Eu, no meu jeito meio preguiçoso de ser, costumo sintetizar, dizendo que somos apenas Padeiros.
Uns, os outros, tratam do pão para o estômago.
E nós, do pão para a alma.
Nietzsche, mais sintético ainda, dizia que:
"Without music, life would be a mistake"
Gostava de vos chamar a atenção para o excelente texto de Alain de Botton, jornalista do The Guardian:
Uns, os outros, tratam do pão para o estômago.
E nós, do pão para a alma.
Nietzsche, mais sintético ainda, dizia que:
"Without music, life would be a mistake"
Gostava de vos chamar a atenção para o excelente texto de Alain de Botton, jornalista do The Guardian:
What's the point of music? Ask Peter Gabriel
Whether releasing sadness or sending shivers down our spines, the songs in our ‘emotional toolbox’ can transform daily life … if we learn how to use them
Music is so much a part of almost all our lives that it seems peculiar to stop and ask what it might be for. It just appears straightforwardly to benefit us in ways that are too diverse and ineffable to start to take apart; this might be one arena where we keep the dread hand of the theorists away. Musicians themselves have tended to reinforce such an approach, rarely venturing to supply an additional prose commentary around what their chords are already communicating.f music? Ask Peter Gabriel
Whether releasing sadness or sending shivers down our spines, the songs in our ‘emotional toolbox’ can transform daily life … if we learn how to use them
Yet a clearer handle on the theoretical role of music may at times enhance rather than impoverish our capacity to appreciate music. Knowing what music does for us can give us a sharper sense of which of its varieties we might be in particular need of, why and when.
One musician who stands out in the cultural landscape for his profound engagement with the theory as well as practice of music is Peter Gabriel – and what seems especially striking are his repeated pronouncements that music should, to quote his distinctive formulation, provide us with “an emotional toolbox” to which we can turn at different moments of our lives, locating songs to recover, guide and sublimate our feelings.
For example, in explaining the origins of I Grieve (a song which appears on his album Up), Gabriel remarked that he had been driven by a wish to create a song that would help people with the mourning process. The song has gone on to become a standard at many funeral services, a part of our informal collective secular liturgy. The reason is that the song both knows how to release our sadness and yet also channels and contains it. It creates perfect conditions for a catharsis. As psychologists will explain, the grieving process tends to be beset by two dangers: that it cannot begin, or that it will not stop. In this context, I Grieve performs a double manoeuvre for us. It starts with what sounds pure lamentation. The tone is utterly dejected. The loved one has only just breathed their last:
"There’s nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone"
But after several of these tragic verses, there is a shift, subtle and then ever more insistent, towards a note of cautious redemption. Gabriel begins an incantatory repetition of the lines:
"Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on"
We are urged to accept the constant dispersal and redistribution of energy across the planet.
"In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust"
Whether releasing sadness or sending shivers down our spines, the songs in our ‘emotional toolbox’ can transform daily life … if we learn how to use them
Music is so much a part of almost all our lives that it seems peculiar to stop and ask what it might be for. It just appears straightforwardly to benefit us in ways that are too diverse and ineffable to start to take apart; this might be one arena where we keep the dread hand of the theorists away. Musicians themselves have tended to reinforce such an approach, rarely venturing to supply an additional prose commentary around what their chords are already communicating.f music? Ask Peter Gabriel
Whether releasing sadness or sending shivers down our spines, the songs in our ‘emotional toolbox’ can transform daily life … if we learn how to use them
Yet a clearer handle on the theoretical role of music may at times enhance rather than impoverish our capacity to appreciate music. Knowing what music does for us can give us a sharper sense of which of its varieties we might be in particular need of, why and when.
One musician who stands out in the cultural landscape for his profound engagement with the theory as well as practice of music is Peter Gabriel – and what seems especially striking are his repeated pronouncements that music should, to quote his distinctive formulation, provide us with “an emotional toolbox” to which we can turn at different moments of our lives, locating songs to recover, guide and sublimate our feelings.
For example, in explaining the origins of I Grieve (a song which appears on his album Up), Gabriel remarked that he had been driven by a wish to create a song that would help people with the mourning process. The song has gone on to become a standard at many funeral services, a part of our informal collective secular liturgy. The reason is that the song both knows how to release our sadness and yet also channels and contains it. It creates perfect conditions for a catharsis. As psychologists will explain, the grieving process tends to be beset by two dangers: that it cannot begin, or that it will not stop. In this context, I Grieve performs a double manoeuvre for us. It starts with what sounds pure lamentation. The tone is utterly dejected. The loved one has only just breathed their last:
"There’s nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone"
But after several of these tragic verses, there is a shift, subtle and then ever more insistent, towards a note of cautious redemption. Gabriel begins an incantatory repetition of the lines:
"Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on"
We are urged to accept the constant dispersal and redistribution of energy across the planet.
"In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust"
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