On the Objective Power of Music

The Catholic Thing

By Brad Miner.
I've often written here about painting. Now, I want to write about music, a subject about which I've no expertise, although I do have 6,261 tracks on my iPhone.
Act one of Noël Coward's "intimate" comedy, Private Lives, begins with an off-stage orchestra playing some innocuous tune, to which it "returns persistently," and occasions this exchange:
Elyot: Nasty insistent little tune.
Amanda: Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
The notion, I guess, is that emotive music - strings swelling in crescendo, perhaps - is manipulative. Sometimes that's true. Or it may be what these days we call an "earworm." My grandchildren, still in their toddler period, can't get enough of the nasty and persistent "Baby Shark." It's on my iPhone, of course.
But to my mind, there's nothing as potent as great music. Plato and Pope Benedict XVI had a similar view. And I have proof.
There's an Internet meme called "reaction videos," in which a young adult YouTuber with a "channel" listens to music suggested by a "follower." Music, that is, the host has not previously heard.
When I first stumbled onto one of these (an African woman listening to Luciano Pavarotti), my first thought was: Really? She's never heard opera? But then. . . .Perhaps not, if it's mostly missing from her experiences or culture.
In fact, opera wasn't much of a part of my youth, although I heard snippets in Bugs Bunny cartoons, on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other variety programs, and sometimes in movies.
I also knew from sports that "it ain't over till the fat lady sings," although I was unaware then that this was also a meme - in this case, taken from Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, specifically Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, who is sometimes portrayed by a soprano wearing a horned Viking helmet and hefting a spear. That's mostly satire and rarely seen in actual performances.
It was William Congreve, not Shakespeare as many believe, who wrote - in the first line of his 1697 play The Mourning Bride - that "Musick hath charms to soothe a savage Breast / to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak." (Note too that it's Breast, not beast.) It's certainly the case that music can get us to move our feet or move us to tears, especially if powerful experiences are associated in our minds: an alma mater, a national anthem, or a song once heard at a funeral.
But sometimes, it's just the music itself - the music, and the performer. For me, "Nessun Dorma," from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot (which premiered in 1926), is one of those. And that's odd because, in context, the aria itself would seem unlikely to evoke a tearful reaction.
Calaf, aka the Unknown Prince (il principe ignoto ), has correctly answered three riddles posed by Princess Turandot to her suitors (rather like Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, although in the play it's caskets (gold, silver, lead): "Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves"). But Princess Turandot, though she has promised to marry the suitor who answers correctly, has also decreed that a suitor who fails to answer the riddles must die.
She's Portia and also Shylock.
But despite Calaf's success, she reneges because she hates men. So, Calaf makes a bargain: if by the next morning, Turandot can discover his name (remember he is ignoto - incognito), he'll surrender himself for execution. But if she can't figure out who he is, she must marry him. She agrees but decrees that throughout the kingdom none shall sleep (nessun dorma) until the prince's name is discovered. If they fail, she'll slaughter the lot of them.
It's Turandot's subjects who mustn't sleep, and it's they (in chorus offstage) who begin the aria, to which Calaf joins in.
Luciano Pavarotti sang Nessun Dorma often, and any tenor worth his salt has tackled it. And in those aforementioned "reaction videos," not a few are of people listening to Pavarotti sing the aria. None shrugs it off; most are awed. Others are reduced to tears. But I've chosen none of those...