The Student Prince

I might have been ten, perhaps younger, when I was swept off my feet by The Student Prince. For many years afterwards I believed that, once I had shed my cygnet’s drab feathers and become a swan, I would be spirited away to a magical place called Heidelberg where a prince with the handsome dark looks of Edmund Purdom and the powerful, passionate yet tender voice of Mario Lanza would see me and instantly fall in love. It was a successful, if not the only, attempt by the Spirit of Romantic Love to get me to do its bidding.

As a teenager I was attracted more to classical music than to pop. Music of all sorts, I am now convinced, powerfully links the physical and the spirit worlds. Performing music, listening to music not only arouses transient emotions but can alter the course of a life because it is spirit which motivates and energises. In thrall to the Spirit of Romantic Love, you can become blind to the charms of mere mortals. Even worse, you can convince yourself that a mere mortal is The Student Prince and burden him with unrealistic expectations.

Last week I was speaking to a young relative and was struck by how his life seems to be following a similar trajectory to the one mine followed for a couple of decades. As well as sharing genes, classical music, its performance and audition, played a part in both our lives.

We belong to a culture where we listen to music because we enjoy it. We are aware of emotions it may arouse, but our society is still blind to other, perhaps far-reaching consequences, it may have. It can affect our breathing rhythm and heart physiology. Because heart signals radiate some distance from our bodies they can be replicated in those around us causing entrainment which is driven, for better or worse, by the most powerful force in the system.

I am certain that knowledge of the effects of music exists in the human race. Perhaps the knowledge will be shared with the rest of us when the time is appropriate. At least this is my hope.