Music is activating both sides of the brain

Music can bring you back to life

The truth is that humanity evolves every day, gathering around the campfire, singing and telling stories, or doing it all at once. That is, by the way, how our ancestors did it; that is how they understood the world and each other; that is how they learned to live.

We humans, the music-making species, have always been like that, and probably always will be. Meanwhile, music's ability to express, explore and resolve issues related to human existence remains one of the greatest gifts of community.

I would say that sound is like the sea: as the pattern of the waves expands, it encompasses not only matter but also our minds. Well, when the latter suddenly becomes uninteresting, Bach (a German Baroque composer) or any other kind of sound we like stays^[1].

One winter's day, just before the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world, Clemency Burton-Hill - BBC presenter, creative director of an American classical music radio station, and Bach lover - suffered a catastrophic brain hemorrhage. She survived, as we know, but was unable to see, move or speak for some time. Thanks to several operations and months of rehabilitation, her perception and vision were restored, but the right side of her body remained paralyzed, and her speech simply stopped. It was only after a while that her slurred sentences began to form again from the original matter of her mind, so that now every word - metaphorically speaking - is a deliberate triumph, as precise as a Bach note.

Even before the terrible incident, Clemency, in a book she wrote, praised classical music, likening a daily dose of music to a sonic form of soul support. Among other things, the clichéd idea that music is beyond speech also proved to be true, as it turned out to be part of the woman's recovery, moving both sides of her brain and eventually restoring movement to her body, despite the common handicaps caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Work done with love prolongs life

Over the years, we have seen that classical music, for example, is able to reflect variations of exceptional mathematical precision which, according to some scientists, have been developed as a cure for insomnia, almost always appearing in the form of an extra shot of musical caffeine: it is said that in just a few seconds, some pieces of music rearrange the molecules in the atmosphere, enabling clearer vision and hearing. Meanwhile, this unique way of writing leads to the possibility of a personal approach to oneself and the environment.

Returning to the perspectives of music therapy, it is interesting to note that a particular melody can recall things from events that have already passed (echoes of the former self). But one thing is clear: it has always been and will always be a soundtrack of bodily aliveness, often marking a protracted trajectory of physical or psychological recovery^[2].

If we were to invite people from all walks of life to a concert, mixing between the strains of a challenging life - from the elderly organist to the little-experienced cellist and the organizers - even in the biggest slum, they could find a sense of musical meditation that motivates them to calibrate their everyday life in the face of loss of various forms.

I would venture to say that music never sounds the same, and it fills people with an awareness of the miracle of life, where each day is equivalent to a new beginning - fantastic - gaining a great portal into the mystery of music and the ending of a bundle of crumbled notes that spreads far and wide.

Going back to classical music - the early beginnings of the Romantic era - this type of work has, so to speak, descended from academic obscurity, conveying the vibration of transcendence. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Bach material available to French readers - even those who valued music - was limited to "dry", uninteresting biographies that presented him as a dull mathematician of sound juggling with overly complex musical models.

In the end, Bach was saved from the theorists who devalued him because of ideologies of music that were "too pure" - supposedly poor compositions created as an exercise in mathematical rather than poetic perfection - and instead allowed people to see him as an unprejudiced poet and sound painter who would use the language of music to depict supernatural landscapes of emotion and thought.

Genius is not an individual but a collective force

The desire to express poetic and aural concepts is thus at the heart of music's essence, the result of which, by appealing to the audience's creative imagination, aims to evoke feelings, ideas and visions. However, this can only be done if the person using the language of sound can convey ideas with great clarity. (Bach is said to be one of the best in this respect, because a soul that longs for peace in the midst of the world's troubles and is itself filled with it, allows listeners to hear about his experience through music).

I should also mention that I would divide artists into two categories: the subjective, who use their own personality as the source of their art, even if they follow the law of "I live for myself", and the objective, whose art is not impersonal, but "super-personal" (selfless, responding to the needs of the time), conveying through their existential vessel a universal contact, the final point to which all the directions lead^[3].

Yes, many different generations have been engaged in a creative work before whose eternal grandeur we involuntarily pause, feeling the consequence of the nature of art, which seems to transform the taken-for-granted into a Bach coming with the promise of the afterlife, representing the most powerful expression - aliveness and mortality - stretched over the edge on which we sit at the end of the day.

Believing that music holds the secret of life, we open our lives and let it in. On the other hand, the brains of extremely talented musicians are like a supercomputer, which allows them to write several thousand pieces, combining technical precision with the most amazing emotions - intense joy and beastly grief - adapting to the whims of a sensitive heart.