Simple Songs for Psalms

Music alone

     As music accompanies a great variety of functions in culture, it is useful to consider the matter of music itself, isolated from its many uses. First, consider what music is not. It is not waves in the air. Though it has a physical basis in sound, music occurs in the mind, not in the ear. It is not a form of reading, though reading may be employed in producing music.
     We often refer hastily to a music score as music, but it is not. How absurd it would be to attend a concert where the performers simply handed out music scores for perusal and then dismissed the audience!
     Music is often referred to as the “universal language.” Would it were! Alas, our poor world needs a universal language, along with so many other things. Unfortunately, both the “universal” and the “language” portions of that characterization may be questioned.
     As to universality, a person raised exclusively on western music will be puzzled at best when suddenly exposed to Chinese or Indian music. It may be pleasant or unpleasant, but the lack of training in the musical tradition of those cultures will invariably limit his appreciation of it. While it is true that western music has been received in eastern and southern Asia to a remarkable degree, its acceptance cannot be separated from the influence of the whole of western culture in Asia today.
     When one describes music as language, one is employing a metaphor. While there is a sender and a receiver and there is certainly communication, music lacks other important features of language. Music can convey no facts, no imperatives, no wisdom, and no truth. Morally and philosophically, music is completely neutral, utterly ambiguous. Some analysis of the syntax of music as language has been carried out, and there are similarities, but music is lacking in some basic components.
     So, what does music convey or communicate? This is a complex and difficult question, and a definitive answer is probably out of reach. At a minimum, music presents an emotional script, a sequence of sound events in time that triggers a corresponding sequence of emotional states with collateral thoughts and feelings within the listeners. The emotional response of the listener is not fixed, in that a particular tone does not produce a particular mental and emotional state of a particular intensity in all listeners. People’s responses differ. But through enculturation, a degree of uniformity exists, such that most people’s responses are sufficiently similar that they can have the impression of a shared experience when listening to the same music. All such experiences are transient.
     To give oneself over to the emotional script of a work of music is pleasurable. No one, probably, can say exactly why. There is a sense of surrogacy about musical emotions. If the circumstances that produce those emotions arose in ordinary life, one might find the events devastating. In the experience of music, the emotions are safe, disconnected with the surrounding circumstances. One can, through music, experience emotions of great intensity, powerful violence, transfiguring delight, or humiliating despair, all from the comfort of a chair, and then emerge, wipe away the tears, and continue life as though nothing has happened. Such phenomena are intensified where there are words and perhaps a story attached to the music, as in opera or oratorio.
     The communication of higher or conceptual thoughts in pure music is doubtful. Many composers have noted in detail the sources of their inspiration in the creation of a particular musical work and indicated the subject they believe they have depicted. Such notes can be very interesting, and they frequently reveal associations that are informative. But the notion that pure music is in itself capable of conveying such concrete ideas is highly questionable. Moreover, the idea that the music itself cannot be appreciated apart from such knowledge is doubtful at best. (For many years, I have admired and loved Richard Strauss’ enormous tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra. Strauss claimed that in this work he embodied the thought and ideals of the book of the same name by Friedrich Nietzche. Despite the fact that I know this tone poem well, and have also read the book, I am unable to find any trace of thought or influence from the book within the music, apart from the section titles. It appears to me that people can and do fully appreciate the music whether they have read the book or not.)
     Enculturation provides the vehicle for erecting the structure and hierarchy of emotional connections to musical tones and formations. This is learned very early. It then functions life-long as the heart-harp on which the nimble fingers of music strum and pluck, to our delight. Somehow, we become the instrument that music plays upon.

          B. Singing as incarnation

 
Copyright, 2010-2011, by Robert McAnally Adams,
        Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day.
Logo image Copyright 1996 by Shay Barsabe, of “Simple GIFs”, by kind permission.
Send comments to curator@cqod.com.

Last updated: 3/6/11

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