I have given this subject a great deal of thought – but recognize the disparity between what I do and what I really believe. The motto I have on my music website and business cards is “Music can change the world | beauty, harmony, peace.” And I often find myself repeating Lenny Bernstein’s famous quote “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
The events in the world around me have frequently provoked me to write music in response. I have a Music for Peace series, a Music for the Earth series, Music for Ukraine, Music for Israel. They are my personal, musical response to societal ills that gnaw at me – but do they actually achieve anything? Can the music change the minds and hearts of those who hear it with regard to such issues?
I like to pretend that it does. I harbor thoughts such as Plato did, that music can alter minds. But I don’t really believe it does. Music can alter moods – it certainly alters mine! But can it be political in the sense that it alters anyone’s political viewpoints? I think the answer is a definite no. After all, Nazis loved their Beethoven and it didn’t keep them from committing horrors – and Beethoven, who also wrote music with political intentions, was the furthest person from a Nazi mindset one can imagine. Ditto for the Japanese warriors who, after a day of lopping off heads, wrote haiku and practiced their calligraphy.
On Substack especially, I see people writing, writing, writing – endless words aimed at altering people’s political opinions. Does any of it change a single mind? My guess is that it does not. I learned long ago that no matter the logic, no matter the facts at hand, one can’t change the political opinions of even your closest family and friends, let alone that of total strangers on the internet.
Will I continue to write music as if it can accomplish more? Yes. But that is more to satisfy myself than with wishful thinking that it will really have a salutary impact on the world writ large. So enjoy the music one hears. Let it fill you with emotion. But it is not political – even if written with the most political of intentions. It is just notes becoming passing, momentary waves of sound that pluck upon your psyche, more powerfully in some than in others.