Why does Music move us?

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything" 
- Plato 

That was my question to the man sat next to me.
We had sat for a while enjoying each others company.
 "Why does Music move us?"
Strangely I did not expect an answer, despite this mans deep intellect.
There would be no answer.
I would later learn to expect no answers, no answers at all.

On entering the Great Parlour of Wightwick Manor, would you too have have stopped suddenly in your tracks on hearing the sound of the grand piano playing ?

Would you too have felt your whole body and limbs fall away, relax and feel yourself being cocooned within the safe warmth of the drifting  musical notes?

Would you too have felt in your mind's eye, falling to your knees,  as if in prayer to kneel at the altar of the melodic soft cadence building to a crescendo to take you to a higher plane?

Would you too have felt your inner soul vibrate, resonate and long to be freed with every caressed piano note played?

Would you too have felt the awakening of the realms underneath, never touched, never stirred as blurred memories faded by ?

And would the beautiful aesthetics and surroundings of the Great Parlour by William Morris, designed in an age of theological romantic rebellion against the rationalism of the Enlightenment have spiritually awoken and moved you?

Moved you to tears? Tears which would freely flow from your eyes and your eyes alone?



"For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music, while the music lasts."

- The Dry Salvages by TS Elliot