Chapter 9

Music and Silence

I knew a musician who was not at all his equal but was still a very good musician, and he used to compose. He composed operas, musical comedies, and music for… well, not concert music. In front of a sheet of paper… you see, he had a large sheet of paper and on it he wrote the names of the different instruments; and beside each one he wrote simply, just like that, what it had to play. He was a friend of mine, you know, I used to see him at work. It was as though he was writing equations, like that. When it was finished, it had only to be given to an orchestra, it became something magnificent. Sometimes even… The other man, you noticed how he played his theme on the piano, didn’t you? He played a few notes, almost nothing, it seemed just two or three notes, like that: it was his theme. And on this theme, then, suddenly he began to write. But this man usually did not even play his theme on the piano, he wrote directly. It is a particular cerebral formation. There are others who compose exclusively on the piano and someone else has to write for them. Another person has to do this work of giving the different notes and organising the notes to reproduce the harmony created. But this man I am talking about – great musicians like Saint-Saëns, for example, the musicians of his time, gave him their compositions for orchestration. They wrote them, you see, as one writes for the piano, for two hands; and he changed that into orchestra music. He orchestrated just as I said, like that, separating the different groups of instruments and putting down beside each the part it had to play. (Silence)

Mother, when one hears music, how should one truly hear it?

For this – if one can be completely silent, you see, silent and attentive, simply as though one were an instrument which has to record it – one does not move, and is only something that is listening – if one can be absolutely silent, absolutely still and like that, then the thing enters. And it is only later, some time later, that you can become aware of the effect, either of what it meant or the impression it had on you.

But the best way of listening is this. It is to be like a still mirror and very concentrated, very silent. In fact, we see people who truly love music… I have seen musicians listening to music, musicians, composers or players who truly love music, I have seen them listening to music… they sit completely still, you know, they are like that, they do not move at all. Everything, everything is like that. And if one can stop thinking, then it is very good, then one profits fully…. It is one of the methods of inner opening and one of the most powerful.