Literary Essay on Music
Music, the highest form of art
Of the seven “fine arts” that the muses were kind enough to bestow on humanity, music occupies a prominent place in my heart. The reasons for this may seem extravagant to the reader, since I can hardly make a guitar cry or force the miserable wailing of a flute. But they are what they are, and these reasons have to do, above all, with the notion of rhythm.
The word rhythm comes from the Greek rhythmswhich can be translated as “symmetry” or as “cadence”, and is present in almost all the words with which we refer to the cyclical, that is, to the recurrent: the biorhythm (the cycle of life), arrhythmia (the lack of rhythm, for example, in the heartbeat), and so on.
Rhythm is an idea that we naturally associate with life, because it entails a sense of order in its own way: life is nothing more than a point of equilibrium in which the matter of our bodies is sustained for a while, before the inappropriate notes get into your melody and end up sending it headlong into chaos, that is, disorder.
The astute reader will already have guessed where my paths lead: music, of all the arts, is the one that best represents life. It does it better than painting, despite the fact that it offers our eyes the beauty of the landscapes of the world, or perhaps the face of the beloved. It does it better than literature, despite the fact that the word is the instrument that contains the universe within itself, the tool with which everything can be transmitted. It does it even better than sculpture, even though a perfect statue may well be mistaken for a living thing. Music, that majestic form of abstraction, whose notes do not aspire to imitate the song of the bird but to evoke its flight in our minds, is the purest of artistic languages.
Long before the word and the first paintings, music was present. Scholars of the human being think that it would have been one of the first forms of shared culture, an essential part of pre-religious rites, possibly for healing, celebration or combat.
The music was there in the heartbeat of the first human mother, singing under her skin against the ear of her clutched infant, and It is of all the arts the only one that brings us closer to the worldto the animals, instead of distancing ourselves: the musician plays his instrument as well as the bird sings, while the painter and the writer distance themselves to look better and translate into their respective languages.
Also, as I was saying, music contains in itself the flow of life, the movements that characterize it. The circularity of its melodies, which repeat themselves from the beginning to their unexpected end, trace the exact path of our lives. The expressiveness of its sounds, full of color without being able to see it and strength without being able to touch it, invites us to action, to contemplation, to thought. Whether in the background or in the foreground, at a concert or on the phone, music connects us with the essential of existence: time.
Does the reader friend know why when they make you wait for the phone they play some piece of unbearable joy online? To fill the void, without a doubt, because waiting is an invitation to death. And does he also know why some things can be done better with the right music? Because it connects us with who we are, with what we do, with an infinite, immediate and fast present time, as if letting ourselves be carried away by its sounds, we could eternalize the moment, feel it more fully, be more here and now than in complete silence, on the lookout for thoughts that flutter like vultures.
Metaphors aside, the rhythm present in music arouses such a connection with our bodies that it truly constitutes a universal language of human beings. A melody does not require translators nor does it give rise to misunderstandings or ambiguities because, deep down, it connects with our own eternal rhythms: the drum of the heart, the guitar of the ear, the different wind instruments of the voice. We are music, inside and out, even those to whom Euterpe, the Greek muse of music, denied her slightest talents from an early age.
Here, dear reader, is the explanation of why I consider music as the maximum artistic language, incapable of being translated into any other; as the zenith of the human experience, which leads us to connect with what we are: time that elapses in a swing. Air in, air out. The heart gallops quietly.
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What is an essay?
The essay is a literary genre, whose text is characterized by being written in prose and by freely addressing a specific topic, making use of the author’s arguments and appreciations, as well as the literary and poetic resources that allow embellishing the work and enhancing its aesthetic features. It is considered a genre born in the European Renaissance, the fruit, above all, of the pen of the French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), and which over the centuries has become the most suitable format for expressing ideas. in a structured, didactic and formal way.
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