Music And Soul

Bruno Maderna, Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra No.2 (1967) I paid the closest attention to the oboe in the concerto which concluded Saturday afternoon's concert. The soloist was tense as he waited for his solo passages, but once he began playing those impossibly long notes, he relaxed into his mastery, and the loosed tension entered me, making me momentarily one of the players. All that was surface: the oboe's sadness was a costume, a disguise I assumed to become one with the music. Time passed, music blossomed into a passage of utmost beauty. these oboe sounds circled around me, entered me through an open wound I only dimly recalled receiving, and lodged themselves in my soul, as if native to that place within. They adopted the deep red color of my soul, as their tendrils pierced the nearby tissue. And so it is: my soul enhanced by music is more than human substance, it partakes of a beauty reflecting the Eternal. It has happened as I willed it... And those sad long notes summon dreams which take the form my soul desires.