Marco Corrao Dec.

1st, 2016

On Music, Emotion, and Totality

As a Philosophy student, I have always been captivated by those themes which run through
the whole history of philosophy. From Democritus and Parmenides in ancient Greece, the
part-whole question has always been object of debate among thinkers. Should we observe
reality in its wholeness, or should we rather start from the parts which compose it? In other
words, can the whole be considered more than the mere sum of its parts?

Coming from a strong atomistic culture, it is often hard for us to grasp this idea. After all, that
piece of paper in front of me is just a huge amount of molecules that stick together, and the
burger I am eating is simply the sum of its ingredients. Thinking about this, I struggled to
find something that falls outside this paradigm. And yet, one possible answer came to me
unexpectedly, while doing one of my favorite daily activities: playing guitar.

As a guitarist and a music enthusiast, I believe that music is able to convey powerful, raw
emotions, which we all can recognize. Regardless of whether we like a particular instrument
or not, we will all feel that deep, moving sensation hearing an E minor chord. And we will all
react similarly to that energetic major chords progression. As I reflected on this, I bumped
into quite a fascinating idea, contained in a concept which I happened to know well:
harmony.
Lets take an instrument and play, for instance, and A, then a C, and finally an E. These
notes, on their own, will not communicate much. Hearing them separately, we will perceive
neither joy nor sadness. But lets take the same three notes and, this time, lets play them
together. The magic happens: we will hear a well-defined, heart-rending sound: we will hear
an A minor chord. Even more interesting, lets now make that C a C sharp. With joy, we will
hear an A major chord.

What happens, I believe, is truly fascinating. When played together, these notes are able to
transmit a feeling that was not present in any of the individual notes. What makes the chord
major is not the notes themselves, but, rather, the relationship, the mathematical ratio existing
between them. Indeed, the concept of majority itself starts existing in the very moment we
play these notes together. The whole has become indivisible in its parts. Indeed, it has
become more than its parts.

This idea, which lays at the core of harmony, is probably best expressed by the words of
British musician and conductor Benjamin Zander, in his inspiring speech titled The
Transformative Power of Classical Music. Trying to describe what lies behind a masterpiece
such as a Prelude by Chopin, he says So let's see what's really going on here. We have a B.
This is a B. The next note is a C. And the job of the C is to make the B sad. And it does,
doesn't it ? [...] Composers know that. If they want sad music, they just play those two
notes1. Neither the C nor the B are sad notes. Yet, played together, they are able to convey
a feeling which appears so real to us.
Marco Corrao Dec. 1st, 2016

Every piece of music takes twelves basic tones and combines them to create new and unique
results. Complementarity and totality are what makes music such an incredible language, able
to transmit natural, unfiltered feelings. On this idea, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that music is
such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on mans innermost nature is so powerful,
and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an
entirely universal language2.

A piece of music is powerful, it is structured, it talks straight to our souls. Can we really
consider it a simple sum of its notes?

1. Zander, B. (2008, June). Benjamin Zander: The transformative power of classical music.
Retrieved from
http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion?utm_source=tedco
mshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread

2. Schopenhauer, A., & Payne, E. F. (1966). The world as will and representation. New
York: Dover Publications.