Musical evocation

Those old melodies still sound so good to me as they melt the years away

The Carpenters

It’s true. But more than that, they sometimes catch me unawares and I find myself with a lump in my throat! Music is truly the most evocative of languages – like Dr Who’s Tardis it can whisk us away to other times and places in a flash. And it works as a kind of ‘virtual embrace’ – loved ones near and far, old and new, are brought again into one’s orbit, and are greeted with emotion – happy and sad, sad and happy, all of a oneness, and all unexpected, unsought. Musical notation and distinctive voices – sometimes no more than a word, or a string of two or three notes, are required to stir us – and the context of the original hearings is, of course, unique to each of us, whilst also bonding and unifying. Aaah. Those old melodies … gifts of life and of love.