Musicians/Magicians

This was always my favorite drill in elementary school. Say "Musicians Are Magicians" five times fast.

Then I'm looking at these batons. There's a long one and a short one. I'm reminded of Mrs. Umbridge in the "Order of the Phoenix", who used a short stubby wand. Then I'm thinking... wand...baton...wand...baton.

I look up the etymology of each word, baton is from the French word "stick" and wand is from the Old Norse word for--you guessed it, "stick".

So how about the music and the spells? How similar are they? Well if you think about the meaning of the word "spell", as a formula or recipe, then it might also be translated as "composition". Ideally, in order for a spell to work, every element must be there and accurate, or it will fail. A similar effect is true in music, when parts are missing or played wrong, the end result is different from the intended vision.

So what is the difference in the overall effect then? Well, a lot depends on your belief system. Most people admit that they don't believe in magic per se, but then when you ask them about miracles in the Bible or the existence of angels they have a much different answer. And then there are the more pragmatic scientists among us who have not a stitch of superstition may also not admit to believing in magic, but once you reach a certain point in understanding the laws of the universe, magic once again becomes apparent. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke.

No one in our modern society knows any magic spells, at least not that they're admiting, and if I know anything about human nature, it is if anyone knows something, they are admiting it. But plent of people know music, and even more people listen to it on a regular basis. To delve into a comparison, one must think about the overall effect of music on a human. There is only really one major effect, and that is mood shift. There are some minor effects, such as information, intellectualization, and meditation. How does this compare with legends of conjuration, transformation, and alteration?

Not at all in any real sense, but in broad terms, altering someone's mood has a mysticism of its own. How else can this be achieved naturally except through music and art? You can witness an event, or hear of one second hand, and the power of it can certainly change our mood and provide us with new information to process, and this can be a shared experience among those around you at the time. You can also artificially transform your mood with drugs and alcohol.

Are musicians the magicians of the modern era? I would like to think of us as a throwback, a remnant. If magic ever really did exist as a discipline, and was perhaps stamped out of existance first by religious fervor and then by the scientific method, then it quite possibly resembled the music of today. Lest we forget those Gregorian Chants, the precursors of modern Western music, whose intention was to conjure the spirit of the Risen Savior within the confines of the church. And don't forget that most common of responses to music, the applause, which stems from the original method to dispel spirits.