And Music is Her Name
And Music is Her Name
Like other aesthetic forms, music has a great ability to reflect truth, beauty, and goodness. But, before we can discover the rich beauties in music, we need to know how to approach it. We need to know that God is the source of all beauty. We also need to know that some music reflects God's beauty better than others. Here are a few ideas for how we can take our first steps toward a more deliberate approach to music.
Listen actively. We have recorded music playing many of our waking hours. A radio alarm clock might wake us up in the morning. Some sort of excuse for music is usually playing as we drive. The radio may be blaring as we work in the garage or the kitchen. It is playing in the store while we shop. Some can't even fall asleep at night without a white noise lullaby. Music in our day and culture is very cheap. It comes very easily with the click of the magic twanger. But, we've only had recorded music for a hundred or so years. For all the thousands of years previous when we wanted to enjoy music, we had to either make it ourselves or be near someone else who could. So, what has happened is that we have gotten very good at ignoring music. Brian Eno, is not the only one who markets music for the purpose of passive listening. Most of pop music is marketed for ignoring. I don't know about you, but for me some of my most humbling moments have been times when I have been singing along with some oldie on the radio and suddenly realized the horrible lie I just sang. I got into those situations because the hundreds of times I had heard the songs, I had not really considered them. I knew the lyrics from passively listening many times, not from any deliberate consideration. If I had not really considered the words to those songs, it is probably even less likely that I had deeply reflected on the musical message.
Listen patiently. Music is an aesthetic form which is revealed through time. Music also requires time and patience for its appreciation and enjoyment. Sit down with it as you would a good book. Rid yourself of unnecessary distraction. This is the only way I can even begin to listen to Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis or any of the Passions by J.S.Bach. Take the time to listen to the whole piece. This was an important production rule for Every Thought Captive Live, the former radio show of the Highlands Study Center. There were no intentional talk-overs or fade-ins. We wanted our listener to hear and enjoy the whole song. Real music has a beginning and an ending, just as a story has. My father-in-law, by his good influence, has taught me to dread that fade-out song ending that so many studio recordings have. In our church, the elders also apply this understanding to our worship liturgy. We don't skip the third stanza or shake hands during the fourth, even during a slow moving Psalm which has eight, nine, or sixteen stanzas. Like a story, music takes us somewhere. It requires us to participate. It moves. It begins here, takes us there, and brings us back again, only better. Great symphonies do this, psalms and hymns do this, and so do thousands of simple folk songs.
Listen critically. There are high art forms and there are low art forms. This classification by the way does not refer to whether it is morally good or bad (and I'm not saying music is morally neutral either). To put it simply, high art forms reflect great truth and beauty, while low art forms (often called folk art) reflect truth and beauty within a smaller context. There is a time for Bach, and a time for Happy Birthday; a time for singing, and a time for listening. It might help us to understand music and discover beauty within it if we apply what we know about other art forms to it. For example, a particular instrument in a musical composition might be analogous to a character in a literary work. And the timbre of that instrument might be analogous to the voice of that character. The key of a tune might be like the setting of a novel. Musical phrases and notes are often rhymed like ideas and words are in poetry. We can find analogies like these in visual and culinary arts. The sweet malt and the bitter hops flavors in a good homebrew tastes, to me, like the tension between the I and V chords in most of the fiddle tunes I play. Bill Evan's piano playing sounds to me like I'm listening to a painting by Claude Monet.
Listen to enjoy. It has very wisely been said that utility before beauty is a devolution. We need to be careful for using music. We may use music to get us in a romantic mood or to wake us up in the morning. Some people listen to classical music so that they have something to discuss with their metropolitan friends. Music does have legitimate uses like the "admonishing of one another," but it is not just a tool. All Scripture is "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" and yet we sing "I will delight myself in thy commandments, which I have loved." In the garden, God said the trees were "pleasant to the eyes, and good for food," but it was Eve who saw that the tree was "good for food, and pleasant to the eyes."
Ignore the words for a moment. Listen to the music apart from the lyrics. Listen to the battles between dissonance and consonance. Hear the war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Listen for the building and rising tension and its climatic release. Hear fall and redemption. Listen to harmony and counterpoint melodies and hear the One and the Many. Listen to the dynamic movement and peaceful rest and hear Creation and Sabbath rest. Listen to good music and hear God's glory.