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  • Mysterious Ways

    The Transcendent Power ofMusic

    Sep 25, 2019 4 minutes
    By Elena Tafone, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

    Back in high school, one of my good friends invited me to the school’s Christmas concert, a per-formance of Handel’s Messiah. She would be playing the violin. I hesi-tated. I wanted to support my friend. The problem was that Messiah—which covers the birth, life and death of Jesus Christ—runs more than two and a half hours. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my Friday night.

    I told myself I’d stay for an hour, then sneak out. So I took my seat in the auditorium. The lights went down, and I is religious, but that wasn’t what moved me so pro-foundly. It was the music itself in all its harmonic complexity that made me feel something only music could stir in me.

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