"All is music, my friend." Life is an opera, written by God and scored by Satan.

Hi my fellow ATSers,

A few days ago, my parents gave me the most remarkable gift which I am just beginning to enjoy- 26 operas (complete with the liberettos) from their record collection. I am in the midst of listening to the music, which sounds divine on the turntable, and fills me with nostalgia and other less definable emotions.

Listening to the operas has made me aware of a couple of things.

Firstly, I will never be able to repay my parents for their countless gifts- not even by "paying it forward" to my own children, as I most likely will not be able to provide them with the same quality of life that my extremely opportunistic and hard-working parents gave me. But I will sure try.

Secondly, life is so short! My parents bought many of these records while still young and full of vigor. Now they are grandparents, and I am a parent myself. We have only one life, and therefore wasted time and wasted (negative) emotion is almost criminal. The good news here is that, so long as there is life remaining, there is a chance to remedy past mistakes and start anew.

And lastly, that there is no other music (imo) that captures the beauty and tragedy of human life as well as opera. This reminded me of a small chapter in a relatively unknown but incredible book called Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis. I thought I'd share the chapter in full with you, ATS. Please enjoy (and if you do- read the book!).

Excerpted from "The Opera", chapter 9 of Dom Casmurro.

Life is an opera and a grand opera. The tenor and the baritone fight for the soprano in the presence of the basso and the second voices, when it is not the soprano and the contralto who are fighting for the tenor, in the presence of the same basso and the same seconds. There are numerous choruses, many ballets, and the orchestration is excellent..'(...)

'God is the poet. The music is by Satan, a young maestro with a great future, who studied in the conservatory of heaven. Rival of Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, he could not endure the priority those classmates enjoyed in the distribution of the prizes. It may be, too, that their overtly sweet and mystic music was boring to his genius, which is essentially tragic. He started a rebellion, which was discovered in time, and he was expelled from the conservatory. The whole thing would have ended there, if God had not written a libretto for an opera, and thrown it aside, because he considered that type of entertainment unsuited to his eternity. Satan carried off the manuscript with him to hell. With the idea of showing that he was a better musician than the others--and perhaps to effect a reconciliation with heaven--he composed a score. As soon as he finished it, he took it to the Eternal Father.
'Lord,' he said to Him, 'I have not forgotton what I learned up here. Take this score, hear it, emend it, have it performed and if thou find it worthy of the heavenly heights, admit me and it at thy feet.'
'No, retorted the Lord, 'I will hear nothing.'
'But, Lord...'
'Nothing, nothing!'
Satan went on supplicating with no better luck, until God, wearied and full of pity, consented to have the opera performed, but outside the precincts of heaven. He designed a special theater, this planet; and created a whole company with all the parts, first and second, choruses and ballet dancers.
'Hear some of the rehearsals!'
'No, I'll have nothing to do with the rehearsals. It's enough to have composed the libretto; I am quite willing to split with thee the author's royalties.'
That refusal was probably a mistake: from it resulted certain incongruities which a hearing would have detected and a friendly collaboration prevented. Indeed some places the words go to the right and the music to the left. And there are those who say that this is the beauty of the composition and keeps it from being monotonous, and in this way they explain the trio of Eden, the aria of Abel, the choruses of the guillotine and of slavery. Not infrequently the same plot situation is used over again and without sufficient reason. Certain motifs grow wearisome from repetition. There are obscure passages; the maestro makes too much use of the choral masses, which often drown out the words with their confused harmony. The orchestral parts, however, are handled with great skill. At least this is the opinion of the unprejudiced.
The friends of the maestro would have it that a better score would be hard to find. Occasionally one of them will admit that there are certain gaps here and there, but with the continued run of the opera no doubt these will be filled in and smoothed over, since the maestro does not refuse to emend his work where he finds it at variance with the sublime thought of the poet. The friends of the latter take a different view. They claim that the libretto has been sacrificed, that the score corrupts the sense of the words and that although it may be fine in some passages and contrived with art in others, it is absolutely unrelated, even contrary, to the spirit of the drama. The ridiculous, for example, does not exist in the text of the poet: it is an excrescence in imitation of the Merry Wives of Windsor. This point is contested by the Satanists with some appearance of reason. They say that at the time young Satan composed his grand opera neither this farce nor Shakespeare had been born. They go so far as to affirm that the English poet did nothing more than copy down the book with such art and felicity that he seems himself to be the author of the work; but, manifestly, he is a plagiarist."
"This piece," concluded the old tenor, "will last as long as the theater lasts--and there's no telling when it will be demolished as an act of astronomic expediency. The success of the production is increasing. Poet and musician receive their royalites with punctual regularity, but not in the same coin. The law of division is that of the Scriptures: 'Many are called, few are chosen.' God gets paid in gold, Satan in paper."
"Very witty.."
"Witty?" he shouted. Then he calmed himself: "My dear Santiago, I am not witty; I have a horror of wit. What I say is the truth, pure and ultimate. One day, when all the books have been burned as useless, there will be someone, maybe a tenor, most likely an Italian, who will teach this truth to men. All is music, my friend. In the beginning was the do, and the do became re, etc. This wineglass (he was filling it again), this wineglass is a brief refrain. You don't hear it? Neither do you hear wood or stone, but they're all part of the same opera..."

