Music and the Human Heart

I’m late with the blog this week because I lost my oldest and dearest friend to cancer on Wednesday, and I just didn’t have the heart to write anything.  I’m not sure I have the heart now, but some thoughts have risen to the surface concerning music and the human heart, so even though I’m hesitant to use this public space for these very private thoughts, I wanted to jot down a few observations.

It is amazing how music touches and expresses what is deepest in ourselves.  This summer, as my friend’s brain crumbled under the weight of the tumor that was eating it up, several old hymns that I’ve known since childhood would come to mind, out of the blue.  They spoke to the situation so clearly that I would type out the words and send them to her or her husband.  Once I sent a YouTube video of a hymn that gave us both great comfort.  In early July, as I wrote a hymn arrangement for my church’s Summer Choir, there was my friend quite suddenly in the middle verses, even though I’d started it with no thought of her in mind.  Even last March, when I first got the news of her cancer the day before a concert, one of the numbers during the concert (not a hymn this time) was particularly a propos.  I’m always all business when I conduct a concert, focused on the task at hand, but this particular number spoke of death and loss, and suddenly tears were near the surface.  It caught me by surprise.  But all of these musical instances carried a sense of healing within them, both in me and between me and my friend.

How does music do that?  I don’t know, it just does.  There is always an intellectual and aesthetic appeal in music which is very satisfying, but there is also something that calls to the deep places in the human heart.  We would be the poorer without it.

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside