What is this unspoken language of music between musicians in the moment of making music together? I was never really aware of just how much communication there was through the felt sense, until it suddenly was not there.
Several years ago I taught a middle-aged woman in a group home for the chronically, mentally ill. She had played the piano in her younger years, and her family was hoping that music lessons as an adult would help bring some joy and fun back into her life. She loved to play duets, so we always spent part of the lesson making music together.
While her reading ability seemed to hover at the late elementary/early intermediate level, she knew how to lead and follow with changes in tempo and dynamics. I could breathe, and she would come in right on time. I would put a slight hesitation in the music, and she would match it. It was fun to play together.
One afternoon at her lesson, we were playing a familiar, simple and beautiful duet. The unspoken, but felt language between us was in full force.
Then suddenly, for a beat or two I noticed that she wasn’t breathing with me like she usually did. Yet, we kept playing.
Then the next beat came, and the nuance to the phrase wasn’t there, like it usually was. Something was off, but I didn’t know what. Yet, we kept going, not saying anything.
A few beats later, I realized she was no longer playing, and I needed to take a hold of her shoulders so she didn’t fall off the bench.
The paramedics came, and they said it was a seizure.
Thankfully, it never happened again, but the felt experience of those moments of being alone in no mans land while playing a duet with another musician really stuck with me.
I never really appreciated just what our body is capable of when we make music. Our ears hear, our eyes see, and our entire body feels. There is so much information there that I didn’t realize it until it was gone.
I marvel at the human body’s capacity to breathe, and how we can synchronize our playing to our breath.
My student was in a group home for the chronically, mentally ill, yet she still had the capability to hear, see, feel and make music with her whole body. When the seizure took away her entire set of music making skills, it gave me a new appreciation of just what her music abilities were, and the abilities of all musicians.
As musicians we are so fortunate to be able to participate in making music, just for the music itself, just for our own expression of being alive, just because. When I think of music like that, I can’t imagine my life without it.