At the beginning of the Tokyo String Quartet, I expected a bland, unmoving performance. I judged my expectation of the performance based on not only the prototypical expectation for a string performance, but due to the typical demographic of the audience. The audience composed primarily of elderly people and when I was seated to watch the performance, most of the heads I say were either bald or graying.
But little did I know that I was wrong, extremely wrong in fact. The beginning of the Tokyo String Quartet played dreary, sad music. I closed my eyes, thinking sad moments reflecting the thoughts and then strangely, I started to cry. The other performance after the first performance started to be subsequently happier, and my sad mood started to become a bit more elated over time. I realized that I started to become connected to classical music, something that I thought I never would become connected to in the way I felt connected to pop music.
I then realized that Nietzsche in his work The Birth of Tragedy was absolutely right. Before this performance, during one of the Macaulay Seminars, I said that words tend to connect to emotions much more quickly than music ever could. I said that because I was closer to a writer than a singer or a musical performer, thus I was connected to the words I write. I still am. But I realized that ever since this performance, my opinions on what can cause emotions changed. I learned that sometimes, music can connect one to emotions more than words ever could.
