Music as Worship

Sermon

Danish composer Carl Nielsen wrote the following summary of his 4th Symphony (subtitled "The Inextinguishable") after the premier of the work in 1916, while World War I was still raging:

"The title 'Inextinguishable' suggests something that only music can express fully: the elementary will of life. Only music can give an abstract expression of life, in contrast to the other arts which must construct models and symbolize. Music solves this problem only by remaining itself; for music IS life whereas the other arts only depict life. Life is unquenchable and inextinguishable. Yesterday, today and tomorrow, life was, is, and will be in struggle, conflict, procreation and destruction; and everything returns. Music is life, and as such, inextinguishable."

My own interpretation of this is that Nielsen felt that at the beginning of the 20th Century, war and struggle as in all ages were inevitable, for without these necessary "evils,", there was no place for the human spirit to flourish. Yet, somehow others are able to experience the universal ideals of peace, resolution, just victories, and fulfilled needs (both personal and worldly), while experiencing and conjuring seductive power through hearing great masterpieces of music.

English composer Benjamin Britten possessed this same universal gift as Nielsen (i.e. evoking the muses) but his worldview was one of a conscientious objector and a pacifist. In Britten's apocalyptic testament of protest, called the War Requiem, he used the power of his music alone to serve (for those who cared to listen) as the ultimate deterrent to the atrocities and outrage of the act of war. Many people who have heard this piece feel that the poems of Wilfred Owen, which were used as texts for some of the work's graphic soliloquies, are aided a thousand-fold by the music. Britten truly channeled the muses for his purpose. Owen, by the way, was an English soldier who died in a trench just one week before the Armistice in Europe was signed. Owen’s heart-wrenching prose, taken from his letters and diaries from this period, is painful to read, and infinitely more painful to experience when set to Britten's music.

An ongoing problem of music relates to the "chicken or egg" dilemma: Does music serve the words, or do the words serve music?

As a person born into a highly musical family, and one who has experienced music in thousands of guises and purposes, I have felt that it is truly music that is the noblest of all arts. For no other art form appeals to more senses as does music.

So what is music?

"Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence."
-- Robert Fripp, guitarist of King Crimson

"Music is nothing separate from me. It is me.... I think you'd have to remove the music surgically."
-- Ray Charles

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.... I get most in life out of music."
-- Albert Einstein

"Music - The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend."
-- Ludwig van Beethoven

The late Leonard Bernstein said once so wisely to a large assembly of young people in Carnegie Hall in New York: "Music isn't about anything; music just is. It’s tones, notes, chords, pitches, motives, nothing more. Just bricks and mortar."

This is a sobering thought when we are forced to strip music of its more human elements. For Bernstein, these elements were merely vehicles for some greater presence to penetrate and bring to life.

Why and how does this art form affect us so much? Is there some way to explain it in scientific terms? Music theorists have attempted to explain this phenomenon by boiling it down to analyzing Hertz vibrations, waveforms, the harmonic series and audible overtones. But this always falls short of an explanation about the spiritual reaction and release of emotion that occurs when humans are moved by music. Even the most pragmatic of people have at least once in their life acknowledged that a certain piece or cultural genre of music was "great." If it is great, then the pragmatist might be held responsible for answering the question "why is it great?"

Practicing musicians experience perhaps a deeper understanding of the answer to this question, if not only because they are constantly probing the mysteries of finding an appropriate expression for their audiences.

I can say that there are some scientific universals, but here is not the time or place to summarize the field of ethno-and bio-musicology. Those academic efforts are post-modern at best, and the more we delve, the more we find that this question of "universals" is really unanswerable.

Let us then not deal in absolutes or futile attempts at finding anthropological realities, but rather let us delve into spiritual experiences and expressions from the past and present. For this is where music as a form of worship comes into play.

Let me summarize briefly how the ancients experienced music:

Beginning with the hunter-gatherers… From archeological findings, scholars have surmised that music was a form of practical communication. For example, a tusk from a woolly mammoth was made into a horn that could be blown to summon or warn the other clans or tribes. Also, sticks and skins could be made into drums. Drums have come to emulate and symbolize, in just about all cultures since that time, the human heartbeat. It probably was not long after the hunter-gatherers when humans discovered a certain organization of these sounds to make what was the first abstract music.

In early agrarian societies, drums and song were most likely a spiritual balm for the tedium of daily labor. In this case, music made one more productive. (This by the way, has nothing to do with the overstated and crude "Mozart effect" fad that has permeated American pop culture in the past 10 years.)

For both of these two mentioned societies, music was doubtlessly used during battles as a way of inspiring people to continue in their struggles. Centuries later, one may recall the case of the bagpipe as the ultimate in aural terror!

Almost immediately, human civilizations required music for religious ceremonies. This has always heightened the spiritual experience, and has acted as an important catalyst to help human beings commune with the Divine.

In the area which is now China, the philosopher Confucius (551-479 B.C.) regarded music as essential in maintaining order in the universe and in human society. Also, Emperor Han Wudi, who reigned from 140 to 87 B.C., went so far as to create an Imperial Office of Music.

The importance of music in the lives of the Ancient Hebrew peoples is well documented in their history and scriptures. Psalms were sung during religious ceremonies in the form of call-response (soloist followed by congregation) or antiphonally (one group followed by another). Also, wind, string, and percussion instruments are mentioned very clearly and graphically in the Hebrew bible, especially in Psalm No. 150.

