I was a little surprised when I read in Walden that Thoreau, alone in the woods, recommended that people not listened to music. He says something like it is too hypnotic and can easily become an addiction. I don't listen a great deal but music offers such pleasures that it seems equivalent to good food and good friends as a source of happiness. Yesterday, while driving for about 6 hours in the car, we spent some of the time listening to music. We have loaded nearly all of the CD's we own into our classic iPods and so we have a portable library of music everywhere we go.
I find tunes coming to mind unbidden, exactly as Thoreau predicted, but I have not found any bad side effects from them. I find three sources of music especially empowering: Mozart, Iz and hymns. We have a good bit of Mozart, both instrumental and operatic. My cell phone ring tone is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. We enjoy his operas The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro. If the two of us have a "song", it is probably Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K 581. Also, the music adapted from Mozart by Markoe we have listened do while doing yoga and it is very soothing.
"Iz" is the nickname of the Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. We carry a couple of his albums on our iPods but "E Ala E" is the collection that I return to repeatedly. The mist-covered fields of northern Wisconsin are not the meadows of Hawaii but his voice and the notes and rhthyms are just as mellow and majestic here.
Whether at home, the moving car or in church, the great old hymns such as "It is well with my soul" (verses of which might be acceptable in nearly any spiritual tradition) and "How great thou art", which we sang at our daughter's funeral service, restore our balance, our energy and our optimism. We happened to also listen to "Chiquita" by Abba. I have always liked the pounding piano in that arrangement. It reminds me of a few experiences in European beer halls where it seems to me the level of music sensitivity is fairly low at times, but the communal joy and energy created by belting out clear simple tunes and rhthyms are as nourishing and uplifting as food, drink and smiles.
