I would like to comment a little more on why I started this seminar on music criticism with a poem, specifically with Mary Oliver’s “Messenger.” This will give my perspective on studying, thinking, and writing about music as I begin my 36th year at UK.
I think of all engagement with music as “music appreciation.” Whether we are casually sight-reading a popular song or analyzing the advanced harmonic techniques of complex art music, whether we are listening (really listening) to music or trying to describe it to a friend or a student, we are “valuing it,” or in other words appreciating it. We are only able to experience music because we are alive and have our sense perceptions in tact. (Obvious, you may well say, but how often do we appreciate that!) As workaday and tedious as life can seem at times, it is also a mystery and a miracle, and when we wake up to that basic fact, it can be “astonishing.” So music can--and should--wake us up. What are the ingredients for that magic? Mary Oliver suggests that “all the ingredients are here, which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, /a mouth with which to give shouts of joy….” This doesn’t mean we have to force ourselves to be cheerful all the time, but I find this attitude a very good ground from which to begin, over and over again. We can and need to be discerning and make judgments all the time, but our critical writing and assessments can be based on that foundation. If you don’t accept this or it seems strange, try this attitude on and see (and hear) what happens.
So, What comes next after astonishment and gratitude? Sharing. In the poem that sharing takes the form of “shouts of joy;” for us it will take the form of writing accounts of our experience and discussing them with others, not exclusively members of our seminar. These accounts will be “stories,” even if they take the form of an academic paper. I have found it very helpful, both in my teaching and life outside the classroom, to realize that I am a storyteller—and so are you! And because of this realization I try to cultivate the art of storytelling. It can be astonishing. I think I will let me friend David R. Loy tell the rest of the story of this blog entry by quoting him from his recent book: The World is Made of Stories [Boston: Wisdom, 2010].
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
-Muriel Rukeyser
Not atoms? Of course it is made of atoms. That’s one of our important stories.
What other stories make our world? Creation myths; folk and fairy tales; 17-syllabue Japanese haiku and three-day Indonesian shadow-puppet drams; novels romantic, fantastic and graphic; TV soap opera…newspaper features; op-ed articles; internet blogs; talk show chatter; office memos; obituaries and birth announcements; how-to-use manuals; and how you’re feeling this morning; what happened during our vacation; what to plan for the weekend. [LB: and “critical writing about music!]
A story is an account of something. “What’s the story on these unpaid bills?’
If the world is made of stories, stories are not just stories. They teach us what is real, what is valuable, and what is possible. Without stories there is no way to engage with the world because there is no world, and no one to engage with it because there is no self.
The world is made of our accounts of it because we never grasp the world was it is in itself, apart from stories about it. We do not experience a world and then make up stories to understand it. Whenever we try to peel them all away, to discover the reality behind, whatever becomes exposed immediately transforms into story, like excavated artifacts that disintegrate as soon as uncovered.
The same is true of ourselves, but that is getting ahead of the story.
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My life has allowed me to have this particular view. But rest assure, we are still going to attack and devour plenty of music, in serious, intelligent, heartfelt, and yes “academic” ways. But I hope this broader view will allow you to play in a bigger field, to be more honest and open, and to experience great joy and appreciation as we learn together and celebrate together. Isn’t that one of music’s greatest gifts?
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