A knight in shining armor

There are two ways in which we can interact with classical music and opera. One is extroverted and one is introverted. We could call these the transpersonal and the personalistic. One more? The external and the internal. For starters we’ll look at a well-known scenario which isn’t music.

Enough with the psycho blabber.

The external response to the story of a knight in shining armor killing the dragon and rescuing the princess — after which they get married — is taken at face value. Best case scenario, for the external approach, is that someone responds to the story in a way which helps them overcome some adversity and maybe heal a relationship.

What would be the internal response to the same story? The developing ego in shining armor kills the parental dragon, rescues the true self and becomes self-actuated via the matrimonious union of the two. This approach will help overcome adversity and heal relationships.

When listening to Mozart externally we might have a vision of a flawless jewel box crafted with grace, balance and proportion. Internally we might try to envision what our lives would be like if they looked the way a Mozart sonata sounds.

Instrumental music is so abstract that any number of images can come to mind and I won’t make the error of trying to spitball a bunch of examples based on other composers and their styles of composition. Opera, on the other hand, gets very interesting.

In most operas, the story in never concerned with the private histories of the characters. The drama is based on some prototypical event which has a collective significance for the audience. This is often a death via sickness or violence.

I feel the need to unpack that a little bit.

In a well known opera such as Carmen the characters tell us who they are and what they believe in. Carmen believes in freedom. Don Jose believes in obsession, apparently. Escamillio believes in himself etc. but the story isn’t concerned with how they became those people. They don’t express why they are the way they are.

The story is about how they interact and Carmen ultimately being murdered by Don Jose. What do we do with this?

We could simply emote and wipe a tear at the death of Carmen but she isn’t exactly a sympathetic figure. She’s not unsympathetic either. The point being mere emotional release isn’t going to get us very far.

Externally we could go back and create backstories for the characters. What was Carmen’s father like? Does she have any family? Probably not. What happened to them? They were killed in the war when her town was attacked. How did she get the job at the cigarette factory? She used her sexual appeal, duh. On and on we could go. It’s actually quite fun.

Internally we could look at each of the major characters as aspects of ourselves. Carmen is our desire for freedom. She likes the looks of Escamillo who is our confident aspects. In the end, Jose, who embodies our cowardice, our anxiety, and selfishness kills our chance for freedom.

It matters not which approach we think works best. What does matter is actually having an approach to music at all.