Watching the new film “Maestro”, I was thrilled to discover that the movie begins with this profound quotation from Leonard Bernstein:

"A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them, and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”

There it is: the notion that has proven so fruitful in my creative work and my life’s journey: that art -- and for me, specifically music -- is fundamentally about the tension between opposites and how those opposites are reconciled within a given piece. It is exactly that process which moves us when we hear music, and which makes music different than, say, traffic noise or the sound of the wind in the pines. No opposites there.

Had I known that quotation, I would have placed it at the beginning of my new book, “How Music Means.”

One of my new pieces for solo cello, “To and Fro,” expresses the notion of opposites right there in the title, “To” being the opposite of “Fro.”

The notion is in the music as well. In the opening three measures a simple idea of presented: four descending notes of the C major scale, then an upward leap of a seventh, then four more descending notes, returning to the first note we heard. It is rendered in quarter notes and half notes and marked “stately.”

But then, in ms. 4, an opposing idea is presented. It is marked “sprightly.” Rendered in eighth notes and with a skipping dotted rhythm, the notes descend again, except this time, the figure drops FIVE notes and then climbs again, returning to the first note of the figure.

So … now we’re set. In half a dozen measures, two musical opposites have been established. It’s not unlike a boxing match. “In this corner is ”stately” and in this corner is “sprightly.” Let Round One commence! They slug it out it! How will they connect? Will one prevail? That is the question that drives the rest of the piece.

Why should we care? Because the piece, like almost any other piece of well written music or well executed art, provides us with a metaphor for our own struggles to reconcile the opposing elements of our lives.

“What opposites?” The same old ones. Love and hate, day and night, up and down, liberal and conservative, good and evil, believers and infidels, rich and poor, old and young. masculine and feminine, slow and fast, hungry and full … on and on. We struggle daily, hourly, minute by minute, to balance the antipodes of these ageless and endless conflicts. It’s wearying. We never get it right, once and for all.

But in music? Ah, yes, at last. Here is one place where opposites ARE reconciled. That is the joy of music. Yet, sometimes we weep. Why weep if music is joyful? Because we remember that such a reconciliation will never happen in realities of our lives. Certain loved ones will always hate each other and there is nothing we can do about it.

This piece then, “To and Fro,” is not about sunsets or mountain tops or hot lobster or anything else than music itself. In terms of the Bernstein quotation, it does not answer questions; it only provokes them and “its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”

It’s strange, isn’t it? that these jangling, twangling, scraping noises somehow resonate with our most intimate inner realms, evoking rarified states of mind which vanish as soon as the music ceases, leaving us with a half-remembered dream that was both joyful and pathos-ridden, both “to” and “fro.” Yet satisfied, too, and in ways nothing but music can impart.

To hear cellist Michael Ronstadt’s majestic and extraordinarily expressive rendering of “To and Fro,” click on the link above.

There's also a link to the PDF of the score.