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Hi Everyone,

This is a very general question addressed to all . . .

I am a little curious about your inner experience of music whether as a performer or composer . . . I keep wondering if I am the only one who with music feels the tones pulsating and resonating in a mad sea of ecstasy, the force so intense it is almost unbearable, blocking out all thoughts of other things, making one crazy and wild with freneticism such are the tremendous vibratory energies engaged, as one's ears ring and the hands burn with electricity.

Or is this just an abnormality with me specifically?

Probably it is just with me! But maybe someone here has had a similar or related experience, maybe a one-off, of being totally taken over by the music? Maybe of something outside oneself taking over one's playing, or of something in one's experiences with music as a composer or a performer perhaps not having a totally naturalistic explanation?

If so, do tell!


M.

I think it is very difficult to describe my inner experience but I can tell you that sometimes when the music comes out [ ala Chopin] I do feel a bit crazed. So I have to think my best analysis would be the reaction of any listeners.

I do know that when I play something exquisitely beautiful I have to check my pulse and make sure I am still breathing. Talk about a calming sensation.

Life's pleasures and treasures.

rada

My experience is somewhat paradoxical. In performance, I step back and allow the music to exist separate from me. That is, I am not there while my fingers are on the keys. Don't know where I go, but it's not "there".

However, I know that what comes out of my fingers is determined by the conscious choices I make when practicing for that performance. So, I'm not really "gone" after all, since my "influence" can still be felt/heard.

I think this is one of the major reasons why art is so different for everybody. But I have no idea what to call it.

Wow, Shelley, you outdid yourself with that one!!

Michael, I think everyone who loves music, especially those of us who play, all experience this euphoria. I think it's safe to say that all of us at PW feel this way at times. The hard part is adding discipline, intelligent planning and accurate hearing to the passion.

I had this interesting dialog with myself a number of years ago. What is the true "experience" of the music? When I'm playing, I'm often too busy to experience it. Immediately after, I want to hear the recording so I can really experience the music. Then when I hear it, I relive the act of playing it. But... when do I really experience the music?

Sometimes when I sit and hear someone/s else playing, I want to go home and play the same music myself, so I can truly "experience" it, thus starting the cycle again.

Basket case, I know.

I think music acts as a sort of abstract trigger, setting up a dynamic feedback loop in my brain, using the raw data of the totality of my personal inner experience, real and mystical, over my lifetime. Once this chaotic feedback loop is established it carries on under its own momentum. In other words, my mind is doing it all, not the music, which actually describes or communicates nothing. Better minds than mine have attempted and failed to account for the quale of mystical experience, the visionary landscapes of the mind.

In my music I can be gloriously, completely and harmlessly mad. This is very healthy.

I don't know if that is safe to say. I've only had this kind of thing happen once or twice. Feeling deeply involved with the music, yes, but not all the other sensations Michael noted.

I'm not sure I can tell, and even if I can, do I want to? A lot of my experiences seem to me to be private in some way, and I don't necessarily want to talk about them with the whole world.

I'll just say that I've had all sorts of ecstatic experiences with music, both playing it and listening to it. Trying to verbalize them, well, that's a whole different issue. It seems that somehow it's not possible to quite say what it is you want to say about things like that, at least for me. But that's why some people say we have music in the first place - to say what cannot be said otherwise.

I certainly have, but I don't care to share it with the rest of the world (as wr says)...

It is fascinating that the same piece of music can be highly valued by many people, yet each person's experience of that piece can be different.

My own experiences are certainly intense, but they bear no resemblance to those described in the OP. The word "crazed" does not apply. My nervous system is not especially sensitive to sound per se...rather, music affects me in much the same way as does poetry. A poem can be equally powerful read silently or recited aloud.

..therefore ye soft pipes, play on,
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
- Keats

I never mind sharing, but overindulging in what you share is far too easy to do; vivid visions, dissociation from body, breathlessness, sudden emotional depletion or construction, intense dysphoria, complete lack of temporal awareness, sharp recounting of memories, loss of physicality, tranquility, a vague sense of intoxication, hallucinations, feelings of transcendence, itching, melancholy, incidessienne, decetriste, stasis. Um...if I play long enough, or have been away from the instrument for more than a few days, at least one of the above will occur. It is in these times that, as my recordings tell me, I play my best...um...especially when the affliction is distressing though, of course, that's all accounted for by and dependent upon taste Of course we all experience music differently; if we blended all our experiences together we would, arguably, experience all that music has to offer. The sheer number of ways even a single note might affect someone are, to me, staggering....um...it's saddening how little we each, individually, experience of this abstractity, if you will, that we all clearly love so much...I can only hope music doesn't mind so much
Xxx

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the candid responses so far.

In part I am wondering if anyone here has had a Rosemary Brown type experience. It was partly through such an ongoing experience and entering into a personal relationship with one of the 19th century pianist-composers that the excruciatingly elevated inner experience of music, the ringing in the ears and the burning electrical sensation in the hands were acquired (not metaphor), and I would find it very hard to believe that no one else has had such an experience - especially as there are far more worthy pianists out there than me!

As well I am a bit skeptical toward her claims. This is all about concentrated, practical time centered around piano performance and composition - not about idle small talk and chit-chat!

Thinking back into the work of various authors such as Emerson and Whitman, and of course Arthur M. Abell's interviews with varied composers, I can now observe that certain things were not metaphor or hyper-emotionality, and so I have to wonder if certain avenues of perception toward non-material forces are in fact quite common. Liszt's presence is magisterial and he has provided an exact path for me to follow as a musician in service to others, but this is not at the core of the experiences and was not the substance of their initiation . . .

p.s. - Owing to their substance and content I could not doubt these experiences even if I wanted to, as with Liszt . . . his knowledge of music and of specific compositions down to the present day invariably proves to be correct even when it is quite foreign to my own personal knowledge of music.


M.