Circular road back
January 7th, 2023
It started with monophonic nursery rhymes and naive and boring church songs. After a while I realized that there is much more to music — I started to recognize individual instruments and the delicate skill to make them sound well in unison and the need for them to complement each other. Slowly I started to notice the words and phrases and the stories and the message in the lyrics. Then came the power and loudness and distortion and energy which was just what a rebellious teenager like me wanted. Soon after I discovered the anger and simplicity or rawness of the sound without a need for melody.
And then came finding of the beauty, the unearthly beauty of harmonies in music.
There was no going back for me. I dived right into exploring all the different styles from different decades from all different countries. Musical harmonies were creating the colorful tapestry of music from all the separate woven vocalized threads. Each one separate and unique and beautiful in its way, but together they were blending into synchronized unity of ethereal enchantment. I needed it from the aesthetic point of view to give my soul and my mind charming goodness and happiness. And that is still how I enjoy the music I listen to. Judging and evaluating it is a different matter, of course.
And then I discovered the beauty, the unearthly beauty of monophony in music.
It was a shocking discovery for me that I like and enjoy and got into religious chants from late antiquity and the middle ages. It started as some inoffensive and grown-up music to be in the background while I read my books. Something to drown out the noises from the outside and yet simple enough not to encroach on my consciousness when I was reading. It didn't work out like that at all. Every once in a while I had to stop reading and just listen and enjoy. Every once in a while I had to get up and check what is his song, this chant and make a note to search for more like it. Soon I had several long playlists and serious knowledge of the style of music I never expected to like or even tolerate.
I think my road of discovery of different styles and types of music went back to the point where it started — to the austerity of monophony. I wonder where this road will take me now — the good thing about circular roads is that once you get back to the starting point, a whole new circuit of wonders of discovery awaits you.
