The way music moves us,
(And from where those fiery winds?)
Meaning hidden, meaning most.
A call of lover, mother, home,
A lost path, a landscape,
Dreamed, so familiar, nameless.
The way it moves.
(And what is it?)
A picture of worlds made in mind,
Mind made real, mind talking.
A giving out, a giving of form.
Sounding depths, shallows rippled.
A language of moments
Escaped from time.
Shaped nothing,
Coming, going, resounding,
And music is how we make,
How we shape, our souls.
For all that lives, sings,
(Does it not?).
We find what we may be
By holding, turning, curving air.
Moving, it moves us,
Moving, it moulds us.
Sound exists only
When it is going out
Of existence.
Music moves us
By the accumulated memory
Of notes no longer heard.
(Chords are the thunder
Of one instant.
A tune: a patter of drops,
A blackbird, after storm has passed.)
Wrapped up in it
We find our skin and nerves.
Tingled, a breeze, a whisper.
Edges, but edges that cannot be measured.
Scales, large, small, up, down,
In meets out and melts.
Note, notation, sound
And space timed.
Thought free from subject
And object.
Thought, wordless,
Exultant.
Ripples in the ether,
String theory,
Sound in a jar.
Movements,
First to last.
Scriabin on a mountain
Scribbling Siva.
Drawing colours
From the tenuous darkness.
Chladni smiles.
Shri shri shri.
(Sings itself).
—-
This is in response to a comment, whose whereabouts i just can’t find at the moment, but the first line here is what it was. Apologies and thanks for the inspiration, whomsoever it was….
simonhlilly 
Your words are beautiful and quite thought provoking. Love the artwork too. 😉
Taa!
Thanks, cynthia!
Music and Emotions
The most difficult problem in answering the question of how music creates emotions is likely to be the fact that assignments of musical elements and emotions can never be defined clearly. The solution of this problem is the Theory of Musical Equilibration. It says that music can’t convey any emotion at all, but merely volitional processes, the music listener identifies with. Then in the process of identifying the volitional processes are colored with emotions. The same happens when we watch an exciting film and identify with the volitional processes of our favorite figures. Here, too, just the process of identification generates emotions.
An example: If you perceive a major chord, you normally identify with the will “Yes, I want to…”. If you perceive a minor chord, you identify normally with the will “I don’t want any more…”. If you play the minor chord softly, you connect the will “I don’t want any more…” with a feeling of sadness. If you play the minor chord loudly, you connect the same will with a feeling of rage. You distinguish in the same way as you would distinguish, if someone would say the words “I don’t want anymore…” the first time softly and the second time loudly.
Because this detour of emotions via volitional processes was not detected, also all music psychological and neurological experiments, to answer the question of the origin of the emotions in the music, failed.
But how music can convey volitional processes? These volitional processes have something to do with the phenomena which early music theorists called “lead”, “leading tone” or “striving effects”. If we reverse this musical phenomena in imagination into its opposite (not the sound wants to change – but the listener identifies with a will not to change the sound) we have found the contents of will, the music listener identifies with. In practice, everything becomes a bit more complicated, so that even more sophisticated volitional processes can be represented musically.
Further information is available via the free download of the e-book “Music and Emotion – Research on the Theory of Musical Equilibration:
http://www.willimekmusic.de/music-and-emotions.pdf
or on the online journal EUNOMIOS:
http://www.eunomios.org
Enjoy reading
Bernd Willimek