Friday, 10 August 2007
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Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
By Henri J Nouwen
see relatedMusic Bloopers
It's funny how much some people don't know about music. A while ago, I picked up a novel, feeling in the mood for a good legal thriller. But with the very first paragraph, I was greeted by this howler:The child fell at the rate predicted by Newton, thirty-two feet per second, pulled to the earth by gravity. Leo Ransom looked up at the baby's sharp, shrill cries of terror. The little body seemed almost to float; even so, some part of him calculated the rate of the fall. Before entering the ministry, Leo taught piano at the Julliard School, focusing almost entirely on Bach's music, especially his mathematically precise techniques of ornamentation. Leo loved calculations and numbers.(Pamela Binnings Ewen, Walk Back the Cat, p. 1)
Even on its own, the prose style is bad enough. (What else would pull a person to earth but gravity? What did he see when he looked at the baby's cries? What part of the little body calculated the rate of the fall? Why on earth are you digressing from your opening shocker to review your hero's work resume?) And I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure there's something wrong in that Newtonian Physics bit.
But what really killed me was the offhanded assumption that a person who teaches professional piano would naturally have an obsession with mathematics and numbers: because Bach's ornamentation is "mathematically precise." So when a concert pianist sees the falling body of a child, of course the very first thing that comes to his mind is "Cool, 32 feet per second!"
Um, no, it's not. And the reason it's not is that 1) The overwhelming majority of musicians actually have hearts, and 2) Music is not mathematically precise. Especially not Bach's ornamentation.
If you want a career that will enable you to make lightning-fast calculations and play with numbers all day, I suggest becoming a physicist, not a pianist. If you're a professional pianist, the only numbers you'll really have to work with are the numbers for the fingering (which finger plays that note, 1 or 5?), the beats per measure in the time signature (most often this involves counting to two, three, four, or six), the opus numbers of the pieces you're playing (so you can tell which Mozart sonata is which), and the amount of money that isn't in your bank account.
Musicians who are more interested in numbers than that usually end up becoming acoustical engineers or studio technicians. As for composing, math never really enters into the equation at all. To complete my Bachelor of Music degree, I didn't even have to take a single math class. And I didn't miss it a bit.
I think something along similar lines happens in a lot of discussions about church music. If you listen to enough discussions about worship, you'll hear people discussing which "worship style" is better: Contemporary, Traditional, or Blended (contemporary and traditional together)?
This at least sounds coherent. But on closer examination, they're also missing some very crucial points. For one thing, what exactly is the precise musical definition of "contemporary" or "traditional"? I know great hymns that were written two years ago (e.g. "In Christ Alone"), and simple sentimental choruses that are over eighty years old (e.g. "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus"). Both of them are being sung today, so both are contemporary. And both are written in pre-existing forms, so both are traditional. Yet we keep on hearing that "contemporary" and "traditional" are such total opposites. What's up?
As near as I can work out from the usage, "Contemporary" really means "Music that we heard on a CD and want to copy," whereas "Traditional" means "Music that we've been doing in our church for a while now." But so what? Suppose both words really did define separate and easily distinguished musical genres (as, say, "Classical" and "Jazz" do.) Even if that were the case, which it's not, why must we make the genre of music the most defining characteristic of our worship? When we hear the words "Holy, Holy, Holy," sung, why must we think "This is contemporary music" or "This is traditional music" rather than, "Wow, our God is holy"?
St. Augustine had it right:When I recall the tears that I shed at the song of the Church in the first days of my recovered faith, and even now as I am moved not by the song but by the things which are sung- when chanted with fluent voice and completely appropriate melody- I acknowledge the great benefit of this practice.... Yet when it happens that I am moved more by the song than by what is sung, I confess sinning grievously, and I would prefer not to hear the singer at such times.
--Confessions 10:33, (trans. James McKinnon)
In any discussions of "worship style", we're inadvertently admitting that we are "moved more by the song than by what is sung." Thus any answer to the question "contemporary or traditional worship?" is the wrong one. If you want to worship, don't look at the song, look at the One who's being sung about.
As C. S. Lewis said, "The ideal church service would be one we almost didn't notice. Our attention would have been on God the entire time."
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Comments (3)
my dh (a music minister) doesn't do much xanga. but I think he'd really appreciate this post. I'm going to recommend it to him.
However, the fact is that musical aptitude and mathematical ability have a surprising amount of correlation; there are certainly many musicians who are not mathematically inclined, and there are some math whizzes who are not musical, but there is a definite correlation between the two.
I have to disagree with you quite strongly the music is not mathematical. While mathematical knowledge is not necessary for musical performance or even composing, the mathematical background is distinctly present, and especially in composing I believe that some knowledge can be helpful. There is even strong evidence that Elgar's enigma variations are based on the digits of pi (Elgar is known to have been a mathematical hobbyist), and other composers, including Bach, show signs of having been apt mathematicians in their music.
"In any discussions of "worship style", we're inadvertently admitting that we are "moved more by the song than by what is sung." --my response to this is 'yes' and 'no'. Yes, a lot of the time we're just talking about the style of music we like to hear, and how it makes us feel. But for me and I think for lots of others, we want the music to aid and illuminate the words. It's one thing to read the words of the Magnificat, but I have an entirely different and richer experience of them when I hear the Bach Magnificat sung. He did it right--he presented the words to us with the emotional dressing that belongs to them. Hearing a performance like that, as beautiful as the music is, does not, for me, distract from the words. It brings them alive, and that's what matters to me most in worship music--bringing the words and ideas to life.
RYC about Harry Potter, I am halfway through the Prisoner of Azkaban, now, and really loving it. Here's something to think about when you're reading them. Rowling gave pretty strong clues that Hogwarts represents the church (it looks like a church, there are icons of past famous witches and wizards, it was founded by the four greatest witches and wizards of their day (think of the four Evangelists), first-year students enter Hogwarts by traveling across a lake--they never do it again (baptism), the whole of Hogwarts is separated most of the time, but they come together for meals in the Great Hall (communion). And there are bad students at Hogwarts, just like there are bad church members today. But if you've had Malfoys in your past, my heart goes out to you!! I'd love to hear a little more about them.