Notes from the front row

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter"

I thought about Keats's lines as I sat in the front row of Seattle Symphony's bass section at last night's performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I'd always heard this magnificent music from an audience or through speakers. Sitting barely ten feet from an orchestra in Benaroya Hall was as much a kinesthetic as an aural experience. I heard the music, felt it physically and emotionally, and in the last movement was able to help make it.

Beethoven was completely deaf when he composed this masterpiece. I believe that his physical deafness sharpened his spiritual hearing, that he might not have been able to write so powerfully otherwise. Oliver Sacks has written extensively on the power of music to alleviate neurological disorders. The phenomenon might help explain why banning any kind of music (as did theTaliban) can foster such despair.