Eyeing cultural evolution

On Sunday afternoon, Yo-Yo Ma shared hope in his TED Talk-inspired performance, “Culture, Understanding, and Survival.” Before uttering a word, he spoke in the language of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, which he rendered with embodied virtuosity and understanding.

Ma's appearance was the first of two Sunday that were presented by Music Worcester as part of its 160th anniversary season.

Ma wasn’t there to put himself on display, but to transcend his reputation in favor of something less tangible. For while he was physically dominant in every moment, as evidenced by the audible force of his breathing, he was equally recessive, humbly allowing the music to be its own translator.

So began an idiosyncratic montage of melody, philosophy and autobiographical reflection as Ma regaled us with stories from his 59-year career (mentioning, for instance, that his 2018 recording of Bach for Sony Classical had been made right there in his beloved Mechanics Hall), stories of the music he had selected for our edification, and, most importantly, stories about stories themselves. He emphasized the ability of music to thrive in the presence of hungry ears — as obvious in Ma’s approach to Bach’s music as in Bach’s to his own.

Ma likened the cello suite to a body. In the head he hears scales and arpeggios, the very DNA of music, through which all things are connected: a lesson we do well to remind ourselves of when empathy seems rarely to extend beyond arm’s reach anymore. Such truths might fall to the wayside were it not for champions such as Ma who see the infinite variations they enable. In the heart he finds assurances of rhythm and promises of harmony. And in the feet, as expressed in Bach’s timeless jigs, he grounds himself in the earth, casting an interpretive net into vulnerable waters in hopes of pulling up treasures.

And treasures he certainly found, each polished by years of careful thought. But before dipping his bow as brush into such varied ink wells as Mongolian folk music and a lilting beauty by Turkish composer-musicologist Ahmet Adnan Saygun, he deferred to the quill of award-winning physicist Freeman Dyson, who recently opined, “Cultural evolution will be the main force driving our future.” This tenet fueled Ma’s timely message, and by its vitality pointed to creativity as the life blood of resilience. It was an idea put forth also by Antonín Dvořák, who encouraged his students to absorb what was around them, to experiment with those influences and make them into something that, in Ma’s words, “turns the other into us.” Sadly, in the current sociopolitical climate of triggers and fears, we’ve been taught to think of such action as exploitative and invasive rather than embrace it as a unifying factor of human existence. The more we uphold individuality as the paragon of self-worth, the more we forget what makes us the same.

All the more appropriate, then, that Ma should end, as he began, with a composer who exemplified the cultural search for truth. That Bach did so by trusting his listeners is remarkable when one thinks of the spatial and temporal distances his music has traveled to reach us. The Cello Suite No. 6 thus provided something far more precious than closure in the form of rupture. In that sense, it opened the very air to possibilities of interconnectedness in separation, of light in darkness, of celebration in grief. Ma prefaced it by explaining how Bach depended on listeners for memory, intelligence, and agency. These three pillars of expression provided the link, the interaction, and ultimately the importance of carrying the notes with us as tokens of something that can only be appreciated when we’re not alone. “Bach asks us to imagine the impossible and then build it together,” Ma said, and with those words — alongside music conveyed with such heart and a lifetime’s worth of purpose — indicate a path of healing through our broken souls.

Pond skimming at Wachusett Mountain