Part One -- When I was growing up, . . .
Part Two -- . . . Lend Me Your Ear An ULTRA-SONIC SPIRITUALITY
Part Three -- This is My Story, This is My Song
Part Four -- HEARING AND HEALING
Part Five -- God Gave the Song
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HEARING AND HEALING

"Hear that your soul may be healed." -- Isaiah 55:3

Could it be that to sing is a sound thing to do? Literally?

The story is told of the ancient Greek scientist Pythagoras of Samos (560-480 BC).   As the shadows lenghtned, he made his way down some narrow, cobblestone streets cradling his lyre and strumming on its string the music of the spheres.  Suddenly the light of a rising moon reflected a steely glint off the blade of a dagger wielded by an assissin hiding in a darkened doorway.  With a blood-curdling scream, the man leaped from the darkness.  Pythagoras whirled to face his assailant.  Instead of meeting him in mortal combat, Pythagoras began to play a piece of music on the lyre.   The haunting strains cut deep into the soul of the would-be assassin.  He dropped the knife and fell sobbing to his knees, overcome in a torrent of emotion that swelled from the depths of his soul.⁵⁴

Songs are more than barometers that record atmospheric pressure without being able to do anything to change the weather itself.  Songs are less a consequence than a cause of events.  The kind of songs our souls sing affects our world and affects our health.  Pythagoras of Samos eventually concluded that the cosmos is governed by musical laws.⁵⁵ Thomas Mann believed that the way to gauge the health of a civilization was through its music.

The ability of music to affect the physical body is only beginning to be understood by others beyond the circle of music therapists and music practitioners.⁵⁶   Our beings are bathed in vibrations that unconsciously set the tone and tune of our lives.  Disease occurs when the din of dissonance pollutes the sounds of creation, when the vibrations of one's being are out of harmony with oneself, with others, with God.

Could Novalis be right: "Every disease is a musical problem"?  Could the 18th century French physician Louis Roger be right in his A Treatise on the Effects of Music on the Human Body (1748)?  Could the Lakota poet John Iron Rope be right: only the "singing" can restore skin and bones to sick skeletons?⁵⁷ Isn't that why the ancient Hebrews sang psalms to heal the sick?  Isn't that why the Talmud offered a particular song that could protect the body from epidemic?⁵⁸ Isn't that why the musicians belonging to the Levitical tribes were called "prophets" and "seers?"

Studies of dysfunctional children have suggested that physical and mental states change with the seasons, with tides, and with day-night cycles.  If these rhythms are altered, disease is likely.  Just before Nietzsche's collapse into syphilis-induced insanity, he was overheard singing in the dead of night by his friend Franz Overbeck.   On their journey through the Gotthard Pass on the way back from Turin to Basel, in January 1889, Nietasche suddenly erupted in singing "the very beautiful Gondola Song."⁵⁹  Music was Nietzsche's last toehold on mental health.

Music is made up of three elements: rhythm, melody, and harmony.  The combination of the first two in treating disease, Randall McClellan's studies have revealed, yields a distinct approach to healing he calls "music healing."  In this therapeutic strategy rhythm and melody are combined to create songs that influence the mind first and the body second.  The application of "harmony" to specific dysfunctional body parts he calls "sound healing."  Here the vibrations of certain melodies are targeted to the body first, the mind and emotions second.⁶⁰

The original meaning of Latin word cantare, from which we get our word "to sing," meant "to work magic," to "heal."  Carmen, the Latin word for "poem," originally meant "magic forumla."  Cantor became someone who worked magic, who worked healing, with sounds, with music.  A cantata was a healing piece of music.  A whole new academic field -- "acoustic ecology" -- is studying the sounds people listen to and finding ways to maximize the sounds people need and enjoy.⁶¹

Just before he died, Jimi Hendrix was beginning to speak to others about his belief in the healing powers of music.  Pioneer postmodern musicologist/philosopher/composer/Sonic Arts Foundation director Randall McClellan writes that "Beneath the surface rhythms and changing pitches of music lies a subtler level of vibration that is the music's essence.  It is this inner level of vibration, created by the energy of the music, that harmonizes us spiritually and is, therefore, the deepest source of music's healing potential."⁶²

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Down in the human heart,     crushed by the tempter, Feelings lie buried that grace     can restore. Touched by a loving heart,     wakened by kindness, Chords that are broken will     vibrate once more.                   Fanny Crosby,                               "Rescue the Perishing," 1869

It wasn't only the blind hymn writer Fanny Crosby who testified to the healing power of music in one of her most popular hymns (vs. 3 of "Rescue the Perishing").   Other song writers have long explained "sin" as being out of touch and tune with our Creator.

