Music has its greatest sway over us when it creates a synesthetic experience, blending the senses and emotions. It’s as if the walls between sections of the brain come tumbling down, and sound creates vison, emotion enhances sound, vision excites emotion, and on and on in a virtuous cycle.

But is this essentially and perpetually a positive force, driving both our consciousness and conscience, our moral compass? This is a critical concept to consider today when music is everywhere, utilized to create joy, bolster physical and mental fitness, relaxation, and in more invasive applications to drive consumerism or as mesmeric propaganda, aligning us with various social ideologies and movements.

The German Opera Composer Richard Wagner has been an important subject in exploring the paradox of musical genius. He advanced the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total art form where music, visuals, and story merge, creating advanced synesthesia and overwhelming emotions in much of the audience. Yet the beauty and sweeping intellectualism of his music seems incredibly dissonant when compared to the profound evil in his heart.

Let’s contemplate two highly contrasting inspirations from his operas. When the Russian artist Vasily Kandinsky, a confirmed synesthete, heard the Wagnerian opera Lohengrin, it stirred his natural synesthesia so strongly that he was driven to abandon law and attend art school. Here we see one of the results, a visual representation of music.

A few years later, an adolescent boy left a performance of the same opera with a similar level of enthusiasm, but with a sinister trajectory, becoming the ruler of the Third Reich. Indeed, the true motivations in these two historical figures are far more complex than their exposures to one opera. But we can conclude in both cases that music aroused and enlightened them, intensifying and prodding their internal beliefs. Music is a positive force that can be easily exercised in sinister ways.

Lohengrin - Prelude to Act 3

Listen to this excerpt, or even better, listen to or attend the entire opera, and assess your own reaction.

Music is especially powerful in arousing an association with a larger group, whether an extended family, a social movement, or a nation state. While the world has become increasingly integrated, national identities endure. Social movements continue in their pursuit of justice and fairness. Let’s review some illustrations:

Morning Colors

Music accompanying a solemn daily ritual, inspiring a commitment to an ideal shared by millions.

La Marseillaise - Casablanca

Here, the fallen French find pride and the spirit to fight back through engaging together in a national anthem.

Tomorrow Belongs to Me - Cabaret

Now we view a similar scene with captivating melody and voice, a similar spirit of pride and community, yet great unease for the viewer when contemplating what this music inspires, encapsulated in the wise old man. To what extent were those rising up hypnotized by the beauty of the melody, unable to recognize in their euphoria where this inspiration could lead?

MLK and Mahalia Jackson - Jericho

This final piece honors Martin Luther King, accompanied by Mahalia Jackson, among America’s greatest Gospel and Spirituals artists. Spirituals performed by Jackson often introduced King’s rousing speeches, a powerful musical and intellectual combination that eradicated divisions in American society. Walls will continue to tumble down, both across societies and within our individual psyches. Persuasive forces driven by music can lead us forward or rally us to support unseemly causes. If we remain vigilant and perceptive, we’ll become truly inspired, or we’ll identify when we’re being manipulated and take the proper course of action. Let’s always remember that troubled old man in the Biergarten.

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