The Power of Music to Unite Us

Summary

The website content reflects on the unifying power of music, particularly live performances, and its absence during the pandemic, emphasizing the need for shared musical experiences to foster unity and emotional connection.

Abstract

The article titled "The Power of Music to Unite Us" delves into the author's personal experience as an orchestra conductor during the pandemic and the profound impact of the lack of live audiences. It highlights the emotional void left by the absence of shared musical experiences, which historically have been a cornerstone for unity and emotional expression in society. The author describes the poignancy of performing without an audience and underscores the potential of music to heal and bring hope during times of division and isolation. The piece calls for the creation of spaces where communities can reunite through music, anticipating the transformative power of live musical experiences once the world overcomes the current challenges.

Opinions

The author believes that the collective experience of live music is irreplaceable and deeply missed during the pandemic.
Music's role in human connection and emotional sharing is seen as crucial for national unity and cultural identity.
The absence of an audience during performances creates a profound silence and a sense of incompleteness.
The author suggests that music could guide us towards unity and communication in a time of political and social division.
There is an anticipation that the return of live music will have a powerful effect on audiences, rekindling a sense of community and shared experience.
The article conveys gratitude for music's ability to connect, explore,

Experiencing live music together would help the world right now

Danny Howe via Unsplash

If you’re like me right now, you’re feeling alone and cut off from what was once a freely spontaneous and social life where we connected daily with people who empowered us and brightened our days. But the pandemic has cut us off from each other and with the US election right now on top of it, all I can think about is —

What will bring us together again?

I’m a orchestra conductor and I miss being on stage regularly sharing music with an orchestra and especially an audience.

Just this past week I recorded an online concert with the Victoria Symphony in Canada. It was a beautiful concert of incredibly moving music — Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Barber’s Adagio was part of it. Performing such expressive music with the Victoria Symphony was inspiring, especially at this time when making music together is rare, challenging to organize, and with great potential to be cancelled at any moment.

But the impact of having no audience was a deeper silence than I expected. It reminded me about how much we all interact with each other and experience emotion together in a live concert.

We rehearsed to an empty hall which felt competely normal. But at the “recorded” concert, the only presence was endless wires, cameras and in the hall — emptiness. The energy that wanted to share itself had no one to share with. We shared the music with each other, deeply, because we missed it and each other so much. We shared it with our imagined future online audience too. But the experience of being together in a room, sharing music in that very moment with an audience — was missing.

It’s too bad that music isn’t able to unite us or console us right now. If there was ever a time for all of us to be together in a room experiencing the collective emotion that music brings us — it should be now. Perhaps we would all feel a bit differently.

Music has always been there to unite us. From humanity’s beginning, music has been used to welcome, celebrate, and mourn. Music has played its hand in history and has culturally impacted our sense of national unity, has spurred us on during time of revolution or war, has created identity and brought understanding to the spirit of many differing historical moods and eras. It has helped us to understand ourselves.

The greatest thing that we are missing right now, during this pandemic, during this era of world politics and human contact, is closeness with other people and the experience of being unified as people.

In a concert hall, music speaks to us personally, but it connects each of us to each other. When the music rises, we all rise together, when the music explores, we explore with it, when it descends into silence, we all hush. All 2000 or 20,000 of us. Now that we have suffered being apart and divided, can you imagine what the feeling would be to be sitting inside a concert right now?

In this exact moment of frustration and despair, we should let the music show us the way of unity and communication and let it give us hope. Music has a way of sharing what is most important without using any words. We can learn from it right now. It can help to heal us.

I’m thankful for music’s connecting force. I’m thankful for the journey that it takes us on — the surprises it gives us, the exploration, the growth, the possibility.

The world is a concert hall that is missing its audience. Perhaps we can create, in each of our countries, the space where we come together and unite. Maybe music will help us find that voice that we have lost.

And I hope that when music returns, we will all experience firsthand the power that it has to move and shape us — that we will experience it in its live form, in person and together with others in our community — and together, in the concert hall, we will all be connected together again.