All my life was wrecked by sin and strife
discord filled my heart with pain;
Jesus swept across the broken string,
stirred the slumbering chords again.

If it is physically true that we are what we eat, it is spiritually true that we are what we listen to.⁶³  Music can heal -- or harm.  Just as birds engage with one another in song wars, so the ultimate weapons between the forces of good and evil are musical.  Negative music creates negative states of being and the cumulative effects of that music continue to direct and distort the soul long after the song has ended.  Some sounds stimulate plant growth.  Other sounds impede life.⁶⁴

The ultimate battles going on around us are song wars.  The dangers of gangsta rap, hard-core punk, grunge, heavy metal in creating "harmonic clash" -- a condition in which the rhythm of our souls is out of harmony with the resonance of God's universe -- cannot be overemphasized.  Because a bird sings by exhaling air from a lung, the bird's two lungs can even be used to sing in harmony with itself.  Unlike humans, a bird can't split its lungs to voice disharmonious music.  A bird can't "sin."  But humans can through the distorting resonances of worldly powers and energies.  Music's vibe-wrapped lyrics are literally creating your soul, for good or ill.⁶⁵

How dull the forest would be
if all bird-songs were the same?
       A character in Act One of
        Hans Pfitzner's opera "Palestrina"

If music is at the base of vibrations called the harmonic series, as Leonard Berstein insisted, then certain harmonic forms create and connect with certain emotions and moods and personalities.  We are only at the beginning stages of understanding the effect of music on our physiological processes, but we do know that all of our bodily processes which are basically internal vibratory patterns are altered by musical dynamics whether we are aware of them or not.

Most of the research has been done on the least of the quantifiable: the emotions.   Music is "moving" because it conjures the "passions," it "makes us feel" an emotion or sensation.  One is "moved" by music because, according to Aaron Ridley, music "moves us" to passionate responses which are "sympathwetic," "empathetic," and "assciative."⁶⁶

The earth sings MI, FA, MI so that
you may infer even from the syllables
that in this our domicile MISERY and
FAMINE obtain
     Johannes Kepler⁶⁷

Japanese mathematician/research scientist Susumu Ohno translated a funeral march by Chopin from notes into chemical equations.  He found the entire passage was almost identical to a cancer gene found in humans.  Perhaps Leo Tolstoy was more right than he knew when he saw the connection between music and the body in this way: "music is the shorthand of the emotions," and the "emotions are the bridge between the mental and the physical."  Listen to Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony without getting depressed.  Listen to Chopin's Funeral March without getting sad.   Listen to Beethoven's Fifth without feeling joy, or almost anything by the Beatles without feeling cheerful.  In Johann Sebastian Bach's "Mass in B Minor," there are 7 basic keys to the harmonic, hieratic schemes of human emotions: E minor is the crucifixion key, B minor the key of human pain, G major blessedness, C major contentment, A major joy and grace, F and and C sharp minior transcending suffering, and D major triumph, wordly power and glory.⁶⁸   Bach is one of history's greatest masters at playing the strings of the heart.

If you ask me tomorrow or any other day why some sounds are sad and others glad, I shall not be able to tell you.  Not even your Papa could tgell you that.  Why, what a thing to ask, my pets!  If you knew that, you would know everything.   Good night, my dears, good night.
                            Rebecca West⁶⁹

A woman appearing before the Texas State legislature, speaking on behalf of state funding for the arts, made this statement: "Give me shoes and they last for a year.   Give me groceries and they last for a week.  Give me a song and it lasts for a lifetime."

Leadership is giving people a song to sing.   

Part One -- When I was growing up, . . .
Part Two -- . . . Lend Me Your Ear An ULTRA-SONIC SPIRITUALITY
Part Three -- This is My Story, This is My Song
Part Four -- HEARING AND HEALING
Part Five -- God Gave the Song
Return to SoulCafe Index