The Bible and Music

This past weekend, I attended The Passion Play at Purdue University. This play has typically retold the story of Easter. It talks about the life of early Jesus, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. After talking to someone that I know who worked on the set of the play, they said that it has been a pretty traditional play. It never really strayed away from the long-established story of Jesus Christ/Easter.

This year, they did a parallel story of Jesus’s life and a man that got caught with heroine. For some of the play, they did a split stage. On the right side of the stage, the story of the heroin addict took place. On the left side of the stage, there was the story of Christ. This did not happen very much though. The only times that they really had both stories going at the same time was when the trial was going on and Jesus was on the cross. The other time that there was a split stage was when Michael (the heroine convict) was learning about the story of Jesus. As someone was narrating the story, the actors from the biblical side were acting it out.

So after I shared that, I want to talk about the new plot of the play. The man, Michael, gets drug out of his house in the beginning of the play. He is taken to jail on account of dealing heroine. Once he is in his cell, his cellmate, Eric, convinces him to a religious meeting because if you go, you get free cookies. So, Michael and his cellmate go to these meetings, and get their free cookies. As a non-believer of Christ, he did not care to really listen to the pastor at the meetings; however, the more he went, the more he started to really listen and believe in God.

As the story continues, so does the story of Michael and his jail story. So, he ends up having to go to trial. He is given the option to plead guilty or plead innocent and have to go to trial. Eventually, he ends up pleading guilty for the climax of the play. When he is pleading guilty on the right side, Jesus is getting crucified on the other side of the stage. The lights all shine on him with bright blues and then dark reds. Then, the stage goes dark for a while.

The stage lights come back on and it finishes with Michael. His wife leaves him, he pleads guilty, and he is now a believer of Christ. While the Michael comes forth and shares his love and faith in Christ, the side acts out the resurrection of Christ. I feel as if the resurrection of Christ and the moment when Michael admits his trust in the Lord is significant. The newly Christ can represent God’s “new” love in another human.

I also liked the music in this play. There was a wide array of songs. Some sad, some upbeat, and some slow. I was not familiar with any of the music that was played. They had an experienced choir, a children’s choir, and individual soloists. They never used any straight verses straight from the Bible (or songs that you would hear in church) but it was more of an interesting connection between the Bible and music. It reminded me of the soundtrack in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Altogether, I am very impressed with this play. It was something I had never seen before. It was powerful, new, and exciting. I highly recommend this to anyone.

When class started today, I was terrified. There are exactly 2 places I sing: In the shower, and in the car. So when I was told I would have to sing a song, that I wrote, not going to lie, a little extra heart beats were happening. However, once I got up and started talking it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I enjoy public speaking, so just talking to start made the whole process a lot easier. It was cool to see my classmates get into the song that I wrote. When the claps started, the nerves just went away.

Writing my final project was not easy. To start off, I was in Milwaukee for the tournament. I wrote about half of the song an hour before the game. I was listening to pandora while working, and the song “God Your Mama and Me” by Florida Georgia Line came on. I thought that the song “God Your Mama and Me” was a perfect song to base a song on. My favorite Bible verse is John 3:16. So I just thought of what I go through in my everyday life, and I just wrote a song that God has a plan and has a place in Heaven waiting for us some day. This verse gives us hope that no matter what we go through, there is a better tomorrow coming.

The final projects shared in class today were very interesting. I was a big fan of Matt’s musical composition. He showed a lot of courage singing his piece even though he claimed he was “terrified”. He even got the class involved in his song. I also  found it inspiring how a class that is filled with mainly all non-music majors are able to create music regardless of our natural gifts. I believe that everyone has musical talents, they just express them all in different ways. For example everyone that took a verse or verses from the Bible and put them to a modern day song displayed the musical gift of composition. We are all musicians!

For my final project I created a musical piece on Garage Band. I Psalm 103 as my scripture for this musical piece. Instead of singing Psalm 103 to a modern day song, I created my own instrumental and essentially did a narrative of the verse with the music playing in the background. The music I created was inspired by the tone of the verses I used. The verses in Psalm 103 are reflective, calm and appreciative. I tried to create a musical piece that modeled these characteristics. I used the electric piano, a subtle bass and used female voices in the background. Creating this piece was both fun and meticulous. However, it was nice to be able to take some time away from my other classes to do something that challenged my creative side of my brain rather than my analytical side.

