Tiber was last to see her, as she lay down, weary with grief and journeying, on his wide banks. There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song. At the last she melted away, wasted by grief, liquefied to the marrow, little by little vanishing into thin air.

Ovid, Metamorphoses – Book 14

When our emotional state passes a certain degree of intensity, even when, as in love, another human being seems to be its cause, it seems to be of universal significance. It is no longer sufficient that the girl we love shall know that we love her; the whole world must know. 

The formalized art of poetry goes some way to meet our needs— a verse drama already involves the audience as well as the protagonists— but music goes much further. 

For singing is a form of public outcry: it is on the voluntary level what an ouch of pain or the howl o f a hungry baby.

W.H. Auden, Secondary Worlds

Singing—the final subject—is a particular way in which the voice exists.

It is a little like light. Something of an ambiguous nature, traversing time and space, yet existing beyond, or at the edge of, what they mean. Something ultimately elusive, yet at the same time the most vivid form of energy, creating an image of the world while itself being perceptible.

And it is also somewhat like a face—an arrangement of shapes, openings, hollows and protrusions in which an irresistible impression of identity comes into focus, however illusory it may ultimately be. Seeming to encode the whole meaning and core of a person, their essence and dignity, and allowing itself to be preserved in memory as their outward image.

So singing is like the sun and also like the moon, but above all it is like nothing else in the world—singular, strange, unexpected, most fitting though superfluous, ancient though the freshest and rawest of all things.

What we hear is singing, or its echo, nothing else.

Some of the maps I have looked into

Lawrence Kramer, Musical Meaning

Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals

Michel Poizat, The Angel’s Cry

Gary Tomlinson, Metaphysical Song