Among psychoanalysts, a theory about the effect of music that relies on the idea of parallelism of movement has become popular. Namely, music is defined as a regular movement from one tone to the next, and feelings are defined as processes that consume energy, which is why they represent movement in our inner world. Hence, music is understood as an external mirror of our internal processes, as a way to express feelings, see outside ourselves and internalize them, and to experience them together with large groups of people.
It is possible that there is no more widespread phenomenon in human societies than music. It was known by all cultures, in all eras. On whatever island they find themselves, anthropologists encounter her; archaeologists are discovering instruments that are thousands of years old. We have music for babies, lullabies, music for celebrations and celebrations, wedding, military and death marches, countries have anthems, religions have their sacred music, singing and/or dancing, different peoples have different melos, there is music for relaxation, falling asleep, meditation, work... And in the last few decades, music seems to be hard to escape - in restaurants, shops, airports, in gyms, sometimes even in elevators - as if any risk of silence must be prevented by it. The longest day of the year, June 21, is also International Music Day, so countless outdoor concerts are held and thousands of lovers gather at each of them.
Musical tastes unusually easily create and destroy close friendships and romantic relationships, especially when it comes to adolescents, although in most cases music does not play any specific role in the lives of given persons. (I am always amazed that Svetlana, who supposedly asked everything, settled for her brother, studies, Croatia and Rilke, and was not interested in anything about music.) Many people are ready to travel for concerts, because of Maria Callas they slept for five nights on the concrete in front of the ticket office, because of Taylor Swift they (at least) once jumped so much that a mild earthquake was registered, so many people dress like Elvis or cut their hair like Madonna, almost everyone who you know he bought records, pays Spotify, has at least one t-shirt related to his favorite band, had their poster on his wall. Severe symptoms of a serious form of insanity!
We build huge concert halls, opera houses and use all kinds of large, open and closed, spaces for listening to music together, and for cities like London or Berlin it is impossible to even count how many such places there are in total. Architects especially learn about acoustics so that they can provide us with perfect sound, and the Byzantines also knew that empty jars should be added to the walls of churches in order to get better acoustics. The craziest example is certainly the large hall of the Berlin Philharmonic, built more than sixty years ago, when there was no digital modeling, so first a ten times smaller model was built (so a hall with about 250 seats), all aspects of sound propagation were tested on it in detail, and then it was razed to the ground so that the construction of the "real version" could begin.
THAT STRANGE KIND OF SPIRITUAL ELEVATION
A few people in every generation have the gift of hearing entire melodies within themselves - and knowing which group of instruments should carry them, when to turn up the volume, where to emphasize, and when to all play together. And not only are they able to write it down on paper, but there are also a few people in the world who truly understand these notes and are able to harmonize a group of about a hundred musicians so that, through the banal vibration of the air, they convey to the audience both the written form and all the feelings hidden among the notes and signs. It must not be forgotten that nowhere in the world is there such perfect cooperation as that necessary for the performance of a symphony or an opera: harmony down to the millisecond level, awareness of what everyone around you is playing and how to fit into it, transitions in which no one must "fall out", joint achievement of the most diverse colors and expression of feelings...
Audiences at classical music concerts are equally unusual. While almost all other types of music are danced to, nobody even thinks about it here. Right from the time of the Enlightenment, when the role of religion in society begins to weaken, that strange kind of secular spiritual elevation, meditation in a large group, when no one moves or speaks, appears. You will see people crying and applauding for half an hour in Milan's "Scala" and throwing fruit and vegetables at the singers, but there are also concerts after which there is complete silence for a long time, as if everyone wants to stay as long as possible in that unique state that the music brings them to, so that the experience never ends.
In more popular genres of music, the structures are usually simpler, but the combination of melody and lyrics often hits the heart more directly and people rejoice and suffer more fully with them. Unique performers have many followers here - some wouldn't trade Billie Holiday's singing for anything in the world, some Hendrix's guitar - although there are also independent authors, so, for example, Dylan and Balašević were forgiven a long time ago for not auditioning for any choir. Concerts like this bring another important kind of togetherness through singing together once and tens of thousands of people, for which my favorite examples are "Queen" on Live Aid (perhaps the most effectively used twenty minutes in the history of music) and improvisations during which the endlessly musical Bobby McFerrin turns the audience into a chorus.
