Music as meditation

Evanston RoundTable, April 30, 2024

I would probably be a good candidate for meditation. Partly from temperament and partly from habit, I tend to fill my day with relentless activity, sometimes admittedly in a compulsive and almost mindless fashion, like the proverbial headless chicken, sometimes to the same effect.

That said, I have never been able to wrap my mind (literally or figuratively) around meditation. At my age, sitting perfectly still is uncomfortable, if not impossible, and while I would love to slow down and calm my monkey brain, on the other hand, I enjoy the places it takes me. Sometimes it takes me to ideas for columns, like this one!

In one sense I’m averse to meditation, because it would take time from my day and hamper what I’m trying to achieve in this one and only life, which is to do some good in the world and produce work of some merit.

In the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL, the ubiquitous onboard computer, explains in response to a BBC interviewer who inquires about his role on the ship, “I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all any conscious entity can hope to do.”

Me too!

Making the most of our time here

Notwithstanding that HAL is, if not evil (he manages to kill almost everyone on board), then pretty sick, I’d suggest he has a good point. We’re all given only so much time and talent on the planet: why not put them to the best use possible?

Of course, meditation practitioners would rightly respond that the proper practice of meditation actually enhances daily life and work, by helping to slow down and calm the beleaguered mind.

I’m all for that.

However my preferred approach to meditation is music, specifically playing it. I play the viola, butt of many jokes in the music world (“Why do so many people take an instant dislike to the viola? It saves time.”) but actually a challenging and beautiful-sounding instrument when played “to the fullest possible use,” as HAL might have said (if Dave hadn’t lobotomized him), that is, in the most sensitive and exquisite manner possible, as I’ve written before.

I recently finished reading a book by Karen Armstrong about the Buddha, titled simply, Buddha. Armstrong is a great writer and a wonderful thinker, and I highly recommend this interview about her amazing life and her views on religion, meditation and, well, life in general.

Armstrong writes in Buddha that meditation as practiced by the Buddha (i.e., Siddhartha Gautama: We learn in the book there were many Buddhas before him) is meant to bring on “a state comparable to the effect of music, especially when played by oneself: there is a feeling of grandeur, and calm nobility. It seems as though one is taking possession of one’s own body.”

Playing music

Hmmm. I’m not convinced the esteemed Armstrong has ever played a musical instrument. I emailed a bunch of chamber music friends about this, pointing out that playing music is “not very yogic, because a musician is mentally doing so many things at once (counting, listening and reacting to the other musicians, seeking to master the bowing as well as play the notes in tune) that ‘calm nobility’ is about the last thing achieved!

“Nevertheless I take her point,” I continued. “I was recently playing Haydn and Mozart quartets, two pieces I know well enough so that I could listen carefully and focus on hearing and achieving the grandeur of the music, which brings on, if not yogic calm, at least a sense of the profound wonder and beauty of which we are capable.”

Is that meditative? I note that Armstrong specifies music “as played by oneself.” I think of Heifetz playing the Bach solo Chaconne, one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, performed by one of the world’s greatest musicians. I think of Heifetz saying, “There is no such thing as perfection. For once you attain a certain standard, only then do you realize that it’s not good enough.”

General agreement

I asked my fellow musicians to weigh in on this. Siobhan, a cellist (seen in the photo, taken in March in Door County with friends Pam and Lisa on violin and myself sawing away on viola), replied thoughtfully, “We all know how much better we feel, in some kind of fundamental and indescribable way, after playing music, especially chamber music with friends. My understanding is that music has far-reaching effects on many areas of the brain, which enhances mental experience on multiple fronts, often simultaneously (link here to a nicely concise article, titled “Your Brain on Music”). So yes, it’s probably yogic, but it also induces other states of consciousness.

“I often find myself (especially while playing Haydn quartets) thinking about the notes on the page, sensing the mood and responses of the other players, listening to (and thoroughly enjoying) the quality of the sound, assessing the structure of the music and the composer’s intent. And also thinking about completely unrelated things, like what’s for dinner or a recent encounter or a book I’m reading. My conscious awareness flits between these effortlessly while playing, and with luck, I still get most of the notes on the right beat and in tune.”

True enough, including the mind flitting off to consider other things altogether, while still playing music. The great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who could sight read even the most complex passages flawlessly, once said if he ever got stuck practicing a tricky section, he’d turn on the radio to provide extraneous noise to “squeeze out” the wandering thoughts.

Train wreck ahead!

I have trouble enough staying focused even without distracting noise. I remember many years ago a major mishap during a viola recital I gave with my cousin once removed on piano at my father-in-law’s assisted living facility in Deerfield. These events drew good crowds (what else did they have to do?) and in addition to some 100 residents a good swath of my family was there as well. The problem occurred in the middle of the Kol Nidrei by Max Bruch (transcribed from cello and piano to viola and piano), after the opening somber theme, as the music speeds up with a series of playful but tricky 16th-note passages, when things started to unravel (around 5:54 in this performance).

Suddenly, my cousin and I were lost, wandering in the desert of dissonance and unfamiliarity. (I remember thinking, why hadn’t we practiced this section more?) Sometimes it’s possible to fake your way through a “train wreck” like this – after all, how many people really know the music that well – but after five or 10 measures of aimless confusion, I figured it must’ve been obvious to everyone that something was amiss: I couldn’t fake it this time.

So I stopped, mumbled something to the audience, turned to my cousin and said, “Let’s start again at …” and turned back to my part to find a measure number or letter where we could regroup. But there were none, just lines and lines of notes. So in desperation I said, “Let’s start again where we left off,” which of course was lost! We meandered at cross-purposes for a dozen or more measures (at least half a minute) until, somehow, miraculously, we locked in near the end.

After it was over I took to the mic and said, “Oh well, so much for the best-laid plans of mice and men,” before introducing the next piece.

Funny thing was, when we were finally done, a lot of people stopped by to ask me, “What did you mean by that remark?” They didn’t know!

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was unfocused!

‘Carried along’

Peg, another violist, replied, “I have occasionally had an experience when playing music in an orchestra or singing in a choir of absolutely being in the right place at the right time, where everything ‘is coming together’ and I am carried along by the music,” she wrote. “It can be quite exhilarating. I’ve had the experience of moving into the music that is coming up even, when I may not know the notes.”

“I am reminded of the book Flow, which you’ve probably seen or read. Actually I have a small file on this topic … [f]or example, Scientific American (2009): “Why Music Moves Us” and Science News (2010) “Music of the Hemispheres.”

A cellist friend, Deborah, replied, “Sadly, I am a far cry from anything that resembles ‘yogic’. My mental energy is focused on counting and trying not to screw up too much. If I can listen to the other players at all, I consider the undertaking a success. But we are all at a different place on this journey of playing music.”

True. But Misa, a violinist, felt there was something to Armstrong’s point. “I find that I often get that feeling of ‘grandeur, expansiveness and calm nobility’ while playing music, if I’m not having a lot of distracting thoughts, whether it’s about what happened at work that week or what I’m going to have for lunch, or how well or not well I’m playing. Sometimes I get the feeling of being one with the music and the universe (like I’ve tapped into the secret of the universe) – and no, I didn’t smoke anything beforehand .”

Wow: being one with the universe! I’m mostly in tune with that sentiment. When things are going well as I play, I find everything else slips away in quite a meditative fashion – all nonmusical thoughts – and the sense of beauty and joy that takes over is quite profound.

Certainly worth learning to play a musical instrument, which one can do at any age.