To The Graduates
New School For Jazz And Contemporary Music
by Kirk Nurock NYC May 18, 2006
[excerpted]
[Congratulations to the graduates and their families. Greetings to Program Director Martin Mueller, esteemed guest Mr. Bob Hurwitz, &c. Short reminiscences of our classes together.]
Honorandus ab omnibus hominibus. This quote is from the Hippocratic oath doctors take at their graduations. "...a member of society with special obligations to my fellow human beings." Hippocrates wrote it in 440 BC. It's about ethics and morality. It says--among other things--that doctors shall follow a spiritual calling as they have been put on earth as healers.
Of course we in the arts also follow a calling...one so powerful that many of us felt it even in childhood. So I find myself wondering at your graduation, might there be some oath for musicians to take, to honor our calling. And--in some larger sense--why were we artists put here?
In our culture, artists seem to cultivate a kind of emotional awareness. We create heightened states of perception that can open the human mind and heart, allowing for enhanced inner reflection. We can also amuse, provoke, challenge...I like David Liebman's term "edu-tainment."
But let's get a broader musical perspective as we look back again to the Ancients.
It was Pythagoras who discovered the overtone series in 550 BC. He also studied the planets and calculated that there was a kind of "music of the spheres"--deeply haunting dronings and ringings that he said continue throughout all time. Moreover, he found that their pitches are related to our overtone series and algebraically linked to human music and hearing.
It seems we musicians derive from this. It's as if we are all particularly tuned to the sonic universe and are here to continue creating its music. If doctors heal, musicians resonate.
