I love the music of Andrew Lloyd Weber, especially the soundtrack and lyrics of Phantom of the Opera. I find it simply delicious that the fearsome phantom is in fact a wounded soul who wraps himself in music for comforting. While he is a malevolence at one level, and a frightening presence for Christine, he is also her “angel of music,” and a stand-in, albeit a false one, for the father she so misses who was a deep lover of music also. Her sweet coloratura meets the baritone of the phantom in exquisite melodies.
We know, of course, that the relationship is wrong and doomed to failure. We know also that there is genuine love there, especially in the end when the Phantom does what Raul cannot, let Christine go. How many men could do that? The phantom is a complex character. It is not so simple as hating him as a monster. Nonetheless, we are left in an emotional quandary, so it is best to return to the glory of the music.
Music is a sacred passageway to the knowledge of the Heart for which words are neither required nor ever adequate. Words can punctuate the power of music or weaken it depending upon the partnership quality of composer and lyricist. It is a great spiritual practice to immerse oneself often in music and allow it to transport. It is even better to sing or play music on an instrument of one’s choice and so enter into the purity of the focus that comes after a great deal of practice.
As a young man, I studied voice for four years at the Manhattan School of Music. Opera was the future I then dreamt about. My voice teacher was a psychologist in her own right. She would hear me sing and make comments I still recall, like:” the voice is beautiful and technically correct but your heart lies elsewhere. How are you feeling? What’s happening in your life.”
Singing requires total presence if it is to be genuine. It is a great practice in being present and serves as a reminder of what it means to be present before the sacred: no artifice, no pretending, not technique, not even the words per se, but an opening of one’s heart in love, abandoning oneself to the beautiful.
© Brother Anthony Thomas and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Your teacher had great intuitive wisdom.
I think there are many times in the life where our hearts and our “destiny” (dear God, that’s a phrase I hate but it serves) are elsewhere from where our career takes us.
Now I seem to have wandered so far from my heart I can’t seem to find my way back to it..
I have often looked back to those wonderful days of heady aspiration and wonder what might of been or should have been. Then I realize that what happened was the true calling. My love of singing has never waned, my broader love of music has been enduring, my career in psychology has largely revolved around helping people find their voice ( if not song), and my first love, opera, combined rich often allegorical story filled with archetypal symbolism, leading me straight into the boosom of archetypal pattern analysis and the world of things Jungian. The path is winding and passes through confusing woods, but in the next clearing up ahead we stumble upon a new configuration. I just started learning the piano four years ago and I am thinking of returning to vocal coaching once again.
You mention destiny. I think there is a world of options that define the thrust of individual destiny within which all our choices make for fresh and unexpected patterns. How what we love and what we do intermingle and shape each other is a mystery. Rediscovering our bliss is an ongoing, life-long pursuit I think. All the best.