# Lessons from Composers



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

This may be a contentious topic, but let's see how it goes.

I'm not speaking of a composer's life story being inspirational. That's a whole other subject matter. I'm speaking of the music _revealing wisdom_ to you, simply by inspiring a train of thought that leads to wisdom. Maybe the words/libretto/plot of an art song or choral piece count too, but focusing on the musical content itself and its influence on you as a thinker/feeler in context to the story. Sometimes simply reading about a story is not the same as hearing it. I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about. Perhaps it's just a sudden thought of "Life is worth living for this!" or even "This reminds me of a x,y, and z, which taught me a valuable lesson."

It occurred to me today a sort of "word of wisdom" I found in Rachmaninoff's 2nd symphony, 1st movement which is my favorite. One can just listen to the piece abstractly, but for me, it's completely wrapped up in the visual imagery I got from this Sonata-Allegro _form_. I mean, the Sonata form is wisdom _in itself _when you look at it from a philosophical standpoint: situation, conflict, resolution, and the results thereof. There is a story here within the form, a structure that teaches a message, though a simple one at that. That's what makes it so timeless, after all.

So what did I "learn" from Rachmaninoff, you may say? Well it's not really _new _wisdom at all, but I decided to articulate it to myself today: An obstacle in your course of life is to be grateful for, because they will release traits in yourself that you didn't know you had, such as courage, and you will appreciate the good things in life even more when the obstacle is conquered. That has nothing to do with his personal life, but was purely my experience listening to the music, how the emotions and content related to each other, the ecstasy of surviving conflict (the recapitulation) and the ultimate result of gratitude for it all happening in the first place.

_"I'm thankful for my pain."_

The _coda _of that movement is another matter though... 

Anyhow, feel free to express your thoughts here on the subject, things that you felt music "taught" you. This is completely subjective topic, and I don't want anyone saying "this is the only thing it should be telling its audience" or "this is universal, therefore everyone should accept it" or whatever.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

There is music (composed, interpreted, listened) that moves me to tears: that's a lesson, wisdom that teaches life! Rachmaninov, Mahler, Mussorgsky, I *do* remember where the tears came...


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

I agree with the premise of this thread completely, music has taught me to think the way that I do.

My favorite music has taught me compassion, the spirit of endurance, perseverance, the ability to apprehend mysteriousness, intense/ extreme beauty, how to break the status quo/ social expectation, how to dance (a little bit), less-is-more, what my destiny is...I'm realizing I could go on and on forever with this.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

While I am not sure that it really taught me to do so, but the symphonies of Bruckner & Mahler reinforced my inclination to think in the long-term and to see the complex interactions in life. While they aren't so large in terms of time, the works of Sibelius, Nielsen and Vaughan Williams do much of the same thing.


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

The last movement of Ravel's _Ma Mere l'Oye_ ballet is one of my favorite pieces (along with the rest of the ballet). There is that simple "pure" C major chorale-like melody leading up to that wonderful fanfare at the end. I am always reminded that there is beauty and worth in simplicity, and that all of us will be equal and exulted one day.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Music has taught me to listen :tiphat:


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> So what did I "learn" from Rachmaninoff, you may say? Well it's not really _new _wisdom at all, but I decided to articulate it to myself today: An obstacle in your course of life is to be grateful for, because they will release traits in yourself that you didn't know you had, such as courage, and you will appreciate the good things in life even more when the obstacle is conquered.


I'm glad you were able to achieve this wisdom through musical inspiration, and indeed we sometimes find same through different stimuli, music being one. Sometimes a walk in the countryside suffices. It's personal and it's variable.

That being said, from a psychological standpoint, your finding is accurate. Freud and others have described the occurence of ''stressors'' (as they called them) opportunities to either grow your ego (ego not in the pejorative sense but which rather means the maturity of one's psychism) or a risk of regressing to a previous stage of mental development.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Webern taught me that sometimes less is more.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Becca said:


> While I am not sure that it really taught me to do so, but the symphonies of Bruckner & Mahler reinforced my inclination to think in the long-term and to see the complex interactions in life. While they aren't so large in terms of time, the works of Sibelius, Nielsen and Vaughan Williams do much of the same thing.


Very true of Bruckner and Mahler. I'm less familiar with Nielsen and Vaughan Williams.

