Today is the feast day of St. Cecilia, patron saint of music. Music is such a perplexing thing: collections of noises, essentially, artfully arranged, and these arrangements can have such great emotional power over us. Think of the times you’ve been carried away by a piece of music: Two weeks back on Performance Today, the final movement of “Glassworks” by Philip Glass, “Closing,” performed on six pianos, had me captivated. I was in the truck, headed to Downtown Lake Worth, and even after reaching my destination and parking, I felt powerless to leave the truck until the music ended. Or think of a quiet hymn in a church, or for the Shakers, gifts of music delivered, they felt, to them from the spirit world. The Shakers who received them called them Gift Songs, believing they hadn’t composed the songs by any power of their own. They simply were the vehicles through which the gifts were delivered to the physical world. Such an astounding thing.
I’ve been captivated lately by a 45 second video clip that was released by Jane Siberry. If you know me and Convivio Bookworks well, you know Jane is a big influence. There’s that power of music, of course, and her work informs much of what we do here in terms of the way we see things. Her world view influences also our approach to creativity and even to our business. It’s rare that we get to see a song in the process of being created, but that’s what this video documents. It is, as I mentioned on our Facebook page when I posted it there, about nothing and about everything. I can’t get enough of it.
I find this insight into the creative process fascinating. Music will always be a thing of mystery and wonder to me. St. Cecilia is there to remind us of that, too.
Image: A head study for the fresco “Saint Cecilia Playing the Organ” at the Abbey of Grottaferrata, by Domenichino. Chalk on paper, c. 1608–1610. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.