Music and emotion through time Michael Tilson Thomas

well when I was asked to do this TED

talk I really chuckled because you see

my father’s name was Ted and much of my

life especially my musical life is

really a talk that I’m still having with

him were at the part of me that he

continues to be now Ted was a New Yorker

and all-around theatre guy and he was a

self-taught illustrator and musician he

didn’t read a note and he was profoundly

hearing-impaired yet he was my greatest

teacher because even through the squeaks

of his hearing aids his understanding of

music was profound and for him it wasn’t

so much the way the music goes as about

what it witnesses and where it can take

you and he did a painting of this

experience which he called in the realm

of music now Ted entered this realm

every day by improvising you know sort

of Tin Pan Alley style like this

but he was tough when it came to music

he said there are only two things that

matter in music what and how and the

thing about classical music that what

and how it’s inexhaustible that was his

passion for the music both my parents

really loved it they didn’t know all

that much about it but they gave me the

opportunity to discover it together with

them and I think inspired by that memory

it’s been my desire to try and bring it

to as many other people as I can to sort

of pass it on through whatever it means

and how people get this music how it

comes into their lives really fascinates

me one day in New York I was on the

street and I saw some kids playing

baseball between Stoops and cars and

fire hydrants and a tough slouchy kid

got up to bat and he took a swing and

really connected and he watched the ball

fly for a second and then he went and he

ran around the bases and I thought go

figure how did this piece of 18th

century Austrian aristocratic

entertainment turn in to the victory

crow of this New York kid how was that

passed on how did he get to hear Mozart

well when it comes to classical music

there’s an awful lot to pass on much

more than Mozart Beethoven or

Tchaikovsky because classical music is

an unbroken living tradition that goes

back over a thousand years and every one

of those years has had something unique

and powerful to say to us about what

it’s like to be alive and the raw

material of it of course is just the

music of everyday life it’s all the

anthems and dance crazes and ballads and

marches but what classical music does is

to distill all of these musics down to

condense them to their absolute essence

and from that essence create an

new language a language that speaks very

lovingly and unflinchingly about who we

really are it’s a language that’s still

evolving now over the centuries it grew

into the big pieces we always think of

like concertos and symphonies but even

the most ambitious masterpiece can have

as its central mission to bring you back

to a fragile and personal moment like

this one from the Beethoven Violin

Concerto

it’s so simple so evocative so many

emotions seem to be inside of it yeah

of course like all music it’s

essentially not about anything it’s just

a design of pitches in silence and time

and two pitches the notes as you know

are just vibrations their locations in

the spectrum of sound or whether we call

them 440 per second a or

3729 b-flat trust me that’s right all

right there just phenomenon but the way

we react to different combinations of

these phenomena is complex and emotional

and not totally understood and the way

we react to them has changed radically

over the centuries as have our

preferences for them so for example in

the 11th century people liked pieces

that ended like this

and in the 17th century it was more like

this

and in the 21st century

now your 21st century ears are quite

happy with this last chord even though a

while back that would have puzzled or

annoyed you or sent some of you running

from the room and the reason you like it

is because you’ve inherited whether you

knew it or not centuries worth of

changes in musical theory practice and

fashion and in classical music we can

follow these changes very very

accurately because of the music’s

powerful silent partner the way it’s

been passed on notation now the impulse

to notate or more exactly I should say

encode music has been with us for a very

long time in 200 BC a man named Siculus

wrote this song for his departed wife

and inscribed it on her gravestone in a

notational system of the Greeks

at a thousand years later this impulse

to notate took an entirely different

form and you can see how this happened

in these excerpts from the Christmas

Mass who we’re not assessed no bees for

us is born in the 10th century little

squiggles were used just to indicate the

general shape of the tune and in the

12th century a line was drawn like a

musical horizon line to better pinpoint

the pitches location and then in the

13th century more lines and new shapes

of notes locked in the concept of the

tune exactly and that led to the kind of

notation we have today

well notation not only passed the music

on notating and encoding the music

changed its priorities entirely because

it enabled the musicians to imagine

music out of much vaster scale now

inspired moves of improvisation could be

recorded saved considered prioritized

made into intricate designs and from

this moment

classical music became what it most

essentially is a dialogue between the

two powerful size of our nature instinct

and intelligence and there began to be a

real difference at this point between

the art of improvisation and the art of

composition now improviser senses and

plays the next cool move but a composer

is considering all possible moves

testing them out prioritizing them out

until he sees how they can form a a

powerful and coherent design of ultimate

and enduring coolness now some of the

greatest composers like ba were

combinations of these two things Bach

was like a great improviser with the

mind of a chess master Mozart was the

same way but every musician strikes a

different balance between faith and

reason instincts and intelligence and

every musical era had different

priorities of these things different

things to pass on different what’s and

how’s so in the first eight centuries or

so of this tradition the big what was to

praise God and by the 1400s music was

being written that tried to mirror God’s

mind as could be seen in the design of

the night sky the howl was a style

called polyphony music of many

independently moving voices that

suggested the way the planet seemed to

