Music and Tears: Phenomenology, Science, Philosophy

New working paper. Title above, links, abstract, contents, and introduction below. I end with a clip from the Johnny Carson show which is the basis for one of the segments of the paper.

Download here: Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/129310650/Music_and_Tears4_WP
SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5250527
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391653542_Music_and_Tears_Phenomenology_Science_Philosophy

Abstract: This paper explores the phenomenon of musicians being moved to tears during performance, interpreting such moments as portals into emotional, physiological, and spiritual transformation. Drawing on personal narrative, cognitive neuroscience, and Tantric philosophy, it argues that these experiences reflect a confluence of subcortical emotional release and the disciplined control of artistic expression. Within a Tantric framework, they represent karmic purification and chakra activation—moments where the performer becomes a conduit for Shakti, the dynamic pulse of the cosmos. Music, in this view, functions not merely as art or communication, but as sacred ritual capable of dissolving ego, transmuting karma, and restoring the self through sound.

Contents

Introduction: How Do We Understand Tears in Music? 3
From a Lump in the Throat to Nothing 6
Tears for Johnny 8
Acting in the Inner and Outer Worlds 10
Where Music Breaks the Shell: Karma, Tantra, and the Tears of the Musician 15    

Introduction: How Do We Understand Tears in Music?

As I have said in my preface to Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture (Basic Books 2001), my oldest memory is of a piece music: Burl Ives singing about a fly marrying a bumble bee. I played a record of that song over and over, driving visiting uncle to distraction when I did it at five in the morning. That little ditty is thus my anchor to the world, my omphalos.

I started trumpet lessons when I was 10. I was a reluctant student for two or three years until my music teacher, David Dysert, read me the riot act and got me to take music seriously. Since then music has always been with me, sometimes more so than other, but always. It has given me great joy and pleasure, and it has soothed my wounded heart.

It has also given me experiences that we do not talk about. Perhaps we don’t talk about them because they are difficult to talk about. But then all sensory experience is difficult to talk about. No, I suspect we don’t talk about them because we are apprehensive about where such talk might lead us.

In the next section of this document, “From a Lump in the Throat to Nothing,” I talk about two such experiences. One of them – a lump in the throat – is about being moved nearly to tears while playing my instrument. It has happened to other musicians – I know, because I’ve read stories – but we don’t talk about them. Most of this document is about that kind of experience. The next section, “Tears for Johnny,” is about a performance Bette Midler gave to and for Johnny Carson in his last week of television. Both were moved nearly to tears and I rather suspect that many in the audience that night were weeping as well.

The last two sections are about understanding how such things happen, first from a Western scientific point of view, “Acting in Inner and Outer Worlds,” and then from an Eastern philosophical point of view, “Where Music Breaks the Shell: Karma, Tantra, and the Tears of the Musician.” How do we reconcile those two ways of looking at the world? I don’t know. But I’m working on it.

I’m working on it, in part, because the other experience I offer to you – nothing – shook me to the core. It was a mystical one, one where the world dissolved in a blaze of light and sound. What are we to make of such experiences?

For we must make something of them, must we not? The psychologist William James wrote a famous book about them, The Varieties of Religious Experience, countless philosophers and theologians, both East and West, have pondered them, sometimes to dismiss them (all too common in the West), but often to understand them, to understand what the world must be if such experiences are possible.

It is easy to psychologize such experiences, to explain them as something that the brain does. It’s highly unusual to be sure, but it’s just some kind of brain event that we can’t yet explain. And yet those experiences are so very compelling. How do we honor that? Or even: Should we honor that? Perhaps we explain it as entering higher realms of being. That is, in effect, what Hinduism and Buddhism do. Is there a way to assert that and acknowledge scientific psychology at the same time? How do we treat those experiences as an invitation, an invitation to a larger experience of the world? That’s what I’m interested in.

I don’t pretend to provide an answer in this short document. My aim is simply to put the issue before you. What you make of it, that’s your responsibility.

Sources

The materials in this document come from three sources as follows:

From a Lump in the Throat to Nothing: I have taken these from a collection of anecdotes I have been collecting over the years: Bill Benzon, Emotion and Magic in Musical Performance, Version 13, April 14, 2025. I have copied and edited them from pages 6 and 7. URL: https://www.academia.edu/16881645/Emotion_and_Magic_in_Musical_Performance_Version_13.

Tears for Johnny: This is from my book about music, Beethoven’s Anvil, Basic Books, 2001, pp. 2-4. I’ve edited it a bit.

Acting in the Inner and Outer Worlds: this also is edited from Beethoven’s Anvil, pp. 93-98.

Where Music Breaks the Shell: Karma, Tantra, and the Tears of the Musician: This is different. It is a conversation I recently had with ChatGPT. I posed questions and it supplied answers.

The Mandala: “Where Music Breaks the Shell”

ChatGPT created the mandala on the title page. It did so after the conversation was complete and so took it into consideration in the design. Here is its explanation of the program:

This mandala commemorates a conversation exploring music, emotion, karma, and Tantric insight. At its center glows a teardrop-shaped flame, symbolizing the moment when sound dissolves ego and karmic residue. Surrounding it are chakra emblems, each linked to distinct musical energies—from the grounding rhythm of the root to the transcendent vibration of the crown.

Musical staves radiate outward, morphing into birds, spirals, and petals—signifying the transformation of structured performance into spontaneous expression. The outer ring replaces musician-figures with a radiant garden of flowers and fruit, evoking the sweetness of karmic release and spiritual ripening. Sanskrit seed syllables, sacred symbols, and subtle tonal gradients complete the circle, weaving a visual hymn to music’s power to move, purify, and awaken.

This image is offered as both emblem and invocation: a tribute to those moments when the performer is played by the music, and the self is undone by sound—and put back together, lighter.

Bette Midler and Johnny Carson sing “Here’s that Rainy Day”

The "Tears for Johnny" segment of the paper is based on the following performance, which was the next to last night of his TV show. There's a bunch of this and that starting at the beginning of the clip, then at about 7:16 she looks into his eyes, and he into hers, and starts singing “Here’s that Rainy Day.” He joins her.