Hoping for music that uplifts us
1.14 | June 21, 2020 | Faith, Hope and Love in the Time of Corona
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
1 Cor 13:13
IMAGE: Niek Verlaan
Sunday, April 12, 2020. It’s Easter! I am here in Ranchi, trying to celebrate one of the most significant events of my Christian faith, when Jesus won over sin and death through His resurrection. It is meant to be a day of hope; however, a few hundred miles away, people still seem to be walking their calvary as they desperately try to make it home in the midst of a blistering Indian summer. A few thousand miles away in Wuhan, Bergamo and Barcelona there has been an eerie silence in its streets as coffins pile up for never-meant-to-be lonely funerals. Can this be Easter, I wonder. Sounds more like the apocalypse, says a friend.
Yet, from those very emptied spaces, one man as though in an act of defiance gave us a semblance of hope. From the hallowed Cathedral of Milan, Andrea Bocelli, one of the finest tenors of our lifetime, performed “Music for Hope” — an Easter concert that was livestreamed to millions around the world. For Bocelli it was a moment of prayer:
“I believe in the strength of praying together; I believe in the Christian Easter, a universal symbol of rebirth that everyone – whether they are believers or not – truly needs right now.”
And so was it for a million viewers as our spirits were lifted with some time-honoured classics from César Franck’s Panis Angelicus, to Gounod and Bach’s Ave Maria to the more popular Amazing Grace by John Newton. At a point when Bocelli implored in supplication — “Sancta Maria / Sancta Maria / Ora pro nobis / Ora pro nobis peccatoribus / Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.” — one could sense one’s mortal frailty needing grace upon grace. The visuals of the incarcerated Italian cities of Milan, Bergamo and Brescia which later moved to the hollowed streets of Paris, London and New York added to this mood. Yet, there was hope. Long after the performance, our spirits had continued to remain uplifted. I wonder what this moment would have been without music!
Music and art have proved to be very vital in the way we have to come to cope with the pandemic. Cognitive scientists reveal how music-making brings us together during the coronavirus pandemic. Our ability to synchronise our movements to a musical beat through a process called entrainment enables us to have interpersonal synchrony. This creates a strong sense of belonging and participation that often results in solidarity. The collaborative virtual performance of the Goa University choral ensemble Lux Vocalis (see postscript) is a case in point; but so are the Italians making music on balconies, or artists composing songs about the pandemic.
Throughout history, writes Ed Prideaux, music has enabled us to fight pandemics, but more specifically our anxieties about it. As much as the mind and body are understood to be intimately connected to each other, our mental wellbeing is seen to have a positive effect in treating our physical ailments.
However, pandemics have in turn also inspired art, music and literature. Apart from the various themes it might have informed art, what is probably less known is that pandemics have also been instrumental in the production and ownership of art. In disrupting the prevalent socio-economic order and producing inequalities, pandemics — as in the case of the Black Death (1347) in Florence — enabled the accumulation of capital among a wealthy few, who in turn became patrons and financiers of art, often dictating its aesthetics. In Florentine Italy, these circumstances signalled the Renaissance.
Understanding how the accumulation of class and capital begets privilege and tradition, that in turn influences the aesthetics of art, can reveal a lot about our attitudes towards art and its consumption. In music, it determines what’s classical and what’s folk. While the pandemic has relegated every musician to her or his private space, a post-pandemic economy could determine who among these returns to work and who stays away permanently.
In his insightful essay on The Uselessness of Art, T M Krishna — one of the most significant Carnatic vocalists of our times — explores our attitudes towards patronising the arts. He reveals how our prejudiced aesthetics towards the art associated with marginalised musicians from the lower castes — often described as folk, rural, raw and ethnic — relegates them to a life of systemic poverty. Their condition becomes even more acute during the ongoing pandemic. For a more engaged discussion on this theme, see T M Krishna’s interview: Reshaping Art.
In the course of this pandemic, as we discover how liberating music could be to our mental and spiritual wellbeing; Melissa Chan cautions us against over romanticising musicians to the extent that we purely imagine them as emotionally driven aesthetes who must make music. That runs the risk of not recognising the dedication that they have invested into their craft to produce something so sublime for us today. That also runs the risk of not recognising the fact that artists, more so those who are marginalised, are professionals who also need to earn their daily bread.
As much as we discover the uplifting effect of music on our lives, it needs to also uplift — liberate too — the very people who produce it for us. That way, when we shall return — and we will — to our post-pandemic live performance, we shall enjoy it in good faith.
Wishing you faith, hope and love,
Rinald D’Souza SJ
HISTORIA DOMUS
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Readings
FAITH
Music for Hope
Andrea Bocelli | Duomo di Milano | 12 April 2020
“On the day in which we celebrate the trust in a life that triumphs, I’m honored and happy to answer ‘Sì’ to the invitation of the City and the Duomo of Milan. I believe in the strength of praying together; I believe in the Christian Easter, a universal symbol of rebirth that everyone – whether they are believers or not – truly needs right now. Thanks to music, streamed live, bringing together millions of clasped hands everywhere in the world, we will hug this wounded Earth’s pulsing heart, this wonderful international forge that is reason for Italian pride. The generous, courageous, proactive Milan and the whole of Italy will be again, and very soon, a winning model, engine of a renaissance that we all hope for. It will be a joy to witness it, in the Duomo, during the Easter celebration which evokes the mystery of birth and rebirth”
Andrea Bocelli
HOPE
Symphonies Silenced, Sonatas Streamed: The State of Classical Music During COVID-19
Melissa Chan | Los Angeles Review of Books | 27 April 2020
We romanticize musicians, and imagine them as emotionally driven aesthetes who must make music. That is partly true — no one enters such an unstable industry for the money. I often think about the time one must invest to have a music career. Most players showed early talent as toddlers, and have practiced every day ever since. Few other disciplines demand such preparation — essentially two decades of training before even starting work. Yet anyone with a two-year MBA likely makes much more money. It is passion, then, not pay, that drives people to play professionally.
But everyone needs food and shelter, and this pandemic has revealed the precarious financial tightrope so many musicians walk. If we’re now seeing vulnerabilities in the global supply chain for products like masks and pharmaceuticals, the same domino effect plays out in the music world: a canceled festival means musicians don’t make money, and when musicians don’t make money, neither do their agents, managers, publicists — nor do their piano tuners, or sound and light technicians.
LOVE
Reshaping Art: T M Krishna in Conversation With Sidharth Bhatia
Sidharth Bhatia with T M Krishna | Asia Society | 2 June 2018
Krishna presents the opinion that homogeneity in the arts, created by caste and religion, must be diversified. By questioning the content produced by restrictive subgroups and then deconstructing and challenging the subgroups as they exist, Krishna makes a call to churn the status quo. While identity is strongly linked to caste based social order, Krishna made the audience aware that the role of identity distorts as one goes down the social order. For that reason, individuals must “see themselves and recognize the issues,” in order to see each other, enable a conversation, and thereby influence the current texture of how the arts exist. When posed the question if Krishna risks “over-sentimentalizing the subaltern” by Bhatia, Krishna acknowledged the risk but voiced that sentimentalization happens when one does not problematize current dynamics and hierarchies. Art is to disturb, he said. Krishna proposed that reshaping art is reshaping community.
Postscript
Postscript
A Clare Benediction / John Rutter
Lux Vocalis | Mae De Deus Church, Saligao, Goa | 15 June 2020
REFLECT
For it is not so much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul,
but the intimate understanding and relish of the truth.
The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, #2
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