Life in Music
Life is a cadential six-four
Holding us in suspense
Penultimate to the reality of the afterlife
And the return of our soul to do
Sometimes it's an unresolved five-seven
Left hanging in the muggy air of a theory classroom
One late May morning, after the professor has lost hope
In modulation comprehension
More often than not, life is a deceptive cadence,
It's true direction uncertain and knowable only to Fate, the composer
Sometimes we yearn for the sweet vanilla timbre of a five to one,
But we become tangled in infinite circles of fifths
Other times we look for the adventure of minor six,
But stop on five.
When we lose all hope, we grasp at the compromise
Of a common tone modulation, only to allude to a foreign key
With sharps and flats coming from all sides, crowding the staff
If we’re lucky, life is an augmented six chord
Full of beautiful ambiguity.
The best of which is the French Surprise
We try to live in what we think is harmony,
But really it's just white noise posing as a unison.
The dissonance of relationships
Imitates the consonance of intervals
When we see someone, in theory, as a perfect fifth
The sol to our do, we realize too late
That we missed an accidental,
And unable to reconcile
Harp on as a wide tri-tone
Leaping above our friends and colleagues,
Always lands us on ti or te, where we need help
Getting up or stepping down
We ornament the melodies of our lives
With harsh bravura trills, and turns out of key
Our self is lost, when we neglect simplicity
In the end we are forgotten here
Some unfinished symphonies
Others full works, great in our own day
But unfashionable now
Our only home is heaven
Where new worlds of harmony
Unencumbered by rules
Set us free as the music of the cosmos
Haunting the stone deaf ears of genius
Who eventually gets us right
This poem came about after I saw a discussion on my choral professor's whiteboard. I began to think about the imitation of life and music, and how we describe the events of our short lives here on earth. Every composer imparts upon their music some, if not all, of their life, and even the simplest chord progressions and cadences speak volumes about who we are.
How do you define your life musically?
