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