For my final project I recorded a video of myself playing  “Hallelujah”  on the piano. My favorite part of the class this semester was the intersection of popular music and the Bible. The intersection intrigued me, especially once I worked on the scavenger hunt project and found more examples of music that was not explicitly Gospel or Christian music, but more in the secular sphere of the music industry. I found a beginner’s sheet music on”Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, a personal favorite of mine that makes multiple allusions to the Bible and God while remaining in the popular music industry category. I practiced the melody over the course of a few days, bringing me back to my 5th grade days when I was forced to participate in piano lessons for a brief stint. However, it was fun to tinkle the ivories and play a classic rock melody for the class.

For my final project, I set Jesus’s words in the Garden of Gethsemane to one of my favorite songs, “Skin and Bones” by David Roch. The words were very easy to set to the song. However, the actual construction of the song was rather difficult. I could not locate an instrumental version of the song, so I did my best to take away the vocals of the song. But I was not completely satisfied with the result. I worked on this project a lot last week during holy week of Passover and Easter, so it seemed fitting to use the words of Jesus in the Garden. I used passages from Matthew, Mark, and Luke to construct the words to the song, and my friend Alicia was kind enough to sing the words for me. It was a very challenging project, and I now have a greater appreciation for composers that do this on a regular basis.

This final project was extremely hard for me. I’m not good at making music and especially not singing. Ultimately I recruited a couple friends and a couple bottles of wine and went into a piano room at Lilly at made music. We recorded a piano piece separately (bless my friend who’s a great piano player) and then added the voice (bless the same friend who sang louder than me) and came out with a song. This definitely made me leap outside of my comfort zone and I credit my friends and the wine for a lot of that.

On Saturday, April 15th, I went to see Too Many Sopranos put on by Butler Opera Theatre in Schrott. The story features 4 divas who are invited to sing for the Heavenly Choir, but only one of them is able to have a spot. This is because all the men have been damned to Hell. They discover a Redemption Clause, however, that if they go down to Hell and complete a selfless act, they will be able to bring back as many men as they need/want. This show intersects with the Bible and music in that St. Peter is a main character, and the story backs themes of redemption. As an opera, music is used to reinforce the story, so many songs were about descending into Hell, as well as being excited about being in Heaven. My favorite song was similar to a Spiritual, which was the song about the divas descending into Hell.

Overall, it was an entertaining performance that used humor and music to engage a new audience with opera.

As I approached the final, I began a little confused and worried that the piece I was tasked with creating had to be able to play as an audio file. But after talking with Dr. McGrath, I learned that this was not an essential part of the assignment. I was so relieved because one of my hesitations was that I would have to learn how to work a software, which could have limited what I was able to do for my project. I was scared that if I had to learn a software I would turn in a project that didn’t meet my own standards.

However, I am pleased and proud of what I was able to accomplish. After some back and forth, I ended up selecting Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen to set a biblical text to. I chose this song because I think it is similar to 5 songs in one, due to all the tempo changes. This made for a really fun process of working with the text to play off of the emotion from the different sections. My original idea was to set the story of Moses, found in Exodus, to the music, but I wanted to tell the story in chronological order. This proved to be not a simple task, and I ended up changing my idea. Instead, I set the Book of Esther to Bohemian Rhapsody, and I think I am prouder of this end result than I would have been with Exodus.
I was able to include all the key players and events of Esther’s story in my song, although I wish I could have included more of Esther turning in Haman to the king. I think this happened simply because I ran out of music. I still have a line where Esther holds her banquets, but I do not have the king sentencing Haman. I think that this choice still tells the whole story through music, but it does not include the detail that I read in the text.
Overall, I am very happy with how Esther Bohemian Rhapsody turned out, and if I had to do this project again, I think I would still choose Bohemian Rhapsody to put a biblical text to.