The Power and Influence of Music

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for the beloved music teacher at my elementary school, Dr. Genevieve Glen ("G.G.") Baker-Fitzmaurice. G.G. turned hundreds of kids on to the power of Western classical music through her engaging teaching, encyclopedic knowledge, and belief in the musical capacities of every student.

At the service, a friend read out this quote G.G. had singled out in her files. Although the language of the author is steeped in the Christian tradition, the meaning equally captures the omnipresence and aesthetic force of music, including Dharma songs, in Khmer life-cycles.


Servant and master am I; servant of those dead, and master of those living. Through me spirits immortal speak the message that makes the world weep, and laugh, and wonder, and worship.

I tell the story of love, and the story of hate; the story that saves, and the story that damns. I am the incense upon which prayers float to Heaven. I am the smoke which palls over the field of battle where men lie dying with me on their lips.

I am close to the marriage altar, and when the grave opens, I stand nearby. I call the wanderer home, I rescue the soul from the depths, I open the lips of lovers, and through me the dead whisper to the living.

One I serve as I serve all; and the king I make my slave as easily as I subject his slave. I speak through the birds of the air, the insects of the field, the crash of waters on rock-ribbed shores, the sighing of wind in the trees, and I am even heard by the soul that knows me in the clatter of wheels on city streets.

I know no brother, yet all men are my brothers; I am the father of the best that is in them, and they are fathers of the best that is in me; I am of them, and they are of me; for I am the instrument of God. I Am Music.

(Anonymous, as found in Cynthia Pearl Maus, Christ and the Fine Arts, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938), pp. 19-20)