The Early Greeks considered music to be of mathematical and cosmic significance as well, hence the concept "Music of the Spheres." Pythagoras, the mathematician of Samos (circa 500 B.C.) discovered the frequency proportions based on mathematical principles that define the divine logic in the intervals we still hear today (such as the Octave, 5th, 4th, and 2nd). Pythagorean philosophers believed that these ratios also governed the movement of celestial bodies and other cosmic matters. Thus, music came to be revered as the highest of intellectual, spiritual, and artistic pursuits. Many literary references exist that describe the role of music in Greek culture and the effects of music on human behavior. Greek philosophers considered music to have great psychological and even supernatural powers. The "Doctrine of Ethos" maintained that different types of music could affect human behavior. For example, music in the Dorian mode (an early scale) would cause persons to become reasonable and contemplative. Conversely, music in the Phrygian mode would cause persons to become passionate and belligerent. Orpheus, one of the great mythic figures of Greece, was said to have the power to move objects and influence the gods with his music. The sound of certain instruments were also considered to be very powerful. For example, the lyre and the kithara (both stringed instruments) were said to evoke reason and were linked to the worship of Apollo, the god of reason. Similarly, a double-reed instrument known as the aulos apparently evoked passion and was linked to the worship of Dionysus, the god of ecstasy.

So, how is all of this relevant to today, and how do we follow these ancient examples in order to commune with any supposed "musical deity" as a form of worship?

Might I be so bold as to suggest that music IS for me the voice of God. I cannot prove this to you, but I can only relate to you through relating to you some very personal experiences. These were revelations to me and to several of my professional musical colleagues, many of whom exist as atheists and agnostics.

One of these agnostics is my father, a microbiology professor (who is himself an accomplished amateur musician). Never once in my life have we ever prayed together in an organized religious sense, and that is not likely to ever change. However, one day I discovered that our religion had been under our noses all the time. In one unforgettable instance, my father and I marveled and closed our eyes simultaneously (as if in prayer) while listening to the last movement of Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. He and I have agreed that this piece is one of the great gifts to civilization. Its primeval iconoclastic classicism represents clearly the tragic irony and dichotomies of the human experience. While we listened, a certain presence (or "Geist" if you will) was unmistakable, and there was no question that we were worshipping at this moment. Since then, music has been an essential glue that has bound my family together.

The late Dr. Jacob Bronowski in his book The Ascent of Man (of course he means both men and women here) made into a video series, makes a statement on information and responsibility and its moral dilemma to scientists. In the one segment called Knowledge and Certainty, he states that the principle of certainty in physics must apply only to verifiable knowledge. At the same time, Bronowski examines the implications of bombing Japan at the end of World War II. Then, in what seems initially like a random manner, he juxtaposes the humanist traditional principles of the old Göttingen University with the inhumanities of the holocaust. At the very end of this particular segment, Bronowski wades in a shallow pond wearing an expensive suit and shoes in the middle of the death camp at Auschwitz. This was apparently the place where the ashes of the several hundred thousand victims were washed away and became one with the earth. He then sifts through the mud and, in a symbolic way, recalls the tortured spirit of his own family who were all murdered during in the holocaust. Normally, Bronowski spoke in elevated academic language, but this time, he said a few unscripted words, and was eventually left speechless. At this moment in the film, music could only speak his words. Perhaps it is the power of the music that was chosen that made this television moment so famous. If I recall correctly, the music played was the final section of Jean Sibelius's 7th and final symphony, certainly music of divine inspiration.

Music is for me the only evidence on earth that telepathy really exists. Very often, coinciding images are conjured in my head when I hear music. For example, in Sibelius's final orchestral work and what I consider his final testament, called Tapiola (named after an ancient pagan Finnish forest god), there is one moment toward the end of the piece where a series brass chords had always evoked a vision of a dark reddish-purplish human heart pumping blood slowly and calmly. This always caused me to close my eyes every time I listened to it. In 2002, when I was researching Sibelius's personal effects, with the permission of the Sibelius family, I ran across a small piece of paper dated 12 Dec, 1943 transcribed by Sibelius's son-in-law who was a conductor. The paper translates as "Sibelius said: At this spot, the horns must play 'from the blood of the heart.'" There is a footnote on the same piece of paper written two weeks later that says "Sibelius said: It chills my bones every time I think of this passage." One might think of this as the result of a "universal language" called music, but for me the matter is even deeper.

In the 1960s, Stravinsky visited the small apartment room in Switzerland where he had composed his towering masterpiece Le sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring] in a sleepless manic spurt of inspiration in 1913. When Stravinsky returned to this place, he was awed, not by himself or by his own achievement, but by the fact that this "holy" place represented a shrine to his art. Stravinsky's exact words were "This is the room where Le sacre was composed, and I am the vessel through which Le sacre passed." As a musician, I (trying not to appear as a superstitious fanatic) believe this statement to be of the utmost truth. Notice that Stravinnsky considered the artwork itself to be divine, and not himself. More specifically, the art has a way of "writing itself" through divine logic. At least once in our lives, we as humans are moved to bend and sacrifice ourselves so that we can allow some great work (artistic, charitable, religious, humanitarian, or otherwise) to pass through us. When it's over, we are changed, but it's still possible to go about our business as we often do.

Many philosophers over the centuries have related that music communicates where words fail. Imagine an art form where the normally shy or mute person is finally allowed to experience emotion. This was the case with me, a person painfully shy by nature, believe it or not, but through music, my shortcoming was defeated. I speak for many people who agree with me that music is our vehicle, our voice, and our holy vessel. We plainly and clearly are worshipping through music.

AMEN.