I was reminded last night of the power of music to affect you in a physical way – I don’t pretend to understand how this works, but it is a very real experience as far as I am concerned. Music affects me in many different ways, depending on the nature of the music – soothing to calm me, martial to inspire, the possibilities are endless, but what I want to concentrate on here is the tingle factor when the power of the music sends a shiver through your body.
In a previous post I talked about the memories that music can hold. In the sense that memory is commonplace (for most of us) it is perhaps no surprise that particular musical triggers ar responsible for something that has happened in the past become once more clear and at the forefront of our mental ‘vision’. In that post I talked about some of the pieces of music that hold particular memories for me.
In this post, however, I am talking about music that affects me – despite the fact that there are no specific memories to trigger that response.
The reason for the post is that I (serendipitously) came across a video on YouTube of the final section of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony – “The Resurrection”.
This has long been one of my “top 10” pieces of music. In all the symphony lasts for around 90 minutes – but the tingle factor moment for me comes almost at the very end. At 11:15 (I have had to replace the original video – the climax is now at 1:26:03 – the bonus is that the whole symphony is there to listen to!) on the video the climax arrives with the choir singing “auferstehen” (rise again) and then repeating “ja, auferstehen” (yes, rise again) – as that second statement rings out not only do the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but a shiver runs down my body and the hairs on my arms and legs join in!
It never fails – every time I hear it – the same reaction. It is a wonderful moment in music. There are others, and perhaps in a future blog I will list a few other pieces of music that move me in one way or another.
How does it happen? I don’t know, the music that Mahler penned many years ago, performed by lots of different performers, just always has that effect. I can listen to it at the end of the whole symphony, or in isolation – just a few bars – and there it is again – hairs stood to attention!!!
I suspect that these sort of reactions will be quite personal – so others listening to the same music will not be so affected – although I did see one recording where the contralto soloist had tears streaming down her face as the final few minutes of the symphony rang out in triumph. So I am not the only one.
Why this piece of music and not others, I don’t know, and I probably will never know, but I am thankful that I am able to appreciate the beauty, and awesome power of such music.