WHOA! What is Maullaria? An Encore

Fifteen years ago, The Discovery Orchestra published my first blog post—The Opening Chord. And we’ve republished it since then. Here now is my second—What is Maullaria?—re-edited.

The term Maullaria was coined in the early 1980’s by a young member of the New Jersey Youth Symphony who had a T-shirt made which read: I Have Maullaria. I recall being very touched that one of our violinists so enjoyed playing in the NJYS, that he wanted to advertise—in a clever play on words—how he felt about the experience. Amused, years later I decided to use Maullaria to describe how Ifeel when I listen to classical music. And just what is that frame of mind? In attempting to describe it, I can barely scratch the surface except to say that it is the most riveting state that I can personally experience by any means.

One special day when I was four-years-old—before I entered Kindergarten—I was home with my great Aunt Edna, my babysitter for the morning, while my mother was out grocery shopping. In the mail arrived an LP 331/3 RPM vinyl record of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” My mother, Helen Jordan Maull, an accomplished pianist and accompanist, had ordered the LP for the family.

Aunt Edna got out our Gimbel Brothers (a department store that closed in 1986—I’m showing my age) monophonic, portable record player. I remember this device well because the tone arm was not properly grounded and would give you a slight electric shock when you touched it a certain way. Aunt Edna put on the record.

Seated on the living room floor, I began to feel as though I was being electrocuted … by the music. This was my first—at least my first self-aware—time listening to a symphony orchestra. It was totally overwhelming! The timbres of the various instruments, the sound of the violins playing in such a high register, and the powerful dynamic effects all caused me to weep. It seemed that the music was playing me—I felt like my heart was bursting. But at the same time I wanted that moment to never end.

When it did, I realized I had just experienced something I’d never experienced before. I would not have known how to even begin to describe it. Ten years later—when I was in high school—my mentor Dr. Saul Feinberg (1932-2024) would help me understand what had transpired. Giving our undivided attention to the elements of music––so masterfully manipulated in a work such as Dvořák’s wordless, abstract Ninth Symphony—can trigger that overwhelming response. It’s sometimes known as the goosebumps experience, or—in the terminology of Brandeis University professor and psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)—peak experience.

Has this happened to you while listening to music? If you’re continuing to read this blog, my guess is that it has. You’ve already had Maullaria—or more precisely, YourNameAria—because it describes your own personal aesthetic response evoked by music listening. And if you’re like me, having once been in this state—having been so powerfully emotionally moved by abstract musical sounds––you have probably gone back to this wellspring often, in order to repeat this intensely satisfying experience. In my life there are two demarcations of time: Before Dvořák (BD) and After Dvořák (AD). I don’t remember much from the Before Dvořák period, but After Dvořák—things have never been the same.