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I was reading George Steiner's essay on Martin Heidegger (Univ. of Chicago
Press) and came upon this, to me, interesting section about music. I know
it is not specifically related to Wagner, and it does not even cover any
new ground, but I thought Steiner expressed himself and the mystery of
music particularly well, and some here might be interested. Please forgive
my indulgence.

mp
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To the majority of human beings, music brings moments of experience as
complete, as penetrating as any they can register. In such moments,
immediacy, recollection, anticipation are often inextricably fused. Music
"enters" the body and mind at manifold and simultaneous levels to which
classifications such as "nervous," "cerebral," "somatic" apply in a rough
and ready way. Music can sound in dreams. It can recede from accurate
recall but leave behind an intricate ghostliness, a tension and felt
lineament of motion that resembles, more or less precisely, the departed
chord or harmony or relations of pitch. No less forcefully than narcotics,
music can affect our mental and physical status, the minutely meshed
strands of mood and bodily stance that, at any given point, define
identity. Music can brace or make drowsy; it can incite or calm. It can
move to tears or, mysteriously, spark laughter or, more mysteriously still,
cause us to smile in what would seem to be a singular lightness, a
mercurial mirth of mind as centrally rooted in us as is thought itself. We
have know since Pythagoras that music can heal and since Plato that there
are in music agencies that can literally madden. Melody, writes
Levi-Strauss, is the supreme mystery of man's humanity. But what *is* it?

Is melody the being of music, or pitch, or timbre, or the dynamic relations
between tone and interval? Can we say that the being of music consists of
the vibrations transmitted from the quivering string or reed to the
tympanum of the ear? Is its existence to be found in the notes on the
page, even if these are never sounded (what conceivable ontological status
have Keat's "unheard melodies")? Modern acoustical science...is...capable
of breaking down analytically and then reproducing any tone or
tone-combinations with total precision. Does such an analysis and
reproduction equate with, let alone exhaust, the being of music? Where, in
the phenomenon "music," do we locate the energies which can transmute the
fabric of human consciousness in listener and performance?

The answer eludes us. Normally we search for metaphoric description.
Whenever possible we consign the question either to technicality or to the
limbo of obviousness. Yet we *know* what music *is*. ...in music being
and meaning are inextricable.

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Please forgive this post. I was sending to the Wagner NG. It is not about
high-end, but something different. Yet, perhaps it kind of fits in a way.

mp

[Jenn]

wrote:
Please forgive this post. I was sending to the Wagner NG. It is not about
high-end, but something different. Yet, perhaps it kind of fits in a way.

mp

I think that it fits very well! For a very interesting discussion of
such things, see "Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy" by Robert Jourdain.