Music

As I was listening to a choral piece by Eric Whitacre today at work, I was reminded of the power of music. Music has an indescribable influence on our thoughts and emotions. I have always loved music - particularly music with intricate rythms and complex harmonies. I unfortunately don't have the musicality of my sisters or the near-perfect pitch of my oldest son but I still like to sing. My classes at the gym can attest to that and are probably grateful when the vocal range of a song is too high for me because I stop singing. The piece I was listening to is called Sleep. It is a slow, classical piece that he wrote in 2000. The harmonies are beautiful and the song has a very ethereal feel to it. If art is about eliciting emotion than music is the highest form of art. What turned me on to this song was a TED talk given Eric Whitacre in which a described a social experiment that he did. He posted a video of him directing the music to each of the 8 parts. He than asked people to submit videos of themselves singing the parts. Once that was done, the audio of each video was spliced together. The resulting performance is particularly stunning in light of the fact that each performer was a stranger to the others. There were over 2000 voices from 53 countries. The music is beautiful and very peaceful. I haven't tried yet but I am sure you could find the performance I described on YouTube.