how do certain combinations of notes produce such sublime beauty?

and yes, i did use sublime there knowing full well what it means in literary terminology. i am an english major, after all, and i am in an american literature class this semester. but last night as i was walking home from campus, i was listening to my ipod.

short side note here--i recently become a fan of ipods but i thought i would never have one because they are way too expensive for my "i continually leave the country and have cut my meals down to 1.5 a day" college student budget. but through luck, or chance, or the spaciness of my sister, i came to inherit a free one for christmas. i guess it was more of a gift than an inheritance, but inherit sounds better in this context. and since then i have used it extensively, involving the 10 minutes it takes to walk to campus in the morning and the 10 minutes it takes to walk home every day.

really, listening to my ipod while walking to campus has changed my life. i usually walk alone, as i get to campus so early and leave so late that most of campus is still asleep or has already left for the night. but ever since i got my ipod, i no longer walk alone. sometimes i walk to campus with Sister Hinkley, and sometimes with Elder Holland and President Eyring, and sometimes when it is really cold and my breath freezes and smacks me in the face as i walk along, i walk with my friends from hawaii. or any place tropical, really.

but last night i was walking home with todd mccabe and april moriarty. they have these beautiful, magnificent hymn arrangements for piano and violin, and they are spectacular. some of my favorites include "in humility, our Savior," "He is risen," and "beautiful Savior." the songs have beautiful melodies in and of themselves, but something about the lilting rising and falling of the violin brings the beauty from my mind to my heart--as though the violin bow was playing on my very heart strings and the music is resonating through my spirit.

as i was listening to "beautiful Savior," i started thinking about note, chord, and cadence combinations. there is one musical phrase that is my particular favorite in this rendition, where the violin repeats a musical phrase "fair are the meadows, fairer the woodlands," and the second phrase rises a thrid higher than the first, with the violin doing a little grace note. it is my favorite phrase in the whole song. why could something this simple be my favorite phrase? how is this chord sequence different than those directly before and those after? and how can a chord sequence inspire such thoughts of beauty, of reverence for my Creator, of worship and devotion?

then i started thinking about the chord structures and cadences that are deemed "naturally" beautiful (it was a long 10 minutes...). take the circle of fifths, for example. that chord sequence is so universally pleasing, it doesn't take any musical training to realize that when a cadence ends in a circle of fifths it just sounds "right." but why are these musical elements so universal, even eternal? it is just because note values mathematically add up correctly? and does this work with our other senses?

it does. first i thought that it doesn't work with anything but music, because i thought to myself, no one looks at a combination of numbers, say 68429, and thinks, oh, wow, what a beautiful sequence of numbers! that sequence of numbers makes me want to serve my neighbor, or worship the Creator, or do my visiting teaching, or feel the love of the Savior in my life. but...then i thought about sunsets and sunrises. there are certain color combinations that are also deemed universally beautiful. sure, a few people may differ, but most would agree that when the sky is filled with the colors of a late summer sunset, as wordsworth said, their heart leaps up when they behold it. the same thing happens with taste, though to a lesser degree in my opinion.

so, what is it? what is it about certain chord combinations that are so inherently appealing to the mind and especially the heart? how do some songs sound so familiar? and how can we rise on wings of song--rise to the heights of the heavens, and change our lives, and become more like the Savior...all though chord and cadence combinations?