April 02, 2008
Lohengrin at Opera Australia
When I caught sight of the title of Robert Fulford’s essay in Canada’s National Post (hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily), “My church: the mind’s ‘theatre of simultaneous possibilities,’” it rocketed me back more than a decade to my voice teacher’s living room/studio and her proclamation one evening between lessons, “[Music] is my religion.” I recognized her feeling immediately and began to think of the parallels: performers and composers as priests and priestesses; historians and theoreticians as monks and nuns; the audience as congregants; and all of us as seekers of spiritual transcendence.
In his essay, Fulford puts forth the idea that mere exposure to, or even appreciation of, the arts cannot transform a soul, but does offer “the chance to live more expansive, more enjoyable and deeper lives,” and, “gives us, as well, the opportunity to look at everything around us in a slightly different light.”
So I ask you, dear blog browsers, what makes music sacred to you?