An die Musik

Not much to do this Christmas Eve, laid up with a cold watching the rain fall from gray skies outside. So I thought of sending this message from Franz Schubert for the holidays:

O blessed art, how often in dark hours,

when the savage ring of life tightens around me,

have you kindled warm love in my heart,

and borne me to a better world!

Often a sigh, escaping from your harp,

a sweet, celestial chord

has revealed to me a heaven of happier times,

O blessed art, I thank you for that!

Bryn Terfel and Malcolm Martineau...

By Miles Hoffman...

Schubert’s song may well be the most beautiful thank-you note anyone has ever written, but it’s also something else. It’s a credo, a statement of faith in the wondrous powers of music, and by its very nature an affirmation of those powers. We may view it as a statement of expectations as well. The poet thanks Music for what it has done for him, but there is nothing in his words that would make us think that Music’s powers are exhausted, and indeed the noble, exalted character of Schubert’s music would lead us to believe that Music’s powers are, if anything, eternal, and eternally dependable.

But just how does our gracious Art exercise these powers? How does it comfort us, charm us, kindle our hearts? We might start our search for answers by positing two fundamentals: a fundamental pain and a fundamental quest. A fundamental pain of our human condition is loneliness. No surprise here: We’re born alone, we’re alone in our consciousness, we die alone, and, when loved ones die, we’re left alone. And pain itself, including physical pain, isolates us and makes us feel still more alone, completing a vicious circle. Our fundamental quest—by no means unrelated to our aloneness and our loneliness—is the quest for meaning, the quest to make sense of our time on earth, to make sense of time itself.