move in ptolemies geocentric universe

this was truly the music of the spheres

this is the kind of music that Leonardo

da Vinci would have known and perhaps

it’s tremendous intellectual perfection

and serenity meant that something new

had to happen a radical new move which

in 1600 is what did happen

this of course was the birth of opera

and its development put music on a

radical new course the what now was not

to mirror the mind of God but to follow

the emotional turbulence of man and the

how was harmony stacking up the pitches

to form chords and the chords it turned

out were capable of representing an

incredible varieties of emotions and the

basic chords were the ones we still have

with us the Triads either the major one

which we think is happy or the minor one

which we perceive as sad but what’s the

actual difference between these two

chords it’s just these two notes in the

middle right

it’s either a natural at 659 vibrations

per second or E flat at 622 so the big

difference between human happiness and

sadness 37 freakin vibrations so you can

see in a system like this there was

enormous subtle potential of

representing human emotions and in fact

as man began to understand more his

complex and ambivalent nature harmony

grew more complex to reflect it turned

out he was capable of expressing

emotions beyond the ability of words now

with all this possibility music

classical music really took off it’s the

time in which the big forms began to

arise and the effects of technology

began to be felt also because printing

put music the scores the code books of

music into the hands of performers

everywhere and new and improved

instruments made the age of the virtuoso

possible this is when those big forms

arose the symphonies the sonatas the

concertos and these big architectures of

time composers like Beethoven could

share the insights of a lifetime a piece

like Beethoven’s fifth

basically witnessing how it was possible

for him to go from sorrow and anger

over the course of a half an hour step

by exacting step of his route to the

moment when he could make it across to

joy

and it turned out the symphony could be

used for more complex issues like

dripping ones of culture and such as

nationalism or quest for freedom or the

frontiers of sensuality but whatever

direction the music took one thing until

recently was always the same and that

was when the musicians stop playing the

music stopped now this moment so

fascinates me I find it such a profound

one what happens when the music stops

where does it go what’s left what sticks

with people in the audience at the end

of a performance is it a melody or a

rhythm or a mood or an attitude and how

might that changed their lives to me

this is the intimate personal side of

music it’s the passing on part it’s the

why part of it and to me that’s the most

essential of all mostly it’s been a

person-to-person thing a teacher-student

performer audience thing and then around

1880 came this new technology that first

mechanically then through analogs then

digitally created a new miraculous way

of passing things on albeit an

impersonal one people could now hear

music all the time even though it wasn’t

necessary for them to play an instrument

read music or even go to concerts and

technology democratized music by making

everything available it’s spearheaded a

cultural revolution in which artists

like Caruso and Bessie Smith were on the

same footing and technology pushed

composers to tremendous extremes using

computers and synthesizers to create

works of intellectually impenetrable

complexity beyond the means of

performers and audiences at the same

time technology by taking over the role

that notation had always played shifted

the balance within music between

instinct and intelligence way over to

the instinctive side the culture in

which we live now is awash with music of

improvisation that’s been sliced diced

layered and godknows distributed and

sold what’s the long-term effect of this

on us or our music nobody knows the

question remains what happens when the

music stops what sticks with people now

that we have unlimited access to music

what does stick with us well let me show

you a story of what I mean by really

sticking with us I was visiting a cousin

of mine in an old-age home and I spied a

very shaky old man making his way across

the room on a walker he came over to a

piano that was there and he bounced

himself and began playing something like

this and he said something like me a boy

symphony they Beethoven and I suddenly

got it my said friend by any chance are

you trying to play this

and he said yes yes I was a little boy

but at the simply Isaac Stern that the

concerto I heard it

and I thought like God how much must

this music mean to this man that he

would get himself out of his bed across

the room to recover the memory of this

music that after everything else in his

life is sloughing away still means so

much to him well that’s why I take every

performance so seriously why it matters

to me so much I never know who might be

there who might be absorbing it and what

will happen to it in their life but now

I’m excited that there’s more chance

than ever before possible of sharing

this music that’s what drives my

interest in projects like the TV series

keeping score with the San Francisco

Symphony that looks at the backstories

of music and working with the young

musicians at the New World Symphony on

projects that explore the potential of

the new performing arts centers for both

entertainment and education and of

course the New World Symphony led to the

YouTube Symphony and projects on the

internet that reach out to musicians and

audiences all over the world and the

exciting thing is all this is just a

prototype there’s a role here for so

many people teachers parents performers

to be explorers together sure the big

events attract a lot of attention but

what really matters is what goes on

every single day we need your

perspectives your curiosity your voices

that it excites me now to meet people

who are hikers chefs code writers taxi

drivers people I never would have

guessed who loved the music and we’re

passing it on you don’t need to worry

about knowing anything if you’re curious

if you have a capacity for wonder if

you’re alive you know all that you need

to know you can start anywhere ramble a

bit follow traces get lost be surprised

amused inspired all that what all that

how is out there waiting for you to

discover its why to dive in and pass it

on thank you