01-22-2012, 03:33 AM
Someone (Gandhi?) called poetry 'the music of the soul'. That's a bit high falutin' for me, but it does suggest that it is the quintessence of something, which can, like music, appeal, and speak, to various parts of us, both going through, and leaping over, our rational, cognitive, mind. Oratory does the same, though it is in sad decline. Churchill's speech about 'We shall fight them on the beaches' did not only ask people to fight on beaches, landing-grounds, and never surrender. It does not just contain defiance and courage; the delivery itself speaks to unsayable things. Undoubtedly, Hitler had ,for his audience, the same quality, and in our times, George Galloway, a man I detest on many fronts. Each of course is different, but they share, I think, the ability to combine their words, sounds, variations, rhetorical tricks, and meanings from which different groups will take what they want, to get directly to the heart.
As with orators, so music is quite different: different genres, different pieces within a genre sung or played by different artists. How can it be that I love old-time blues singers like Bessie Smith, and at the same time, be moved almost to tears by some simple piano playing, Chopin, say? Or a soprano singing , as I have just heard, "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle", from Bizet's "Carmen"?The same is true of art, and sculpture. There are too many: I like Kandinsky, but also Jackson Pollock. In a little gallery quite nearby, the oldest in the world, (Dulwich Picture Gallery) and it has some serious Old Masters, including a couple of little Raphaels-- not the most wonderful, but wonderful enough---but what have any of these in common with Goya's terrifying sketches, or Hieronymus Bosch? I think I must back-track: think of the scene in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" where WH Auden's "Stop all the Clocks" is read. It is the 'music of the soul', and as for music, it is the poetry of the soul, and for the other arts , you may take your pick.
As with orators, so music is quite different: different genres, different pieces within a genre sung or played by different artists. How can it be that I love old-time blues singers like Bessie Smith, and at the same time, be moved almost to tears by some simple piano playing, Chopin, say? Or a soprano singing , as I have just heard, "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle", from Bizet's "Carmen"?The same is true of art, and sculpture. There are too many: I like Kandinsky, but also Jackson Pollock. In a little gallery quite nearby, the oldest in the world, (Dulwich Picture Gallery) and it has some serious Old Masters, including a couple of little Raphaels-- not the most wonderful, but wonderful enough---but what have any of these in common with Goya's terrifying sketches, or Hieronymus Bosch? I think I must back-track: think of the scene in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" where WH Auden's "Stop all the Clocks" is read. It is the 'music of the soul', and as for music, it is the poetry of the soul, and for the other arts , you may take your pick.