Music in the blood

Music in the Blood

In this, the wildest part of our back yard, I was least likely to be seen. It was the limit of the territory I was allowed to roam after dark. This night the moon was full, lighting a path which ended at the back fence, exactly where a dancing body would end up if it rode a moonbeam from the back door. Mostly I was a lump, but that night Rachmaninov wove me into gossamer.

Don’t ask me how his second piano concerto came to be resounding through our house on a starlit summer evening. A lucky night on radio, I suppose; we didn’t own a record player. I didn’t know much about classical music; although I was learning the piano I hadn’t progressed beyond Moonlight Sonata and Fur Elise, beginners’ versions.

Classical music was the Opera Dad listened to every Sunday at 4 pm. We all had to hush (or leave the house, a preferable option). It didn’t turn me on. Forced to choose between the brands of my generation – “Are you a Jazzer or a Rocker?” I’d taken on the ‘Jazzer’ label. Although I preferred rock music to jazz, I liked jazzers’ clothes more

In other words, music was skin deep with me.

Till I heard Rachmaninov.

That summer night when I was 12 or 13, I discovered my sixth sense. I don’t mean intuition or telepathy. This is visceral. I haven’t pinpointed it but there is a membrane somewhere between the skin and bone marrow which vibrates when the right notes are struck. Everyone has it, but some people never find out because they refuse to recognise it.

I was lucky to learn of its existence at a young age although I’ve kept this potent incident to myself until now. It’s not easy to describe music and one’s response to it in words. It’s an overwhelming invasion of the body. The thinking brain turns off, a welcome relief from its monotonous critique. New paths of synapses and neurons spark and set off electronic charges in bone and muscle. The body can’t keep still as sinews stretch and limbs glide.

The concerto awakened me to a different kind of body. At the end of the first movement the swell of violins awakens a corresponding wave around the heart; the passionate piano pounds in the belly. And so transported by the combination of notes he has put together is Rachmaninov that he devotes the second and part of the third movements to developing and expanding those resonant and evocative musical phrases.

I lay on the lawn under the walnut tree after the music had finished. There is nowhere to go but here. Every listening since, live and recorded, has allowed me to re-experience that early bliss.

Composing this concerto marked the end of a period of despair and depression for Rachmaninov. This gives the music a powerful magic, a glimpse into the very deep, of oneself and the universe to which, for the length of a concerto, we are deeply connected.