by Freud -
the rest is noise.
|
| III |
|
| Scherzo |
malevole, con soldi |
|
(Bank)Roll the Drum
rock our sole and body...
|
A man who has no music in his soul
is fit for stratagems and spoils, says Shakespeare. |
|
We have no music in our souls
no souls at all, says neuroscience |
But we do have the Dictatorship of Music
we love to obey the dictates of music
"in our heart" |
|
Except: science says, we have no "heart"
Our real heart knows little of music - |
Brains, then; we feel music through our brains: |
The drum drives - |
Driven brains dance
To turbid chant
Driven brains dance, to turbid chant
Drriven brains dance, to turgid chantt
Drriven brains dance, to turgid chantt
Driven the dance, to brains, the drum
Driven the dance to brains, the drum
Driven the dance to brains, the drum
Driven the dance to brains, the drum
Driven, the drum, driven, the drum
Driven, the dance to brains,
Brains.
Who drives the drums? Who drives the drums?
Money lenders, drive the drums
Money lenders, drive the drums
Lower lower, lower and low
Lower lower, lower and low
Denominator dominator.
De-nominator dominator.
Louder louder, louder and loud
Louder louder, louder and loud, the
Money lenders, drive the drums, the
Money lenders, drive the drums.
For higher profits, drive the drum
For higher profits, drive the drum
What profits a man, to drive a drum
What profits a man, to drive a drum
What profits a drum, to drive a man
What profits a man
Damn.
Everybody knows, sex is good
Everybody knows, sex is good
Sex is good, sex is good, sex is good, sex is good
Everybody, --- every body --
Everybody wants it, sex is good
Everybody wants it, sex is good
Everybody knows it, sex is good
Everybody knows it, sex is good
Everybody likes it, sex is good
Everybody likes it, sex is good
Everybody likes it, sex is good
Everybody likes it, sex is good
Good. Damn Good.
But, what to do with all that money?
|
(music for sex and sole)
| IV |
| Rondo |
a una planetta piccolla |
As our music goes to the feet
we march to the tune of the piper -
To war even, in bad old days.
But todays wars
do not support music -
the nuclear and missile arsenal
is not made riper
through music
(should we be glad?)
not even in Bosnia.
But forget the feet. To the point:
An animal does not sing to change its feeling
contrast feelings,
make a whole that means more than its parts.
That's art. Our art.
Compare, in the now
the new and the recent old,
anticipate the story, as it unfolds,
but most of all, to know that it is a story .
A dog cannot be told a story.
He will bark at the wrong time. Or not bark at all.
He can't tell a story from present truth,
at least for any length of time, though he can play and disappoint.
For him
there is no truth in music.
But for us there is.
That is the difference.
So many truths are clothed in music.
The most luminous and numinous are these:
"When music is pure the heart is pure",
and also strangely, its reverse,
"When heart is pure, then music is pure." But
what means this, since already we have seen
there is no heart?
- is this gobbledygook, maybe even insane ?
Yes and No. Let us explain.
(This is serious stuff.)
Translating now to science, say pure essentic form instead of "pure" .
Heart means:
pure essentic form
produces feeling, through amygdala - the gateway -
passing hence to high brain centers,
a feeling which leads us far to beauty:
only the purest form can do it,
we are made so, that it alone is key
to that lock to our nervous system,
that can
unlock its touch for us.
The pure in heart make beauty,
are seduced. Precise is the form,
its joy suffused,
centered on its being.
It says: seek and you shall find.
A piece of music is a storehouse for essentic form.
- our human heritage.
Music holds it secure
for hundreds of years,
to be rediscovered by men yet unborn
It teaches you how to perfect its form.
Your feeling is the natural guide.
And yet a guide given "from above".
"Listen carefully inwardly,
and produce outwardly precisely what you hear:
Then it will be beautiful," said Casals, and did it.
As Beethoven invented his
last music, he fashioned it
deaf to all sound not from inside
a music never heard before
that did not go to feet
but danced within
with joy
with sense of bliss, of strength without destructive violence
of which many saints told us,
and many rabbis and gurus.
And outside and inside became
The same, so it seemed.
How he gave to us free
the means so we could be free,
save us,
as he put it! Generous, presumptious? perhaps both, or not,
but he was right,
caring for caring's sake,
with wisdom, knowledge, love intertwined
but we did not see the fun
for many generations, and most of us forgot:
his last unheard of message was unheard
as if we were deaf
til now.
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