Music is for Masochists

Music is for Masochists
By Sandra Miller
Originally published in Music For the Love of It

         Rodolphe Kreutzer was a sadist.  After struggling halfway through his book of exercises for the violin, I firmly believed this.  It was an opinion that I never voiced in my lessons, however, for fear that my violin professor would turn to me and say, “Yes, he was.  And so am I.  Play number thirteen again.  And watch your C sharps.”
         So I screamed “Sadist!” over and over in my mind, but only allowed myself to mutter, “Why did I go into music?” as I shouldered my violin for yet another Kreutzer Exercise from Hell.
         Finally, after several weeks of hearing this, Daniel turned to me and retorted, “I don’t know.  Why did you go into music?”
         I stared at him blankly.  Blank stares were my specialty.
         “Don’t ask a rhetorical question if you don’t have an answer,” he said philosophically.  “Now, how about playing number thirteen again….and watch your C sharps.”
         As I hurried out to lunch after my lesson, his words returned to haunt me, echoing over and over in my mind.  “Why did you go into music?”
         Music is fascinating in a quixotic sort of way.  You spend your whole life working at it and you can never know all there is to know about it; you can never play the best that you can ever play.  You can’t even play all the music there is to play.  It’s a mountain that you know is utterly too steep and too high for you to climb, and yet you take fanatical pleasure in going as far as you can.  Pity the musician, who spends his entire life chiseling away at a stone wall and never even makes a dent.
         Music is power.  Quite simply, it’s unadulterated emotion, and if you can manipulate its inherent ability to express, you can also manipulate the emotions and hence the actions of all who hear you.  The mythological Sirens understood this, as did the Pied Piper of Hamlin.  It’s a power so complete, it’s almost scary to contemplate.
         Music is a dynamic teacher to those devoted to it.  It has taught me self-discipline, communication, self-confidence, the joy of acceptance, and perhaps most important of all, a basic rule of life: you get out what you put in.  Music can be many things depending on your own view of it.  At times it has been a clean and organized rigid schedule of practice sessions and taught me to be the same way; at other times it has been a frantic and spastic blend of rehearsals, lessons, and concerts, and so taught me flexibility.  Music has been the emotional crutch that has helped me through the worst times in my life, like when one of my high school friends was killed by a drunk driver.  Music has also been the joyous companion beside me through better times, like actually seeing my first novel in publication.
         Music has taught me so much I can’t even begin to recount it all, but by far the most important of them all is love.  I think love is at the heart of every musician’s choice of occupation.  Love of the tunes, love of the applause….I’m so madly in love with music that at times absolutely nothing else in the world seems to matter at all.  I couldn’t live in a world of silence, a world without music, as I would have to if I gave up my violin.  I’ll never be a famous musician, but I will always play.  Love is what compelled me to music.  To me there is nothing more beautiful than the sound of a violin, whether it is playing a Mozart concerto or a C major scale.  I love it all. 
         So I went to my next lesson all it a tizzy, delighted beyond all description that I had solved at last the Great Mystery….I knew why musicians went into music, and more specifically, why I had.  I explained to Daniel frantically all of my thoughts, from the masochistic thrill of knowing you can never fully succeed, to the immense power, to the charismatic teacher, to the maniacal love.
         He sat in attentive silence while I talked myself out of breath, and I knew he had to understand every word of what I was saying, as any musician would.
         And when I finally finished, he looked at me, deadpan, and said, “I’m glad to see you finally figured it out.  Now, how about playing number thirteen again….and watch your C sharps.”
         “Music is for masochists,” I muttered, and shouldered my violin for another Kreutzer Exercise from Hell.