Music is for sharing: the power of live music

Music is for sharing (as is all art). I tell myself this to move past perfectionism and fear, and allow myself to be vulnerable enough to show up in the world.

Several years ago I walked into Pātaka, my local library and art gallery at the time. A string quartet was playing in the middle of the foyer, a group of students from a local high school. I walked past them as I went into the library, returning a stack of books I probably hadn’t read. The quartet's intonation and tone were far from polished, but it was human and real, and unlike a Spotify playlist, I was experiencing the music the very moment it was made.  

That experience moved me. I hadn't played classical piano for anyone other than myself in a long time up to that point, but it was a confronting reminder that music doesn’t need to be perfect to make an impact. Unless you’re Martha Argerich, the music will probably never be perfect (and even Martha herself could probably quite easily pinpoint moments in her own performances she’d like to change). No, music that has impact is music that’s shared. 

The power of live music isn’t just for the listener: it’s (even more so) for the musician. Creating art that no one else will ever see or hear has its own power (a topic for another day!), but there’s something significant that happens to the musician when they play for others.

For me, something changes in my alertness, in the way I experience the music. I delve deeper in my study, I listen more closely. I learn a piece more fully. Some of that preparation comes from my fear of making mistakes. Because part of me believes not playing perfectly will lead to people realising I’m not worthy of their admiration or love, which will lead to rejection and ultimately abandonment. (Therein lies the basis for all my fears in life.) 

That’s not it though: something else drives me. Some inexplicable need to express myself, to be understood, and to understand the world. Music-making is a desire to connect, on a deeply human level. And perhaps it’s one of the best ways to connect, because music is a language that transcends words. 

I started playing the piano at Pātaka a few weeks after hearing the string quartet play. It was a brown Yamaha grand on wheels, trundled out from a dark corner into the middle of the atrium every Thursday morning. I didn’t play any big classical repertoire to indulge (or injure) my ego, just music to drift in the background. A woman came to me after I played Clair De Lune, tears in her eyes, telling me this was her father’s favourite piece. He’d passed the year before, but hearing the music he loved so much was good for her soul. It made part of her grief feel seen.

What are the words to describe that kind of feeling? If there's a word, I definitely don't know it (and thesaurus.com wasn't much help this time). But that woman at Pataka didn't need a definition for how the music made her feel. The music, my sub-par interpretation of Debussy on an old Yamaha grand, was enough.