Music's Mysteries

This week, I'm playing the second movement of the G-minor Sonata. As I played it today, I marveled at how good it feels to play double stops. Chords are so beautiful. I felt like a mouse pushing a button to give myself an electric shock every time I played a chord in tune. I do believe that one learns to play in tune by conditioning; that once you hear a ringing note, you strive to hit it again and again. Like the mouse pushing the button, I also experience some wonderful nervous sensation when I play the violin. After I practice, I feel more relaxed and calm.

The science of music must be fascinating. Why do people like music the way we do? What makes the laws of music? What determines what sounds in-tune to us and what doesn't? Why do we like certain music that we've loved for centuries? Music is so powerful and so mysterious.

I admit that I know little about Eastern music and musical tastes. They may be very different. Eastern music may even have different scales and definitions of "in-tune," though I don't know that. Humans of different races and who live in different parts of the world are genetically the same, overall. If our musical tastes differ, it's due to something cultural, not biological.

It would be interesting to find out if people introduced from the crib to what I would call out-of-tune music learned to like it and crave it. Do humans have a pre-determined taste for a certain kind of music, or is that taste learned?

I am not sure I want to know the science of how music works to move us. It might be disappointing. I remember being very disappointed when I found at that songs all followed a basic structure of some kind. That, for example, songs in a particular key had to begin and end on a particular chord. It disappointed me, because it meant that the composer hadn't chosen his first or last notes after all. They were prescribed when he or she chose the key for the piece. It took some of the magic out of music. I might feel like a Creationist feels when they learn about evolution. Suddenly something that seemed wonderful and miraculous explained by chance? On the other hand, just as I think evolution is wonderful, not being religious, perhaps I could convince myself to appreciate the science of music, too.