Does some music speak particularly to the older soul?

"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Nietzche

"If music be the food of love, play on." - Shakespeare

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." - Plato

When I was a teenager, I would get together with my fellow band geeks and pore over a catalog of mugs, t-shirts, and tote bags with quotes such as these plastered across them. We would take turns ordering from this catalog for each others' birthdays. It's all fairly embarrassing now — like most of high school — but we so earnestly believed in the power of music.

Nowadays, these types of platitudes make the daily rounds in Facebook posts and online memes instead of on throw pillows and school binders, and reports of the scientific benefits of playing music circulate every few months or so in the news cycle. Add it all to your List of Beneficial Things: coconut oil, Luminosity, strength training, chia seeds, stand-up desks, classical music, check check check, and when you finally get worn down feel free to plop down on the couch with box of artisan doughnuts, watch Netflix, and text your next-door neighbor.

Sigh.

Still, to get a little reminder of the truth behind the cliches is a wonderful thing.

Once in a while I get to coach young musicians in small group rehearsals through the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies. Last week, on a frigid Tuesday evening, I said hi to the dozen or so woodwind players in the sectional and chatted for a few minutes with their conductor about what she wanted us to work on. "They love the Dvorak Scherzo," she told me, "but they've got to spend some time on the Sibelius first. They don't like it, but it's on our next concert."

Sure enough, when I told the musicians that we would be starting with the finale from Sibelius's second symphony, there were audible groans. A glance at their parts told me why, because I was exactly the same at their age.

A grand, stately tempo, lines and lines of the same scale over and over again, and a melody that recurs ad nauseum until the end. Really, it's not a woodwind feature (as the brass would be sure to tell you), and for talented kids who love to play the crap out of their instruments, there's little payoff. Compared to the typical band music they play in their school ensembles, it's pretty boring stuff, especially when you are young and impatient.

I did my best to convince them, and I'm sure there were plenty of eyes rolling while I went on and on about how exciting Sibelius is, how when he changes one little note in that repetitive scale, the whole foundation of the world shifts and the heavens open up for the glorious ending.

On my way home I tried to figure out why music that was so utterly boring to a young person could speak so directly to the older soul. Maybe the older you get, the more you cling to those rare ineffable moments; the less stock you put in the fast and flashy; the harder you listen for the slightest shift in the repetitive patterns of life; the more you yearn to play a simple part within a beautiful whole.

At home I watched a video of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the Sibelius Second Symphony. It's a fantastic performance. But the most powerful moment is when the music stops, and a series of emotions pass across Bernstein's face before he turns to acknowledge the applause.

"Music...can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable." - Leonard Bernstein

Now that's a quote I can get behind.

Rena Kraut is a professional clarinetist whose main career goal was to do something different every day. To that end she has succeeded, and can be found in the upcoming months playing with the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, Muse Salon, and the Minnesota Orchestra. In slow weeks it is her privilege to teach and write.

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