Music's Power: Emotion, Stage, and Ancient Beliefs

Sometimes, when I’m weeding the lavender—and believe me, this year's planting has been particularly vigorous—I think about how deeply woven music is into the fabric of human experience. It isn’t merely background noise or pleasant entertainment; it's a power. A force, really. And if you look back at how playwrights like Shakespeare and his contemporaries used music in their plays, what you see is not just artistic flourish but an understanding of that power—and sometimes, a deliberate wielding of it.

I’ve always been fascinated by the ways we try to categorize and explain emotions. Thirty-four years spent teaching adolescents certainly offers ample opportunity for observation! And it strikes me now, in this quiet retirement, how much of what we consider 'understanding' is really just labeling. Recognizing a tightening in the chest as ‘sadness,’ for instance, doesn’t truly *explain* that feeling any more than naming a wildflower makes you understand its root system or its relationship to the sun. The playwrights knew this instinctively. They didn't feel they needed to *explain* grief or joy; they simply evoked it, and let the audience experience it directly through music.

Think of the “revival” scenes – those moments when a character thought lost is brought back to life by music. They weren’t just stage tricks, you see. The belief in music's supernatural efficacy was widespread then. People truly believed that melodies could have restorative power; that harmonies could affect the body and soul. Phyllis and I discussed this at length during our autumn equinox gathering last year - her grandmother had been a musician in rural Ireland, she said, and carried those old beliefs with her. "It wasn't just songs, dear," Phyllis told me, "it was vibrations. Everything vibrates."

And of course, the anxieties surrounding gender performance were complexly entwined with these musical practices. Male singers on stage were a relatively new phenomenon, and their presence could provoke unease—a blurring of lines that some found unsettling. I remember reading once about a critic who decried a particular actor’s ‘effeminacy’ after a performance in *As You Like It*. The charge wasn't necessarily about sexual orientation, though it easily could have been interpreted as such; it was more about the transgression of socially prescribed masculine roles. Music provided an avenue for expression that challenged those boundaries, and some people just couldn't tolerate it.

The anxieties weren’t limited to men, either. Women were largely absent from professional theatre stages during Shakespeare’s time, so their participation in musical performances – even within the plays themselves—carried a particular weight. It wasn’t merely about singing; it was about embodying roles that could be read as subversively powerful or dangerously alluring. A character like Queen Titania, with her ethereal voice and otherworldly grace, held an almost dangerous potency for some audiences.

Modern interpretations of these scenes often try to downplay the supernatural aspects, opting instead for more psychological or metaphorical readings. I've seen productions where the music is presented as a purely theatrical device, meant to heighten emotional intensity without implying any literal magical effect. It’s all very well-intentioned and technically proficient, but I sometimes feel something vital is lost in that translation—that sense of awe and mystery which would have permeated the original experience.

I recall an old production of *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* at a local theatre years ago - it felt strangely…clinical. The fairies seemed like characters in a science experiment, not beings imbued with enchantment. It wasn't the actors' fault; they were working within very specific directorial choices that stripped away the layers of folklore and superstition that gave the play its texture. Now, I understand the impulse to modernize—to make Shakespeare accessible to contemporary audiences—but sometimes it’s a kindness to let the past be itself, even if it means acknowledging a world populated by beliefs we no longer share.

It comes back, I suppose, to that deep human desire – the yearning not just to *feel* emotions but also to understand and control them. The playwrights understood that music was a powerful tool in achieving both. And perhaps, in our own lives, if we pay closer attention to the power of sound—the rustling of leaves, the murmur of voices, even the hum of the refrigerator—we might gain a deeper understanding not only of art but also of ourselves. The lavender needs deadheading again. I think I’ll put on some music while I work - something simple and ancient, perhaps.