Still here? Then you must truly enjoy reading and philosophy.

Although I don't wholeheartedly agree with such a sympathetic view on Satan's role here, the author raises some very interesting points. And does it so beautifully!

What do you think, dear reader?

Now, off to enjoy more life!

a reply to: zosimov

I'm not exactly a fan of the opera nor of classical music.

But for a good portion of my life a song has been my song, out of the thousands I could literally pull out of my mouth (and sing) this one has always been... Mine.



It's all a showing and one day you'll be knowing, but till then have a blast and take the good times as they last.

Music can be like poetry, it emulates us. We don't emulate it.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: zosimov

I'm not exactly a fan of the opera nor of classical music.

But for a good portion of my life a song has been my song, out of the thousands I could literally pull out of my mouth (and sing) this one has always been... Mine.

It's all a showing and one day you'll be knowing, but till then have a blast and take the good times as they last.

Music can be like poetry, it emulates us. We don't emulate it.

Beautiful, thanks for sharing! Listening now..

a reply to: zosimov

Not to be an arse or take up your thread but this came on my playlist and made me think of this thread.


Dancing to the devil and all that,

If all of our past was played as a song, then our lives are the beat of the drum.

originally posted by: RAY1990

Not to be an arse or take up your thread but this came on my playlist and made me think of this thread.

On the contrary.. you're the only one (so far) to post a response. And good ones at that. Thanks!

If all of our past was played as a song, then our lives are the beat of the drum.

Love this. I do believe there is something to the quoted text in my OP. If all life is vibration, and all vibration is sound, well I suppose it could follow that "All is music". Thanks again for the input!

a reply to: zosimov

Love this. I do believe there is something to the quoted text in my OP. If all life is vibration, and all vibration is sound, well I suppose it could follow that "All is music". Thanks again for the input!

I'll be the devil's advocate and say that sometimes it seems like God missed a beat or two, that's the decent reason the devil turned his back. Just a thought!

Playing the big man at his game, a game so good he wished to deny it... To us, such creatures that have free will.

I wouldn't go as far as saying the devil is a good man though, just highly conflicted. kinda like us really?

Made by God, played by the devil. Your title played me in, I'm not the best contributor and cheers for the compliment. I literally couldn't help myself.. Your post literally gave me confidence, especially the part about being thankful of the life provided in terms of upbringing. In a word, respectable.

Full of nice touches, really nice thread and I genuinely mean that.

a reply to: RAY1990

I really want to respond to your post in more detail.. but running off to work. I'll respond later. Thank you so much for the wonderful comments!

a reply to: zosimov

For a moment there, when i clicked the link i though you'd posted Ahab The Arab, song from ages ago lol.

originally posted by: RAY1990

Made by God, played by the devil.

This is just an awesome quote. I've been putting some thought into how to reply to your post, because I think there are really interesting ideas worthy of considering. Did God indeed "miss a beat or two" which led to one of his best and brightest rebelling?
Was Satan created with free will or did he have no choice but to turn apostate?
What would (our) free will look like if there were no conflicting forces to align oneself with, only good?

Here was my problem coming up with a response- all I ended up with were more and more questions ..

a reply to: zosimov

I try not to think about it too much haha, our own construct of good and evil itself is diverse. Depending on who you ask religious or not.

For instance I'm an arachnophobe, I have no issue killing spiders because frankly, I declared war on them years ago. It's my way of dealing with them. I believe Islam teaches that certain vermin or life can be taken if it causes harm, again I may be wrong but if an insect occupies your house and causes no harm then you should welcome it for 3 days as a guest and then remove it. I've practiced that with spiders that caused me no distress.

Some believe killing animals for food is evil, I'm not sure any sense of our morality could compare to that of celestial beings... It's literally a tough nut to crack!

Is it evil for a dog to eat it's dead master? What if it's starving?

We humans, whether you're religious or not. We have the ability to know what is good, how to co-exist with our ecology... No other creature has our foresight regarding our actions.

Back to Lucifer... I may be wrong but I'm sure the devil was made from the smokeless fire like djinns, he has free-will as the djinn and us do. The difference is the angels know God's will and they are literally his agents, Lucifer literally wouldn't bow down to a lesser creation aka man, those moulded from clay. He and the 1/3 were cast to damnation for they could never learn like humans can, in other words they had no place condemning us as lesser because we are capable if so much more by choice.

Apologies if my post seems all over. I'm rusty with religion and quite tired today.