The Sound of Storytelling

Music is a script all its own and can tell a story in as short a time as three minutes. Perhaps more, or perhaps less.

A dialect of notes aligned that follows a set speed, for the song to make sense, the story to be told.

I listen to a blend of instruments, gathering the notes and the sounds to hear what they are designed to tell me.

Perhaps a violin, the strings that beautifully resonate with me, my ears attuned to its melody. I can feel it come alive, in the depths of my bones and at the tips of my fingers.

Lyrics add another layer, as some music seeks to speak with the languages of both verbal and emotional. Others are sufficient with just the music itself.

Some use their voice, as their only instrument. The emotion it holds, and the raw strength, is enough.

Others are united and dueted, their voice alongside their instrument.

To write music is a gift entirely of itself. Not all are gifted to write notes, nor construct a story with them. To be brave enough to perform a story timelessly and carefully compiled, is a different kind of diligence. A rather daunting dream.

To write and pursue music as such is a bold and daring expression of one's humanity.

A story told in a manner of just a few notes and verses, is a story of miraculous weight.

To reach people on a level not reached otherwise, and to achieve it as quickly as one does with music, is a gift.

Music stirs the soul, and body, as poetry.

''Music is the universal language of mankind.''

-Henry Woodsworth Longfellow

''Where words fail, music speaks.''

-Hans Christian Anderson

''Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of our soul.''

-Plato

''Music begins where the possibilities of language end.''

-Jean Sibelius

''Music expresses that which cannot remain silent and that which cannot be put into words.''

-Victor Hugo

''Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.''

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

''When words leave off, music begins.''

-Heinrich Heine

''Music is the poetry of the air.''

-Jean Paul Richter

''A really good poem is full of music.''

Eric Whitacre

''A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.''

-H. Auden

On Music

When through life unblest we rove,

Losing all that made life dear,

Should some notes we used to love,

In days of boyhood, meet our ear,

Oh! how welcome breathes the strain!

Wakening thoughts that long have slept,

Kindling former smiles again

In faded eyes that long have wept.

Like the gale, that sighs along

Beds of oriental flowers,

Is the grateful breath of song,

That once was heard in happier hours.

Fill'd with balm the gale sighs on,

Though the flowers have sunk in death;

So, when pleasure's dream is gone,

Its memory lives in Music's breath.

Music, oh, how faint, how weak,

Language fades before thy spell!

Why should Feeling ever speak,

When thou canst breathe her soul so well?

Friendship's balmy words may feign,

Love's are even more false than they;

Oh! 'tis only music's strain

Can sweetly soothe, and not betray.

-Thomas Moore