The unexplainable

That was a tough last entry, folks, and the overnight ratings from L.A. are down, down, down. Too serious, they said, and nothing about music. So let's grab the steering wheel and get this thing back on track.

In A Primer for Critics, George Boas observes that “A Neapolitan sixth usually causes an agreeable feeling, but not one person out of ten can recognize a Neapolitan sixth and no one whatsoever knows why it should be so moving.”

Or, in my case, knows what the heck a Neapolitan sixth is. (Learning, from Wikipedia, that it's "a major chord built on the lowered [supertonic] scale degree" does not help. That's something like explaining that Merv can be found in the Murghab river delta).

But I think I know, nevertheless, exactly what Boas is trying to identify, as a phenomenon. It's this: the illogical but absolutely true and even ravishing pleasure that I can get from touching Cleo's absolutely smooth little cheeks. Why should it be so moving? No doubt, the evolutionary biologists probably have their explanations, and Freud would probably like to weigh in, too. But I discount, preemptively, all of their reasons. No one whatsoever knows, really, why it should be so moving. And yet it is.