Music: Man saying the unsayable

"Words still go softly out towards the unsayable.

And music, always new, from palpitating stones

Builds in useless space its godly home. ……………….. A god has the power. But tell me, shall a man Wring the same from a slender lyre?"

-Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus.

If I think about music, my thoughts often turn to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus was a Thracian bard, legendary musician, and prophet in ancient Greece. He was also a renowned poet and, according to the legend, traveled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music, his mourning for his late wife Eurydice, and his attempt to retrieve her from the underworld. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures of classical mythology adopted by Western culture. He is portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture, including poetry, film, opera, music, and painting, among which are Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus from which I took the quotes above.

According to myth, Orpheus was the mortal son of Apollo and Calliope. Apollo gave his son Orpheus a lyre and taught him how to play. Some say that “nothing could resist Orpheus’s beautiful melodies, neither enemies nor beasts.” Orpheus fell in love with Eurydice, a woman of beauty and grace, whom he married and lived with happily for a fleeting time. While dancing with the Nymphs, Eurydice was bitten by a snake and died instantly. Orpheus sung his grief with his lyre and moved everything in the world, living or not; both humans and gods learned about his sorrow and grief.

Orpheus, protected by his music, went to Hades to see his wife. Any other mortal would have died, but he tamed Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to Hades, with his music. He presented himself to Hades the god of the Greek underworld, and the god’s wife Persephone. Orpheus played with his lyre a song so heartbreaking that even Hades was moved to compassion. The god told Orpheus that he could take Eurydice back with him, but under one condition: she would have to follow behind him while walking out from the caves of the underworld, and Orpheus could not turn to look at her as they walked.

Thinking it a simple task for a patient man like himself, Orpheus was delighted; he thanked Hades and left to ascend back into the living world. Unable to hear Eurydice’s footsteps, however, he began to fear the gods had fooled him. Eurydice, as a shade, had to come back into the light to become a full woman again. As a shade, she made no sound as she walked. Only a few feet away from the exit, Orpheus lost his faith and turned to see Eurydice behind him, sending her back to be trapped in Hades’ reign forever.

Orpheus tried to return to the underworld but could not, possibly because a person cannot enter the realm of Hades twice while alive. According to various versions of the myth, he played a mourning song with his lyre, calling for death to come to him so that he could be united with Eurydice forever. Death came to him as wild beasts and he was reunited with Eurydice. The Muses saved his head and kept it among the living to sing forever, enchanting everyone with his melodies. Thus, music is born.

So, what does this myth tell us about music? First, what is music? It is tempting to divide our world into objects, things that have physical existence, that can be seen or touched and their properties; or into subjects which have no physical existence but exist solely in our conscious, where they form the basic matter of thought, discussion, investigation, etc.: Music can neither be seen, nor touched, but it is frequently a subject of conversation. Music has properties, but it lacks physical existence. In such an analysis, does this mean music is subjective?

At its simplest, music is, or lives in sound. But what is sound? Sounds are not properties of the objects that emit them: Sound does not inhere in objects, as colors, shapes and sizes do. They do not fill physical space as things do, nor do they have boundaries. A sound occurs only if it is produced, and it ceases when the mode of production ceases. Concisely, sounds are not things or properties.

Could sounds be events, standing in relationships of cause and effect to other events? What is an event? Events do not exist over and above the changes in things, and the only items in the world that you need to identify to refer to events are the things which events change. Sounds are objective: they are part of reality, and not to be confused with the auditory experiences through which we perceive them, which are subjective. Does this make music the auditory experiences through which we perceive the sounds? Western tradition defines music as the art of combining sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, or rhythm or other expressive content. In Chinese there is no word for music. The word frequently used for music also means joy. Is music joy? Joy refers to the emotion evoked by well-being, and is typically associated with feelings of intense, long-lasting happiness, and emotions are subjective. But C. S. Lewis warns us of a clear distinction between joy, pleasure, and happiness: “I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.”

I have convinced myself music is more than sound. Can we think of music as a ‘pure event' in which no other thing takes part? Is music man playing a lyre, and through that music saying the unsayable? In his Sonnets to Orpheus, is Rilke giving God credit for sound, and man credit for using the sound in music to say the unsayable? Does music say things for which we have no words?

What is the message to take from the myth of Orpheus? As Apollo gave the lyre to Orpheus and taught him to play, so God created sound and the rules for using it. As Orpheus could wring the power of Apollo from the lyre, so man wrings the power of God from music.

(If you like poetry and have never read Rainer Maria Rilke, I suggest you sample his Sonnets to Orpheus.)