It could go on and on like this, there is so much music all around us and in us. The problem starts when you start looking for reasonable explanations for any of this, when you ask yourself what the causes of this music craze are. Music does not have any clear purpose, like hunger, thirst or sexual drive, to have such a big role in our lives and contribute so much to the quality of life of at least some people. Also, although it can decide on the reproduction of some species of birds, countless people have married among people who could not sing a serenade even under the threat of death or have "two left legs and both boiled", so it is not possible to say why music did not disappear during the long evolutionary process.
The very process of enjoyment also seems simply pointless. Sound waves start from a source (vocal cords, instruments or "sound carrier"), have a certain frequency and intensity, which also change. They travel through the air, and neighbors sometimes show you how sound passes through thick walls. They reach your ear and activate a complex perceptual system, at the end of the process you "translate" those waves into the experience of music. And where speech can cause nothing, and noise the desire to move away, these same waves in the case of music cause laughter and tears, courage and sadness, inspiration and suffering... And we still don't know why!?
THE WORLD EXPRESSES ITSELF IN RHYTHMS
We have always believed that the one who sings evil does not mean it, that music is somehow connected with nobility of spirit, generosity or goodness. At one time it was thought that your children would be brighter if you played Mozart's music to them often when they were very young. In the most influential book in the history of mental health care, Anatomy of Melancholy Robert Burton, first published in 1621, recommended music as a form of treatment against depression. Despite this, we know today that hardly anyone would agree to hang out with Beethoven or Stravinsky, that Wagner is a strong candidate for the darkest narcissist of all time, and the music they were constantly surrounded by didn't help.
Science now says that music really affects us in a special way. On the one hand, while solving tasks activates certain areas of the brain - different depending on whether it is mathematical, linguistic, spatial or social competence - music is the only one that activates the entire cortex and various "lower" structures. On the other hand, simply listening to music, without therapeutic intent or purpose, lowers anxiety and blood pressure and improves mood and sleep quality, and stimulates the secretion of "happiness hormones" (dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin).
Some modern authors believe that it could be said that the brain is one big sensor for music, since everything in the world is expressed in rhythms, from the seasons to walking and gesturing, and the better we perceive and interpret these rhythms, the better we will manage both in nature and among people. Probably the most important thing is that we often overlook that the non-verbal aspects of communication are largely focused on essentially musical elements: the tone, color and intensity of the voice, the rhythm of speech, as well as the rhythm of hand and body movements that accompany it all. In preparation for some professions, one learns how to interpret this as well as possible (ideally, better than the interlocutor himself understands it), and in others how to manipulate it and leave the best possible impression on the audience (where comedians have a much more challenging task than politicians).
Among psychoanalysts, a theory about the effect of music that relies on the idea of parallelism of movement has become popular. Namely, music is defined as a regular movement from one tone to the next (which the majority of people spontaneously recognize, and some even study in harmony and counterpoint classes), and feelings are defined as processes that consume energy, which is why they represent movement in our inner world (the Latin word literally says that - e disturbed, and we also feel that feelings inspire us, move us to various activities). Hence, music is understood as an external mirror of our internal processes, as a way to express feelings, see outside ourselves and internalize them, and to experience them together with large groups of people.
Some of the most important philosophers in history were very suspicious of music precisely because it has a great effect on us for completely irrational reasons. It seems, however, that this power of hers to breathe or enhance life can be enjoyed in completely painless and harmless ways. And if I'm wrong, no big deal. For something as important as music, a price has to be paid and it should be paid with a smile. Everything is cheaper than imagining a horror movie in which the universe, human society and our inner worlds have fallen out of rhythm and harmony, and all we hear is the whipping of the wind and the screaming of the hungry.
The author is a psychologist
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