The Haunting Beauty of Music

What we know is knowledge, what we do not know is probably ignorance. Our knowledge helps us in understanding the life and world around us however what we do not know, affects our lives in a subtle and sometimes profound way.

The universe gives us immense opportunity to revel at our ignorance, the precision with which day and night occur every day, trees are green but flowers are colorful, all of us have same eyes, nose, ears, lips, cheeks and chin yet  none of us are alike, we speak and everyone understands, one sings and others get ecstatic. There are many such instances that we may choose to ignore or contemplate them with wonder and as we wonder, our minds widen with intensity and hearts warm with feelings. Music is an outpouring of intensity and feelings and when it is inspired by a painful realization of haunting beauty and tireless striving for its understanding and consummation, it becomes a supreme offering at the feet of the infinite. This state is often experienced by mystics and saints. It is also experienced by poets, artists and lovers.

Amir Khusrow, the sufi mystic, poet, scholar and musician is one personality in whom the feeling of wonder and later ecstasy transformed itself into timeless creations in the field of art, music, literature and poetry. He gave us the delightful musical instruments of tabla, which he split from the old pakhawaj, and sitar. He created what we today know as Qawwali and introduced khayal and tarana in hindustani classical music. One of his popular poems depicts beautifully the paradox of love:

Khusro! the river of love has a reverse flow
He who floats up will drown, and he who drowns will get across.

Interestingly there is a parallel in Greek mythology of Orpheus, who is a dim but interesting figure. He was called, “the father of songs” and he perfected the musical instrument lyre. It is said that with his music and singing he could make birds and beasts dance and divert the course of rivers. He sang such dolorous songs and played such mournful music at the death of his wife, Eurydice that Gods relented and gave him his wife back. He lost her again as he looked back at her before both could be in the upper world as per the condition of the Gods. He then became objet du desire for all girls and when he spurned them, they hit him with sticks and stones though even the stones refused to go near him as his music were so beautiful. He was later torn to pieces by love-struck women. One of the most enduring images of Orpheus is that of a thracian girl carrying his head on his lyre. He and his followers believed that Man is partly of earth and partly of heaven and with pure life, the heavenly part increases.

Awe, beauty, sublimity are the feelings, when inspired in the hearts of men, give birth to timeless creations and produce geniuses that influence even distant posterity. Such a genius lives in the full light of their haunting beauty. What others faintly seek, he knows, with a knowledge beside which all other knowledge is ignorance. It is not a mere coincidence that their expression often takes the form of music.