9-18-23<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been a few small denominations that discouraged music in worship, just as there were sects that outlawed sex. For similar reasons those groups seemed to perish, disappear… and are missed by few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Music is a part of humans\u2019 souls. Mysterious in its way because not everybody has the talent to create tunes\u2026 or perform well\u2026 yet we all respond<\/em> to music. Those who \u201ccan\u2019t carry a tune\u201d (and some people cannot) still enjoy listening. The most hardened people find their hearts softened when they hear a familiar melody. Songs are composed to win lovers and to send boys to war; to bond and to bind; to remember\u2026 and, by diversion, to heal and forget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am not aware of a survey, but I figure that 95 per cent of songs are love songs. Tennessee Ernie Ford once was asked why he sang so many Gospel songs and not more love songs, and he answered, \u201cGospel songs are the greatest love songs of all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instrumental music is, to me, the most mysterious, and profound, of all music\u2026 all of all the arts. Abstract, yet specific in intent. And musical notation is a language all its own \u2013 a universal language. Composers who begin their work with blank staves\u2026 and finish with \u201csounds\u201d that can move us literally and also move us to tears and smiles… perform a kind of miracle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johann Sebastian Bach took those blank pages, and before beginning to compose any work, wrote \u201cJesus, help me\u201d at the top of the first page. When the composition was finished, he wrote \u201cThanks be to God\u201d on the last page, acknowledging his source and strength of inspiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quirky denominations aside, all cultures, in their social and religious practices, have relied on musical expression. The Bible overflows with descriptions, and endorsements, of joyful music. In Genesis 4 Jubal is identified as the ancestor of \u201call those who play the lyre and pipe.\u201d Elsewhere, Elisha commanded, \u201cGet me a musician,\u201d wherewith a blessing was delivered. David, the “Sweet Singer of Israel,” ministered to Saul by playing music at night, much as Bach\u2019s Goldberg Variations<\/em> were composed to soothe those who sought rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martin Luther, the great reformer and preacher, was also a composer (for instance of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God<\/em>) and he defended music in church: \u201cThe devil does not need all the good tunes to himself!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the most important American historians are those who have studied and recorded (including literally) the folklore and folk music of the American past. I was privileged to know (and play music with, even past his 100th<\/sup> birthday!) the legendary Wade Mainer, whose banjo-picking style influenced Earl Scruggs years before the Bluegrass Sound was born. To hear his stories of rural North Carolina, and hear the songs he and his wife Julia (whose stage name back in the day was Hillbilly Lilly) sang together was like walking through history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A friend recently reminded me of the excellent book and movie Songcatcher<\/em>, about those who kept those musical traditions alive. One of the characters mused about the \u201cthread\u201d of a favorite song, perhaps \u201ca touchstone with the past \u2013 a remembrance of all the singers who had ever kept a story alive on the strength of their music, and that singing the ballad was a chance to join that chain of voices stretching all the way back to across the ocean to the place where the families began.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, music hath charms. It is the case, of course, with mighty hymns as well as humble folk tunes. May I provide an example?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is a video of a performance of the hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee<\/em>, which was composed in 1841. Its meaningful words were set to music by several people through the years, including Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). Its words were on the lips of President William McKinley as he died of an assassin\u2019s bullet \u2013 imagine an American president today having this as his last thought? \u2013 and by legend, as The Titanic<\/em> sank, Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s former military aide Archie Butt directed the ship\u2019s musicians to play it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this video, Andr\u00e9 Rieu conducts his Johann Strauss Orchestra, plus 400 brass players and a hundred singers in a performance of Nearer, My God, to Thee.<\/em> The audience of thousands is a mixed, international group in an open square in Maastricht \u2013 and the hymn is performed without words, the singers chanting. Does the audience miss the significance? Not counted by the emotions, and tears, on listeners\u2019 faces!<\/p>\n\n\n\n To hear this hymn, even once, impresses the powerful words on one\u2019s mind, carried by the music. And the reverence of this elaborate performance\u2026 confirms the Power of Music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In words written in 1697 in William Congreve\u2019s play The Mourning Bride, <\/em>“Musick hath Charms to soothe the savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.\u201d And it can lift souls, and carry us somehow Heavenward too:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee! E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me, Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet in my dreams I’d be Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n