”What is Orchestra?” by David Getz

What’s in that name?

What do those three syllables contain

That allows space and time and sound to maintain

A consistency that’s quite a mystery to explain

Yet we all can agree that music makes us more sane,

and not just more sane, but our senses more heightened

Our pulse tends to quicken if the music is frightened

The hairs on our arms stand up as strings tighten

Yet a consonant cadence can cause our hearts to lighten.

And what force accomplishes that phenomenon more

With the precision of waves beating down sandy shores

Than the teamwork of brass, winds, strings, drums, and more.

And we call that force ORCHESTRA.

The magic of this music is molded in monotony,

The same notes and rhythms played on for eternity.

How can eleven pitches and a handful of rhythms

Produce breathtaking majesty and war-provoking schisms?

It doesn’t seem palpable that music is this powerful

But the poignancy with which it produces purpose

Is as impossible to predicate

As light particles parading out of prisms.

And all of that mystery is contained

In the unity and diversity of people

Holding sticks and pipes to limbs and lips

And we call this jungle of contagious chaos ORCHESTRA

The magic of music is contained in our chemistry

Balance and equilibrium, weight, force, density.

All of these forces that act out on matter

Are the very forces that make music matter.

When dissonant intervals destroy our dreams

The consonant chords serve to dissipate the screams

Of that obnoxious ostinato 

that repeats relentlessly

But the peace of that pedal tone

 steadies it majestically.

The weight of the texture of a Mahler symphony

Is balanced by the solo of a Bach Cello Suite in C.

And all of these references and metaphors and similes

Are just an amalgamation of what I happen to see in these

Combinations of pitch, rhythm, and music literacy.

The lighthouses that guide us 

through this tumultuous sea.

And that lighthouse that stands

as a testament to constancy

That every generation since the Renaissance has turned to see 

As the pinnacle of sound, that curates both silence and majesty is ORCHESTRA.

This is Orchestra.

The dance of science and math and art

As the ictus of the conductor’s baton causes the piece to start

And the notes, once bound behind bars of ink

Come stampeding out of their two-dimensional prisons,

Faster than thought

Faster than speech.

You think and *snap* they’re gone in an instant,

Replaced immediately by the next artistic instance

Of time and space occupied by sound, now fading into the distance.

And out of that distance comes dissonance.

And the only constant is consonance.

Dissonance, consonance.

It all makes too much sense.

The battle of good and evil

Laid out in this cross-curricular dance of

History, sculpting, lawmaking, biology

Linguistics, economics, cartography, chronology

These disciplines pay tribute to music’s magnificence,

As it swallows them whole, ensuring their deliverance

To be sealed in time, a statue for eternity

To bear tribute to humanity ever-reaching for maturity.

The tension takes time to unravel,

But the orchestra’s mission is to travel

That distance together 

And pound out with justice’s gavel

This inevitable decision.

The composer, 

That artist who, with notes and rests

Created an incision in the flesh of Father Time,

For the sole purpose of berating the fates

And blessing the muse of scoffing at the poet

For creating the ruse that peace and prosperity

Are something we choose.

Now he laughs as the players on the stage

Complete the charade 

And the audience claps,

At the feast that’s been laid. 

So what is orchestra?

What does this all mean?

Why do we gather, this gaggle of teens,

To unite in a war to explore what’s in store

When we walk through these doors and tune up our four strings?

Each person here will descend on this river

Some taste it sweet, to others its bitter

To some, they will play in its shallows for safety

Yet others will dive in and face its depths bravely

Rarely will any though ever leave the same

For this river of music is one that will change

The fate of a student, the fate of an audience

The fate of a culture, the fate of remembrance

The fate of history, looked in resemblance 

Of a tragedy teetering on the brink of existence

It’s this river's resilience that offers us this deliverance.

So I say to you all

Without offering a defense for my insistence,

What we do down here is not just random happenstance.

What we do down here 

Is offer your imagination a second chance,

To enhance its lungs, to breathe a sigh of relief

And recall with its feet, the motions of this everlasting dance.

All that’s asked of you each day

Is to let your mind be free to create

To roam this room and be free to discover

Its walls of brick are just another thing to push over

To join with one another 

Heart to soul to mind and more

And unite with the notes of those that came before.

So what is orchestra?

I think it’s both safe and hard to say

We’ll hear it each a different way,

But if we try our very best

To play each note, each chord, each rest,

Then, as the novelist wrote in 1869

“Beauty can save the world,”

And I pray we prove him right.