# Why do I listen to music?



## Muse Wanderer (Feb 16, 2014)

This has been a question that personally fascinates me  and what is written below is my thoughts and subjective opinions.

Why do I need to listen to music from so many eras with so much intensity?

Why do Josquin Desprez, Palestrina, Monteverdi, JSBach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner, Schoenberg, Sibelius, Ligeti, Feldman, and so forth instill this profoud need irrespective of era, mode of writing, values or instrumentation used?

It is not just for pleasure, it is much deeper than that.

I listen because I need to.

There is a connection that is difficult to describe, but it exists.

The composer that writes the music has imbued his own ideas, personality, culture, values, pain, pleasure, theology, desires, judgement, knowledge and emotion into a towering structure of melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, orchestration, counterpoint and form.

Philosophically, it feels as if the 'soul' of the composer still exists in the notated notes, and those notes are the key towards that 'composer's soul' becoming metaphorically 'alive' again in the mind of the listener.

Neurophysiologically, there is a flow of information after the sound is perceived by the ear and changed into electrical signals. These are then processed by the inner primitive areas of the brain resulting in reactions that are beyond our conscious control. That is why, in my opinion, it feels so visceral. These areas serve as part of the 'flight or flight response' that is so important in evolutionary terms for survival of the species.

So many areas of the brain are involved with so many connections including the subconscious spatial (hippocampus), emotional (limbic system), short- and long-term memory (temporal), even before the higher areas of the cortex start to make sense of them especially the most 'human areas' such as the frontal cortex. The brain wave activity may even alter according to the music that is listened to.

All this brain activity probably is the reason that a person 'feels' the music before knowing why.

The composers that managed to compose such music, with the right information and codified ideas, that elicited such a varied response within the minds of the listeners are the ones that are highly regarded in our time. They have transcended their own time in a way, and the listener is the privileged person who can feel that information in their own subjective manner.

In a way, this human interaction, binds us to the past and points the way to the future artistically, culturally and socially.


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