Caution...Frissoning Ahead!

For years and years and years, romance novels in particular have used a word I never saw anywhere else: frisson.

As in, "A frisson of unease went through her," or  "A frisson of awareness sparked between them" or the like. While I never ran to the dictionary, the context was usually enough to give me the hint of what a frisson was: a shiver. A tingle. 

Imagine my utter dumbfounded shock, then, when I actually looked it up...to make sure that, if I used it in one of my books, I'd be using it right...and discovered it's a thing.

Something backed up by research, no less.  

And something I've had all my life.

I've always considered myself a bit eccentric for it. I feel music, to a point and at a level I haven't heard many other people talk about much. I know virtuosic artists must feel this to some degree--there's a reason a brilliant player will, in a very real sense, "make love" to his or her instrument. 

But in my ordinary, everyday life, even in music school, I stood out to others for the intensity of the exhilaration and excitement I felt. It was more than merely enjoying music, or loving it--far more. It was an intoxication, a "high" that probably explained why I never dabbled in chemical "highs" of any kind, not even during high school or college.

But as I've grown older, it has an additional component that comes over me when I'm truly making music. Or, as I'm fond of calling it, "kicking musical butt." When I'm in the "zone," in the "flow," or whatever you want to call the results that happen when years of hard work, love, and learning all come to fruition. 

There is truly nothing like the "high" I've felt at those times. 

Like nailing that high A in Gounod's Ave Maria...at 7:30 Mass on Sunday morning.

Or giving the solo on Michael Smith's All Is Well all I had on Christmas Eve...which I did for several years running.

Or pretty much anytime, with anyone, that I can sing the Hallelujah Chorus.

When I've done those things, I've felt a physical chill run down my spine. A subtle one at first. Not dramatic. Just...there.

Now, however--probably because of my "seasoned" status as a music maker--that chill isn't subtle anymore. I'm feeling it regularly. And strongly. Both when singing, and at the piano.

I have a couple of pieces I work on now that I was working on 40 years ago, in school. Yes, 40 years ago. No, I hadn't mastered them yet then, and I was away from the keyboard for enough years that I didn't master them in the interim.

But they're in my blood. And, so, I've hauled them out again--this time, determined to get them under my command, and fit for public consumption.

This hasn't been easy. Because these are not easy pieces.

One of them is the Rachmaninoff Prelude in G Minor. Look it up. It's one of the most awesome things you'll ever spend your hearing on.

Another is the Chopin Waltz in C# Minor, famous for what most of Chopin is so famous for: running lines up and down the keys, this one culminating in a lovely high C sharp at its end.

I've been working these things and working them and WORKING them. Because 40 years away from something usually means you need to reintroduce your hands to it. And, at my age, some of that practice is a bit more challenging, due to arthritis that wants to rob the mastery from my fingers.

I've gradually gotten better, though. To the point where Rachmaninoff is about halfway along, and Chopin is "almost there."

I'm also taking on new stuff I never played before. Grieg Lyric Pieces. Mendelssohn Songs Without Words. Beethoven's Pathetique and "Moonlight" Sonatas. And an Elgar piano reduction of Nimrod, from the "Enigma" Variations, that is loaded with emotion in and of itself.

So, when I play any of this fairly well...? I have to fight off physical shivers. And if you think that's easy...think again.

But I'm welcoming them. Because now I know not only am I not crazy to be feeling these things--there's actually a word for them. An official, recognized, scientific term.  A name for the spell music casts on me, and I try to cast in return.

It's called frisson. And it's real.

So if a day comes when you see me play these things, and my hands are shaking...
...know that reaction probably has little to do with nerves and a lot more to do with an artist trying desperately to keep control of her musicianship while she's breaking out in goosebumps and feeling a chill clear to the roots of her hair.

It's almost scary.

But I hope that, as long as I listen to, learn, and make music...I never lose it.

Thoughts?
Janny