Transfiguration

By George Moraitis

One of my favourite things to do is to ponder why I love listening to music to the degree that I do. I am aware that I consider music to be very important to me, but WHY exactly?

Last night during a listening session, my mind went on a strange journey. Perhaps it was another way of trying to answer this question.

In Vatican City in Rome, there’s a section called the Pinacoteca Vaticana. Located there is a painting of significant historical significance – Transfiguration by Raphael – which is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful and emotionally compelling works to have ever be created. It was painted in 1516 by Raphael and was thought to be finished by his student, Giulio Romano in 1520 after Raphael’s premature death (Raphael died at 37 years of age). Cardinal Giulio de’Medici (who later became Pope Clement VII) commissioned Raphael to paint Transfiguration for the city of Narbonne in France. The painting was kept personally by the Pope after Raphael’s untimely death until he donated it to the church of San Pietro in Rome and eventually it found its way to the Vatican museum.

Transfiguration relates to successive stories of the Gospel of Matthew and is divided into two distinct parts. The upper part of the painting depicts Christ elevated in front of billowing, illuminated clouds and on either side of him are the prophets Elijah and Moses. In the lower portion of the painting, the Apostles are depicted, trying unsuccessfully to rid a possessed boy of demons. The upper portion shows a transfigured Christ, appearing to be performing a miracle, curing the boy and ridding him of the evil.

On a simple level, the painting can be interpreted as depicting a dichotomy – the redemptive power of Christ, as symbolised by the purity and symmetry of the top half of the painting; contrasted with the flaws of man, as symbolised by the dark, chaotic scenes in the bottom half of the painting. If considering a deeper interpretation, it can be seen to depict the relationship between opposing conditions and energies. Life and death, the creator and destroyer, the yin and yang, good and evil, light and darkness and so on. These themes can be applied to all levels of human existence and experience. The philosopher Nietzsche interpreted the painting in his book ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ as an image of the interdependence of Apollonian and Dionysian principles. The Apollonian attributes are reason, culture, harmony, and restraint. These are opposed to the Dionysian characteristics of excess, irrationality, lack of discipline, and unbridled passion.

Staff that work in Pinacoteca Vaticana will tell you that it is common for them to see people observing the painting become emotional, often spending hours in its presence. Some people fall to their knees and cry, overcome with emotion. Some people feel joy, others grief and some just stare at it, lost in thought, expressionless.

Imagine a fly buzzing around in that space. It flies around and eventually lands on Transfiguration. It looks at the couple square centimetres of surface it has landed on, noticing the shades of colour. It feels the surface, noticing some slight undulations, sampling a taste and looking for signs of food. The fly doesn’t know that it is in a museum at the Vatican City. Nor does it understand that it has landed on one of Raphael’s greatest masterpieces. These ideas are human constructs unknown to the fly.

It has no way of comprehending the painting in its entirety and no way of understanding the history and themes depicted by the artist. It has no way of conceiving the artistic styles, techniques and references. With its limited brain size, basic senses and cognitive capacity, it has no way of understanding the emotion and passion that went into this painting from the artist or what emotions can be triggered in the beholder. Concepts like subtle beauty and nuanced meaning are alien to the fly as are concepts akin to spiritual inspiration and transcendence.

In the context of my life, I feel that I am like the fly on the oil painting.

There’s a lot going on that I have no idea about. I have my small sample of experiences and I do my best to make sense of them with my limited abilities & capacities. I manage to gain some understandings and navigate clumsily through my life but I am acutely aware that I exist as a limited consciousness in a vast universe.

What does this have to do with music?

For me, music is an expression of this wonder and depth. When I’m immersed in a piece of music, I am acutely aware that there’s an immediate art form that is being created by a person or a group of people as well as a many layers of nuanced expression existing beyond the artist. There’s a wonder in the human existence, filled with both suffering and joy. I know that there is something greater than myself, a greater consciousness and connectivity that occasionally reveals glimpses of itself to me. There’s histories and life journeys of people, their ancestors, their inspirations, their struggles, their victories, their own self-reflection & acknowledgement of the mysteries of life – all contributing to that lyric, that sequence of notes or that impromptu improvisation that ‘just happened’ in that moment.

If I’m lucky, I may tap into it and feel a moment of inspiration, joy, wisdom, despair or fun. I may feel that I have transcended the ‘mundane’ for that fleeting moment. You get to connect to the vast kaleidoscope of the human condition. I often feel that in recording a certain piece of music, an artist was connecting to something beyond my understanding, beyond my ‘familiar’. Experiencing artistic expression from our favourite musicians, song writers or composers is the same as gazing at Raphael’s Transfiguration – it gives us a glimpse of something supernatural, a higher resolution of existence.

I’m not sure if I have been successful in answering that question of why I love music so much, at least not comprehensively, but I also like that some questions may not be completely answered and perhaps life’s value exists in the attempt.

Miles Davis was another incarnation of Raphael. Same energy, different form.

I wonder what the fly is doing now…