But for me it's hard to say if I really "learned" something from music in terms of "lessons" applicable in real life or so to say valuable for daily life experiences or in other words whether I think of music as a tool for achieving something in life or helping going through it, it's hard to say.....but classical music itself became an inseparable part of my life. Nevertheless OP implies and not without a reason that music is sort of an extension of philosophy ( as we know "philo"-"sophy" is love of wisdom) or may be it's vice versa and it is a philosophy tries to explain in words what is hidden in music. I remember one conversation a few years ago on similar topic : whether music is capable of expressing concepts and ideas or it's just way too abstract for that or even not appropriate for such things as expressing ideas and instead what is capable of just expressing emotions and sentiments.

Now it became clear to me that music is expressing ideas and therefore wisdom. The point is that that music of every epoch embodies ideas and values of that particular epoch when it was composed, therefore ideas/messages vary


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## Guest (Nov 25, 2015)

I read the entire OP, bracing myself for the word _Glazunov_, but it never came. Praise the Lord


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Blancrocher said:


> Webern taught me that sometimes less is more.


For me he taught that more is indeed more.


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## thorne (Aug 8, 2014)

It was interesting reading the original post. When the phrase "Life is worth living for this!" what came immediately to mind for me was the Rachmaninoff 2nd symphony. Listening to that was the first (and I think only) time that I've been moved to tears on a _first _hearing of a piece of music.

I don't really agree that music can function the same way as philosophy, but I do think they can be related. Philosophy is not just assertions of conclusions, but is also about the reasoning that arrived at those conclusions. That's something you can do with concepts and language; not really the same way with music. But art, as the teachers of creative writing like to say, is about showing, rather than about telling. And in that sense, music, and any art, does have the power to directly show us something about the world and life with an immediacy and concreteness that is not there in philosophy. Music, in particular, seems to be very limited in the range of what it can directly portray (many don't believe it can portray anything at all), but within that limited range, it has a unique ability to give us a kind of direct experience of what it means in emotional terms to live with a particular philosophy -- it has the ability to give us the first-hand experience of the rewards (or punishments) of a particular world-view.

Or so it seems to me. By the way, I think this is my first post here... so... Hi, everybody!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I learned about love from Mahler's 3rd symphony. I think part of that came from the documentary What The Universe Tells Me, where different people give their thoughts about the symphony.

As an introduction, to my ears, the piece is about aspiration. In the individual movements, chaos aspires to order, order aspires to preconscious life, life aspires to embodiment, embodiment aspires to consciousness, consciousness aspires to religion, and religion aspires to God, or the true source of love. 
Another person said that it is about the dynamic process of becoming, a progression from capitivity to freedom.
What opened my eyes to a new concept of love was a statement from, I believe, Benjamin Zander who said that the fourth movement is where Nietzche asks, which is deeper, suffering or joy? He realizes joy is deeper. Suffering looks for termination, but joy looks for eternity. This joy doesn't look past the present moment the way nature does; it is to be in this place now.

Or as T.S. Eliot said, Love is most itself when here and now cease to matter. And that feeling is how the last movement ends.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Another composer whose music has affected me is Beethoven. J.W.N. Sullivan's book Beethoven, His Spiritual Development described three phases of Beethoven's music which relate to three phases of adult life: beginning young and brash, then the middle years of recognizing and fighting limitations, and the older years of acceptance. His music from these periods has helped me understand life as it has happened.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Johann Sebastian Bach was a great role model. A lower middle class big family, death of first wife, many children to care, half died at child birth, not appreciative employers during the last decades at Leipzig etc. all point to someone who had strength, and an unpretentious approach to his art who wrote truly great music.


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## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

Beethoven taught me to turn down the volume.


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

thorne said:


> It was interesting reading the original post. When the phrase "Life is worth living for this!" what came immediately to mind for me was the Rachmaninoff 2nd symphony. Listening to that was the first (and I think only) time that I've been moved to tears on a _first _hearing of a piece of music.
> 
> I don't really agree that music can function the same way as philosophy, but I do think they can be related. Philosophy is not just assertions of conclusions, but is also about the reasoning that arrived at those conclusions. That's something you can do with concepts and language; not really the same way with music. But art, as the teachers of creative writing like to say, is about showing, rather than about telling. And in that sense, music, and any art, does have the power to directly show us something about the world and life with an immediacy and concreteness that is not there in philosophy. Music, in particular, seems to be very limited in the range of what it can directly portray (many don't believe it can portray anything at all), but within that limited range, it has a unique ability to give us a kind of direct experience of what it means in emotional terms to live with a particular philosophy -- it has the ability to give us the first-hand experience of the rewards (or punishments) of a particular world-view.
> 
> Or so it seems to me. By the way, I think this is my first post here... so... Hi, everybody!


Hi. I just joined this site, too.


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