Cultivate good taste in sound by pondering upon the kinds of movements a certain melody married to a rhythm can elicit. When a man of poise moves do we imagine contemporary pop or Handel's Water music? Ah, we imagine the latter because the melodies move like the water from a bubbling fountain. And the rhythm's pattern is like the pleasing splashes the trail of water makes upon the pool. Grace with joy can perhaps be the summary of this man's poise. Certainly, he has tastefully imbibed Handel's Water music, intelligently applied it to his every sinew, and with training polished any awkwardness.
Ladies and gentlemen drink deeply of more refined melodies and rhythms and joyfully purge away the silly, clunky, frivolous, agitated, and superficial ones with their respective styles of speech and movements. Soon enough with deliberation, we will satisfy one of human life's requirements-- "a high degree of rhythm and harmony."
And one more thing, this practice is certainly to angelicize oneself. We could not imagine the Angels' movements and speech to be lacking in taste. If a composer could meditate upon their movements and speech his mind would conceive magnificent compositions. But perhaps I speak only of the leisure of heaven. Still, we could deduce from the Church's lofty doctrines and even higher reasonable speculations what melodies and rhythms their motions and speech could correlate to.
If a composer or aspiring composer by the grace of our Lady, Queen of the Angels, reads this, maybe here is your queue. Be sure that the journey to realize such pieces will take much discipline and conversations with the Angels of the various choirs. Let us pray to our Guardian Angels then to make our speech and movements more rhythmic and harmonious as well as to intercede for us to our Lady asking Her to raise souls disposed to make music with the Angels.
Source Protagoras, Plato: Complete Works, 322b.
Painting: Portrait of Three Musicians of the Medici Court by Gabbiani, 1687.
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