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Essay on How Does Music Influence Me And The Society Around Me?
In terms of Western musical history, the most impressive outcome of the belief in the influence of music was the aesthetics of opera that developed in the late Renaissance, and even opera itself. A more recent outcome is the use and regulation of music by totalitarian governments to reinforce political ideology and arouse a militant nationalism. A lesser evil, but also corrupt, is the public use of selected types of music to increase the purchasing of goods or food. On the other hand, it is difficult to find fault with the use of music in dental offices or restaurants. (Theodor, 1973) Certainly, the purgation of fear and the facilitation of the digestion have always been approved effects of music.
But the most highly regarded influence of music, of course, has been the promotion of piety and reverence, something that Gospel music has brought into my life. While views of the harmonic or musical nature of the world and man and society may very well fade or even vanish, theories of the influence of music --its power both to arouse and to soothe--are doubtless so well grounded in the nature of the art itself that their persistence in one form or another is highly probable.
There are numerous references to the influence of music in Shakespeare, among them the well-known discourse of Lorenzo to Jessica in act 5, scene 1, of The Merchant of Venice (ca. 1596), in which cosmic harmony also plays a part. Thus Shakespeare juxtaposes and even combines a Christianized harmony of the spheres with the power of sounding music, yet an important relation between the two does not appear, for the basis of the musical influence on human beings is provided by the motions of "vital spirits" rather than by the restoration of a microcosmic harmony.......
