My husband and I don’t get to our city’s symphony concerts often. To me, classical music, while lovely and quite uplifting when I’m in the mood for it, often feels a bit too formal for my tastes – a bit too stuffy to spend significant sums of money for. Also, true disclosure – it brings up memories of the years of piano practice I subjected myself to in order to “compete” with my high school pianist boyfriend – who always won whatever competition I had going on in my own mind.
This all changed a month ago when Rob and I treated ourselves to a symphony program titled “Compositions of Resistance”. The program included Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and also two heartbreaking yet uplifting pieces by Ukrainian composers Mykola Lysenko and Valentin Sylvestrov. In the second part of the program, we would hear Belgian cellist Camille Thomas as soloist in the second act.
“There is a very important distinction to be made between listening and hearing. Sometimes we listen to things, but we never hear them. True listening brings us in touch even with that which is unsayable and unsaid.” – John O’Donohue
As the orchestra worked through these pieces, taut concentration on their faces, their bodies at one with the instruments, I began to notice my own physical senses softening, opening and then, somehow expanding beyond the limits of my body and melding with those around me. It was as if we all, in listening to this powerful music, had somehow fused with it. I remember this same sensation at rock concerts: feeling as if we were all beating as one giant heart.
“The first sound that every human hears is the sound of the mother’s heartbeat in the dark lake water of the womb. The sound of the drum brings us consolation because it brings us back to that time when we were at one with the mother’s heartbeat.” – John O’Donohue
And then, the famous big finale in the second movement of Beethoven’s 5th – the Big Brass Boom! And…. Silence. For only a moment…broken suddenly by the sound of a very small child with a rather large voice punctuating the hush with a loud Ha! A completely understandable reaction to all the bombastic sound that had come before. The audience erupted in laughter – as did the conductor, who turned and bowed to the small child in the front section. It was delightful and human and totally not “stuffy”.
The highlight of the experience, for Rob and me, came in the second act. Camille Thomas solo’ed in a piece titled “Never Give Up” written for her by the Turkish composer Fazil Say, and in response to recent terrorist bombings in Paris, Istanbul, and around the globe.
“One of the great thresholds of reality is the threshold between sound and silence. All good sounds have silence near, behind and within them.”
In three movements, composer, cellist and orchestra took us on a journey from pastoral contentment through dark, destructive auditory terrain – complete with “gunshots” from the sharp attack on the snare drum. We had been warned about this in the program. but they still came as a shock. And then, silence.
But silence is not absence, not empty of feeling. All of us, cellist, orchestra and audience held our breath. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears and my throat. Then, the cellist again put her bow softly to her instrument, and so began a mournful dance between long tones of sorrow and deep deep quiet. In that quiet, in those silences, we could hear the determined heartbeat of recovery, the tiny seeds of resilience stirring in the ashes. These were the seeds that brought the final movement into being – lighter, hopeful, but with the gravity of innocence lost.
“Music is, afterall, the most perfect sound to meet the silence. When you really listen to music, you begin to hear the beautiful way it constellates and textures the silence, how it brings out the hidden mystery of silence.” – John O’Donohue
We walked out of the concert hall in a daze. Days later, we were still commenting on the power of this performance and how completely unexpected it was for us.
The following week, Rob bought season tickets for the symphony.
* All quotes in this piece are from John O’Donohue’s book “Anam Cara” titled “True Listening is Worship”