Music as Worship, Part II

Sermon

Last year, I began a series of sermons called "Music as Worship." I embarked on this fascinating spiritual exploration with the premise that music for its own sake is a sole form of worship for some people who may not normally consider themselves religious in a traditional Western sense, Western meaning that they may have a sanctuary, congregation, code of beliefs, dogma, or a set of principles that they share with an organized group of people. Many great musicians have been pantheists, but often they have been comfortable with glorifying the predominant religion of their local culture. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Brahms's German Requiem are classic examples of this. In the last sermon, I also revealed to you that I am one of those people who worships the divine in sound (praises God through music, if you will), and I gave some evidence of a real spiritual presence that can emerge in humans when we experience music. The musicians themselves, and perhaps those who are serious professional listeners, often understand that something truly telepathic and supernatural is happening here. Granted, all of this is enabled by anthropological, genetic, and chemical impulses that make up our cultural and physical realities. Nevertheless, musicians are often brazen and bold about what privileges they feel they have over others. This naïve contentment is translated into happiness and elation, and if channeled properly, is transmitted to others in the form of a beautiful performance.  A musician's deep love for their art will shine through in the form of positive energy that the listener may experience on that exact same spiritual level. National Symphony music director Leonard Slatkin calls this "The Happy Virus." The communication from the composer (sometimes deceased) to the listener via the performer is this actual telepathy that I mention.

Today's sermon (Part II) is dedicated to American composer Steve Reich, who turned 70 years old last Tuesday.  Reich has become within the last 35 years an icon of the so-called "minimalist" group of composers, more specifically those who dwell on repetition, abound in non-Western steady rhythmicity, gradual evolving sonic processes, and incessant consonance in their music. The movement emerged out of the late 1960s, and Reich was always at the forefront of it.  His more popular counterparts include Terry Riley, Morton Feldman, John Adams, LaMonte Young, and Philip Glass.  Glass, who turns 70 next year, has achieved a greater general popularity through his commercial and film music. For this reason, and perhaps out of sheer jealousy, Glass has suffered so much idle ridicule from other struggling academic composers, and from people who've often never even heard a note of his music. The most popular joke has been "Knock, knock…Who's There? Philip Glass. Knock, knock…Who's There? Philip Glass. Knock, knock…Who's There? Philip Glass."

My intention this whole weekend (which includes last night's concert given by the Great Noise Ensemble) was to encourage you to go beyond the surface of this music a bit, and to explore how it works, and to try to find what was intended from a spiritual perspective. One of the perennial challenges for the church musician is always to provide a spiritual and meaningful juxtaposition of varied styles of music while hoping that his/her listeners are able to dispense with the simple or idle explanation for any piece of music. Granted, I do agree with Duke Ellington's immortal yet non-specific statement that "If it sounds good, it is good," but Ellington didn’t intend to let us in on his secrets about music's spiritual mechanics, let alone the secrets of how he composed or improvised. In that subject, let us probe the spirit of Reich and Glass, first by diving into their lives.

Reich and Glass, both of Jewish parentage, studied very carefully the religions and music of non-Western cultures. They each took different spiritual paths personally as well as musically.  Reich was the one who retained traces of his Jewish heritage in his music, with masterpieces like Tehillim and his opera, The Cave. Reich had visited Ghana and became enraptured by the West African styles of drumming, particularly that of the Ewe people, which was the primary influence for his one and a half hour long piece from 1970 called simply "Drumming." In it, he broke several boundaries for the Western listener. The virtue offered for the listener was to exercise their patience (with a capitol "P"). Before 1970, two musical currents dominated the West: 1) Popular music with its notorious short attention span of 3-5 minutes, and 2) Condensed and obtuse academic music that was never meant for the average listener to "enjoy." Reich was a salvation figure for many people who viewed music as having a different purpose, and one that is not only musical, but taking on a more visceral dimension.

Glass has been more candid about his religious experiences. In the 1960s, he left for Northern India to pursue a new life as a Tibetan Buddhist, and came into close contact with the Dalai Lama in 1972, and shortly after started a long collaboration with Indian musician Ravi Shankar. It can be said that this experience in India was the true spiritual impulse of all his later music. He renounced his earlier music as useless. He became reborn, so to speak.

In a minimalist work, a piece physically begins, but something about it gives the impression that it is not a beginning, but a continuation from something that began lifetimes before. Development happens, but not in a way that Westerners might be accustomed to. The music evolves slowly. A texture or sound is repeated, then one note may change, creating a new texture or sonic universe. Then, another change happens maybe 45 seconds later, but in another voice or instrument, creating a new sonic universe. Somehow the piece must end at some point, but what the minimalist does is simply cut the music at the end of a phrase without any sense of punctuation. This slow evolution is quite foreign to Western music, but part and parcel with Hindu music.

Regarding universal vibration, we have OM (spelled A-U-M or O-M), the most important sonic transcendent reality in Hinduism and some sects of Buddhism. According to Hindus, OM is evidence of the divine, the infinite Brahman, and of the Universe. In minimalism, the sense of this temporal constant is always present. The music is hypnotic because of this repetition, because the OM holds everything together.Perhaps Philip Glass was so drawn to Buddhism because evidence of the divine is in the form of sound (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Unitarian Universalism allows us to use the word God in place of the divine in this context, if we so choose). We don’t see the divine as an image, but we feel, touch, and hear the divine all through the other senses. I would go further to say that I have tasted the divine in restaurants in Paris and Strasbourg, France, but that may be the experience of someone who happens to be a chef. As a conductor, though, I have encouraged musicians to "taste" the sound as I do. In Claude Debussy's La Mer, I have been able to taste the salt of the ocean as the musical waves crash, spray, and dissipate around my face. For me, this is clearly reflected in the musical substance and Debussy's subtle orchestration, one of many "musical miracles" that I have experienced. Returning to the multiple life cycles, I mentioned to the children earlier in the service that we can experience these cycles profoundly in our lives. Every mistake we make or tragedy we experience is a small death. The grieving process ensues, and slowly we are healed and morphed into a different form. The spiritual journeys found in Hinduism, might suggest that with each death and rebirth, we are improved and move one step further toward enlightenment and Nirvana. After each small death and rebirth, the cycle continues. Of course, the long journey toward enlightenment is the most important part of the process, whether we are western or non-western. The point of view is very important here, and missing this is tragic in my view.

I believe that Steve Reich and his friend Philip Glass hold a very important place in history. They both have been true pioneers in fusing the understanding of Western musical culture to various musical cultures of the rest of the world. Of course, there are many others that each of us know. John Lennon's interest in Ravi Shankar's music in the 1960s is but one famous example.  But if we have learned anything from Reich and Glass, it is that of a profound global view, one that provides a true catalyst and right of passage for understanding non-Western musical cultures as diverse from our traditional emotional responses to music.  If all that we learn from them is that we must be patient (in the sense that "My God, when is it going to end"), then that may even be the first of many steps toward exercising one of our important UU Principles "a free and responsible search for truth and meaning" and drawing upon one of our Living Traditions, namely "Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life."