Our souls are strung out on a musical stave
Each a musical note and its harmonics
Some crotchets, some minims, some quavering in the fleeting wind
Each a distinct sound in time and space and comforted by the rest
between them That allows each to breathe and exist.
Our lives are devoted to searching for the ultimate musical
sequence that mirrors our inner soul architecture like a
resonating drum.
And when some exalted piece
approaches us, our hearts quicken, the pulse races and
we feel faint.
I remember well the first time I heard the
Marche Funebre of the Eroica at the memorial to the
Israeli Athletes at the Munich Olympic games; or the
Brandenburg Fifth while my friend’s mother lay dying on
her white silken bed.
Or Mahler’s fifth which awakened me
to post-classical music.
I can literally correlate events in
my life with each of these moments of awakening.
My biography littered with a list of musical sequences I
stumbled upon; that arrested me in my tracks, phrases
and harmonies that melted me.
Each musical piece feels
like I am coming closer, ever so slowly, to the ultimate
musical sequence I will not be able to bear and my soul
will finally expire to its glorious melody.
So too with the Tzaddik whose soul.
We are told, is a
“general transpersonal soul” whose life is a pursuit of the
ultimate niggun the perfect Levitical music that
encompasses the sequences and harmonies of the
spheres and the secret of creation itself, whose musicality
will herald the Messianic era precisely because his tune
will melt all hearts.
Reb Nachman was seeking this melody and his ten
psalms reflected the complex character of the genres of
literary characters each mirrored. He realized the power of
music to transform and heal and spoke of music of
primordial archetypal tones that resonated with my senses
as I feel when such melodies pass me by.
In the final days that score will be revealed and we shall
discover that it turned out to be the very key by which the
letters of Torah could actually be played on musically.
