Time and Music

The magic about music is its relationship with time. Music alters our sensation of passage of time. I say that because for a moment I want to say that music suspends time - when we hear a Berlioz overture or a Liszt tone-poem, we do not feel time passing away; we see the colours of orchestration floating by our eyes, we hear the lively rhythm beating by our ears, we feel the current of sound waves brushing by our shoulders, but never Time...Time appears to be absolutely still. Once we are swept into the flow of music, we become like leaves floating along the current, and do not realize that the current is moving. We move with the current, and enjoy the bumpy ride, up and down; we might get wet from the clashing of the trumpets and horns, or perhaps a gentle wind of violins and violincellos might against the current. But we do not realize that we are moving along with Time. Consider listening to a Chopin Concerto: Dive into the waves of Hamelin's playing, and you will be surfing along, and only too soon will you come to realize that the wave is approaching shore, and you are brought back on land. Then all of our everyday-busyness: our papers, our readings, our labs, etc, come back to us.

Time, not sound, passes by again...actually, it doesn't pass by; rather, it smacks us right in the face...But what is lacked in time, we have Memory.