[Editor’s Note: I posted Chuck Smythe’s musing, “Second Monday Music: In pursuit of ecstasy,” ten years ago, on April 7, 2013. I repost it today, on my father’s 118th birthday, not only in remembrance of my father, but also in recognition of ecstasy as a forever pursuit.]
“The Tao of which one can speak is not the Tao.” Thus Lao Tzu began the Tao Te Ching—then went on to speak of the Tao at great length.
I mentioned four such experiences. Already, in trying to write this, I’ve benefited by realizing for the first time that there is a pre-history. When I was young, I would often become so deeply immersed in music, or a book, or playing by a trout stream that it became my reality for a time, and the “real” world faded into irrelevance. By my teens, this didn’t happen so much. I still greatly enjoyed these things, but was no longer carried out of the world by them. I think (certainly don’t know) that these things were related to “transcendence.”
So, four experiences:
- In my twenties, I was once listening to Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem. In Den Alles Fleisch, the music took over. For the length of the movement, I was no longer in a room, listening to music. I was the music. The text translates to something like “For all flesh is as the grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the grass. For lo, the grass withereth...” in German, which I don’t speak. I don’t think that is relevant, but don’t know. It seems the power of the music itself carried me off.
- Jump to my forties, and a performance of Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew. All in German, of course. When we got to the chorale O Sacred Head, I almost lost it. Then when the alto started into Erbarme Dich, the lament on the denial of Peter, I did lose it. Some in the audience said this was the Bach Festival’s finest hour.
- A few years later, also with the Bach Festival, we were doing the Mass in B Minor, under the direction of Margaret Hillis, the curmudgeonly conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. When we reached the Sanctus, she chose the slowest tempo I’ve ever heard for the movement—and when the basses started walking down the scale in octaves, showered in trumpets, I had a vision of Majesty that still burns. I don’t believe in majesty. Text; Holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts, in Latin.
- About ten years ago, I bought a recording of the Rachmaninoff Vespers, which I’d never heard before. I started the player, turned to go on about my business. And stopped, rooted to the spot, overwhelmed by the music. Stood still, lost in the music, for three quarters of an hour. It was in Russian, and I didn’t even know what they were singing. (Three excerpts: Come, let us worship; Now Let Thy Servant Depart; Bless the Lord, O My Soul.)
My best guess is that I’m especially susceptible to the music itself. I want to go back there. I want to learn the road so that I can go at will. This is the most important reason I work so hard at music. It isn’t working, though. Once in several years, given the right music, the right performers, the right frame of mind, it happens: the music takes over. I can’t make it happen. I’ve tried especially hard on the piano, but it hasn’t ever happened there, possibly because I’m so involved in the details of creating the performance that my mind isn’t free to go wandering.
I’ve spent thousands of hours over many years trying to re-create the conditions that might take me to Transcendence, or Enlightenment, or Intoxication, or whatever it is that I’m pursuing. I’ve tried meditation, even prayer, as other strategies. So far, no dice. It comes when it listeth, which is hardly ever.
Well, there you have it. Does anyone have enlightenment to offer?
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* In response to another comment on my March 31 review of a performance of Bach’s “St. John Passion.”
| Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Chuck Smythe |
Until the third example I didn't realize the author was also a performer. This is simple ecstasy, and many performers experience it, or something like it. When you see a guitarist with their eyes closed as they play or seeming to stare into space, this is what they are feeling. You forget the audience, you forget to remember the motions in your head, you just KNOW, your fingers know, your voice knows, and when it comes together you get that rush of pleasure, and transcendence is as good a word for it as I can imagine. I sang in choirs since I was a 7-year-old soprano in the church choir, and when everyone is absolutely in tune and time is when I have experienced this most often.
ReplyDeleteRoger and Chuck, please hook up and chat. Share some of your reminiscences, become friends. I’ll make sure you have each other’s contact info.
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