in his novel Every morning in the world, the writer Pascal Quignard said that “music is simply here to speak of what the word cannot speak. In this sense, she is not entirely human.”
Guitarist Jeff Beck has died. His elegant way of playing the guitar spoke where words cannot express emotions.
Perhaps many of you do not know it. He was one of those guitarists for guitarists. Away from the laurels of his massive success, his music, his way of stroking the guitar strings, didn’t seem quite human.
Jeff Beck put his creative independence before commercial pressures to be able to experiment with diverse styles, from the funkjazz, techno or reggae until the opera Turandot by Puccini. The universal language that is music is clearly appreciated in the subtlety of an unmistakable and inimitable style.
A story about music
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, “life without music is simply a mistake”. Music is the expression of full communication, it helps to link human beings around bonds of reciprocity and empathy. As the French philosopher and musicologist Vladimir Jankélevitch would say, it humanizes and civilizes: it is capable of expressing what cannot be transmitted in any other way. It is meeting with others and with oneself. Sometimes I wonder if learning to listen to music would not also be learning how to love.
Perhaps a story will illustrate this humanizing spell of music. While listening to a Jeff Beck record I remember his concert on June 24, 2018 in Ostia, near Rome.
A few hours before the concert I was visiting the ruins. As I was admiring the Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva I saw Jeff Beck sitting peacefully doing the same. During those twenty minutes words were left over. The rumor of centuries of History framed us.
And it was time for the concert. Due to a strong illness, Jeff Beck took the stage of the Teatro Antico almost two hours later than expected accompanied by his Fender Stratocaster guitar. And, despite everything, his stoicism made it possible that night, in that city illuminated by the immensity of the full moon, the public was part of the magical spell that is music.
To say it like Émile Cioran, music simply elevates the human being without trying to persuade anything.
music against loneliness
Perhaps the music of Jeff Beck is not as familiar or impressive to you. There are no disputes about tastes. But what is sure is that you know what I mean when I talk about the spell of music. This is the humanizing force evoked by the philosopher Alicja Gescinska in music as homewhich may not make us better people, but it helps to reduce loneliness and feel closer to others: that “fabulous instrument to combat the sources of evil, hatred, resentment, emotional discomfort and uprooting.”
Indeed, life, at least for me, would be a mistake without Jeff Beck, without those people who break the invisible barriers that separate us from each other. Precisely, one of his last songs was a splendid version of Isolation (Isolation) by John Lennon. Music is a refuge against lack of communication and misunderstanding, a remedy for life’s troubles.
A temple in the ear
Today is a sad day for me. It is paradoxical, because someone with whom I never crossed a single word has left and, when I had the opportunity, I let silence fill the gaps. But it had to be so. In that silence there was only music, his music.
Remembering the song with which he used to end his concerts, A Day in the Life of the Beatles, I will return to those twenty minutes in the ruins. Without words, only music as a form of expression without duplicity. That is his magical spell that now brings to my memory the verses of Rainer Maria Rilke:
“Oh sing, Orpheus! Tall tree in the ear!
And everything was silent. But even in this silence
a new beginning was born, sign and transformation.
[…] You created a temple in their ears.”
Antonio Fernández Vicente, Professor of Communication Theory, Castilla-La Mancha university
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
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