Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Musical mélange
Jan is a wizard at finding gems of songs, sung by the best artists, some more famous than others. Last year she discovered Malakai Bayoh, a teen from London who sings like an angel. There’s even a couple of words to describe his ability to sing in the highest ranges – he can be called a Sopranist, or when he’s older, probably a Countertenor. I remember the occasion when she had me sit down and listen to him sing “Pie Jesu” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem. The highest note he reaches is an A, way above middle C. When he sang the words, “Pie Jesu”, tears started tp flow for both of us.
“Psychology Today” reports on a study of over 800 people and their various feelings as they were brought to tears by listening to a musical selection. “The researchers found that people who had been moved to tears by music could be clearly separated into two groups: those who felt sadness and those who felt awe….they found that people who ranked high on the neuroticism scale experienced sadness when they had been moved to tears by music, and people who scored high in the openness to experience scale felt like crying because the music provoked a profound sense of awe.” (Posted 09/28/2017).
I will not deny some of my neurotic tendencies, but I’m happy to report to myself that I am in the 37% of people who tear up because of the awe that some music causes in me. So, last night Jan and I were off and running, playing favorite selections for each other, and listening intently to the songs that move us. Each song carried the ability to give us goosebumps. There’s actually a word for this phenomenon, “Frisson”. Although explaining it is bit of a neurological mystery, the basic thinking is that appreciating beauty is a human trait, and frisson is a reaction for people of higher creativity and intellectual curiosity. (Discovery magazine, 08/01/2019). OK. I’ll go along with that.
I have a mental list of frisson-producing songs. Each one evokes a strong feeling of awe and wonder. (My friend Rose has developed an approach to life that she calls “A & W”. Not the root beer, but a sense of moving beyond the ordinary to see the beauty and mystery of creation.)
“The Promise” by Tracy Chapman is a love song. As I listen to it I can recall all the reasons why I love Jan, and I get a sweet sense of how deep it runs – something that I need to pay more attention to as our years together mount up. KD Lang sings an awesome version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in which she holds notes for an impossibly long interval. I get a sense of the confusion that infatuation can produce. One time at United Church of Santa Fe we sang a gorgeous song by composer Morten Lauridsen. It takes words from a poem by James Agee: “Sure on this shining night of starmade shadows round, kindness must watch for me this side the ground”. The melody is so stunning that I react each time with that A & W that Rose talks about. I have been a fan of Josh Groban since I first heard him in the 2000’s. On one occasion when he was merely 17 years old he was asked to stand in for Andrea Bocceli and sing “The Prayer” with Celine Dion at the 1999 Grammys. The song went viral. To me, the song carries the message that God’s love and protection extends to all.
Those songs are the beginning of my list of frisson songs. Someday I should learn how to create a playlist of my favorites.