Do take Number 6’s advice and get involved in making music. Perhaps you could try this: http://tinyurl.com/4djj6f

I’m sure they don’t all meet in churches Though, interestingly, my Monday group meets in a hall beneath the tiny Pilgrim Church in Bardon, Brisbane. They charge us almost nothing. Margret RoadKnight is about as irreligious as it’s possible to be, but she nevertheless loves gospel music and this constitutes a good part of our repertoire.

If anyone’s interested in hearing Margret R …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giM_b1FkURc (an old clip, but her voice and energy are undiminished)

In light of your further thoughts, and upon re-reading Number 6, I’ll up my semi-reluctant applause level to 2-3/4ths cheers!

The only singing I ever did was croaking out “Onward, Christian Soldiers!” and suchlike on Sunday mornings. I remember the preacher saying in an uncharacteristic witticism that we ought to bellow out those good old hymns to spite the devil. “We can’t let old Nick have all the best tunes!” Christianity - and all the great faiths - have known and used the power of music. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I resist it.

In more recent years life has been very difficult. I realised I hadn’t sung for a number of years. I started going to those Monday night sessions and have to say it made an ENORMOUS difference to my outlook on life and my ability to handle stressful circumstances.

You make a lot of good points. And of course, everyone who likes music is not sweet of disposition. There’s a difference between liking music and making music, but as you point out … not everyone who makes music is sweet of disposition either.

However, in general, my experience has shown that music has a positive effect on most. I’ll mention some examples from my own experience.

Years ago I used to teach music in a small school. The teachers all said that when the children came back to their class they were better behaved, more alert, and performed their other lessons better. (Hmm … it could be argued that it was contact that the sweetly dispositioned Carmel that did it
For over 20 years I’ve been attending the Woodford Folk Festival. It has grown very large, and extends over 5 days and nights. Alcohol is served onsite. People of all kinds and ages and colours attend the festival. In all that time I’ve never seen one person drunk and disorderly. Nor have I seen one person get angry at having to wait on long queues. The children don’t even cry. This despite stinking hot weather, or tropical downpours. How much influence this has on the rest of attendees’ lives I can’t say.

For a number of years I’ve been attending a Monday-evening singing session with a group of about 20 people, led by the wonderful Margret RoadKnight. There’s nothing formal about the group, no performances, no concern with making mistakes, no annoyance at the people who sing offkey. The camaraderie which has developed within this group is amazing. Recently Margret returned to her home state (Victoria). I thought the group would disband, but it didn’t. There was determination to keep going … clearly the feeling within the group was as important as the singing itself.

As Margret is fond of saying, “When you’re happy, sing. When you’re sad, sing louder.”

It’s possible that the act of making music together, as opposed to solo performance, has the sweetening effect.

On this matter of music’s benign influence, remember that the guards at Auschwitz loved their Beethoven and Schubert. They weren’t otherwise notably sweet guys. Come to think of it, much of Beethoven could hardly be called sweet. The man himself was damn near inhuman. The last quartets are about as harsh, astringent and unwhistleable as 19th century music can get. That sort of stuff appeals to a guy like me with a taste for edge and irony. It doesn’t sweeten my disposition, but it does seem in some tangential way to be “true”. So I’ll give, if not three cheers, then two and a half cheers for the glories of music.

come on in, the water’s fine!….

“Don’t think, feel. Trust your instincts.”
-Qui-Gon Jinn, “Star Wars Ep. 1 - The Phantom Menace”

Vangelis (Blade Runner, Chariots of Fire, etc etc etc) often says that all music already exists in the memory of the Universe, and by playing it we are really just remembering it, acting as a conduit for it.

or as Dieter Meier (of the Swiss electronic duo Yello) put it:

“The Big Bang.
The ultimate hero of low frequency.
The divine intergalactical bass drum connecting the tribes of our solar system.
If we could communicate from our tiny piece of solar driftwood into another galaxy,
what would we say?
We can send out pictures, symbols, chemical formulas or language.
The magic of music is a sign of consciousness that can be understood on far-flung worlds,
millions of light years from our horizon.
Music is an interstellar language from a highly insignificant planet
One of nine in our system,
which sails through time and space,
till the next one,
the next
inevitable
Big
Bang…”

-Yello, “Solar Driftwood”