Doesn't music have an important place in avodas Hashem?
When we say music has no place, it means music in itself is nothing. Music in itself is just a nervousness; a tickling of the eardrum. It's just a nervous reaction of the emotions; it's unreasonable, it's irrational.
But, when people utilize anything, even in gashmius, for a noble purpose, then that thing becomes in itself ennobled. So certainly, if I would be able to hear how a great tzadik would sing... I was once in a shtible, I heard a chasidisha rov, not a famous one, and he was singing ana avda d'kudsho brichu, singing a number of times, and I must say that I left that place better than I was when I came. No question.
Certainly if you utilize music with noble words and in the right atmosphere… We were talking about music per se; music by itself, there is no virtue. And if people say on a man who doesn't appreciate music that he's a man of low character, he's lacking something, these people are silly people. Music has no place in a rational mind unless it's used as an implement to emphasize some great ideal.
So when Dovid Hamelech played on his harp, he wasn't playing music for music's sake chas v'shalom! He was playing the music in order to convey some lofty message. Certainly, Reb Yisroel Salanter said, when you learn mussar in the Yeshivos, that's how they learned mussar, they learn with a nigun, they took a mamar chazal and they repeated it out loud again and again with a certain sad and pensive nigun... and certainly it was used to penetrate a man's consciousness and make him greater. But music for itself is nothing.
The seven- weeks counting is not made by counting the days ahead ("Today is 49 days before Shavuos" or "before the giving of the Torah"), but by counting the days that a lapse after the offering of "the Omer, the first of your reaping" (23:9). If the counting was merely in the eagerness for the great event of the Giving of the Torah when Hashem's voice would be heard, then we should count the days that remain ahead. But the procedure of counting the days that passed since the Omer demonstrates the very important principle gratitude for the produce of the land. Every additional day that we continue to eat the fruit of the land, since the Omer was offered and thereby made the new produce permissible, brings added happiness and thereby requires additional gratitude.
By looking back at all the days when we enjoyed the new crop, we thereby become more and more full of gratitude and love of Hashem that gives us the land and the produce; and we thereby become even more eager to serve Him by accepting His Torah. "If there is no flour, there is no Torah" (Avos 3:17) and therefore "If there is no Torah, there is no flour" (ibid) because the Torah study is the expression of gratitude for the flour which enables men to fulfill their purpose in life which is Hashem's Torah. Thus the giving of the Torah which is memorialized 50 days after the Omer actually emphasizes and augments the gratitude for the produce of the land which not merely provides sustenance and happiness, but which enables men to achieve the highest form of happiness and the truest prosperity, which is the Torah study and the achievement of True Knowledge of Hashem.
Important Numbers
