Ruminating about Resonance

I've been thinking a lot this evening about resonance. Resonance can have many meanings in terms of music; a note can have a certain resonance or amount of vibration, or a piece can have a resonance with a person, among other meanings. When a piece has resonance with me, I feel like it speaks to me, as though it is accessing some subconscious part of me that has been built up through the years to prefer some styles of music over others, to prefer instruments over others, and to prefer certain performance practices over others.

What I've been thinking about is how this same concept that we experience in terms of our musical preference applies to our relationships with other people. As we grow and learn about ourselves over the years, we have built up a set of notions and ideas that comprise not only our self awareness, but also our comfortability with new thoughts and ideas. In the same way that Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or a Schoenberg string quartet can prove to be an uncomfortable experience in someone who has only been exposed to tonal music, our various exposures personally provide a system of comfort, love, and friendship that provides a basis for our interactions with new people. Thus, for some, a person may provide a deep resonance with what is present and absent in their life, and for others the person may seem completely void of interest.

I think, however, that the concept of resonance goes deeper than this, however, because often the piece of music that is most resonant is not the one that conforms to the rules that one is used to, but rather the one that expands the boundaries of one's imagination in a new direction. This way in which a piece can provide resonance through expanding one's imagination of music, I believe, runs parallel to the way that a person can, by expanding one's experience and imagination of life, provide a deeply resonant presence in another's life.



Anyhow, my name is Ethan, and I am a student in Portland, OR. I plan to use this blog to explore classical and popular music, perception, and whatever I happen to be thinking about as I sit down to write the blog. I hope you find it interesting!




What I've been listening to today:

Frederic Chopin's 4th and 5th Nocturnes
Maurice Ravel's Miroirs
Johann Sebastian Bach's Wohltempierte Klavier Book 2
Sufjan Stevens' All Delighted People EP