Traveling to Listen
Music is sound organized into a harmonious composition. It’s the art of the muses, the rhythm of poetry, the scale of inspiration. In classical Greece, music was embodied by the muse Euterpe, the “giver of delight.” In ancient times, music was the beat of a drum and the tone of a flute; before that it was the staccato of raindrops, the rush of a river, the song of a bird. Sound is all around us, and yet it can become so layered and discordant that we stop listening. For travelers, the sense of sound is one of our best tools for discovering the world in all its dimensions. This issue is about exploring with ears first—it’s about listening to destinations as much as looking at them. We visit musical places…