The Bible and Music

In class on March 26, we discussed John Rutter. He was a conservative with very traditional views. He wrote many pieces with a nice, tuneful melody that always could be described as beautiful and pretty. John wrote very simplistic music, as that was the easiest to make sound light and airy. Strangely enough, although he wrote religious music, he was Agnostic. We learned that he just wanted to write beautiful pieces for others, like the Church he went to, etc. This led us to determine what the true meaning of spiritual is. We decided that it is the nonphysical value or belief in something. The idea of leadership is that you can lead someone to a certain belief even if you don’t believe in it yourself. Music can be physical (sheet music, iPods, CDs, record players, vinyls) or nonphysical (the actual notes we hear). It is transcendent, bringing us to a higher level of existence and reality. It is chemically, physically, and spiritually made. As long as you get involved in the subject for the time being, you can reach that higher level and feel better afterwards, you can create beautiful music if you’re invested.

In class on March 21, we discussed many different topics. We started the class discussing how Mary had sex before marriage, and how that is a controversial topic, because isn’t one of the main points in the Bible not to have sex before marriage? We then discussed Evensong and Cranmer, and the Book of Common Prayer. On one hand, a lot of people believe that you should be able to choose to engage in any activity you want, as it is your life and not theirs to decide. On the other hand, there are people who believe you should follow the Bible on a strict basis and anything out of its bounds is sin.

We then moved on to discuss syllable use and stresses in text. We used the phrase “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior.” We said you can put the words in a way that you are able to keep the flow going. Repetitions are okay in music, too, in order to add length or time to a specific line or chorus. We tend to hold out stronger words because they mean more, but it is sometimes cool to do something unexpected, such as putting a longer emphasis on less meaningful words because it can easily obtain the attention of the listener. You can change the piece as many times as you want, it’s not like you’re locked into one set tone the whole time. Not everything has to sound “perfect,” as long as it sounds good to you and you like it. How are we to decide what sounds higher and lower? We said God or Jesus would have more of a higher pitch because it is talking down to us from a higher power, but that can be different for other people and their perception.

Over the weekend, the most memorable experience in terms of relation to this class was the music I heard at the Easter Service on Sunday. My church is very small compared to most, our average size is from 40 to 100 people each Sunday. We are a non-denominational church and it was founded only 5 years ago. Our small town church is most known for the Harmony Road Band that plays there every Sunday. It is a neat experience because my girlfriend and her mother started the band, which recently released an album on ITunes and produced a CD. The Easter Service stuck with me and one of the main reasons was the music that started the service. I did not realize the impact the first three songs can have on an entire church service and even the message. The songs set the tone and it was interesting that I was thinking in the mind of what I would in our Bible & Music class.

Over the weekend, I celebrated Easter. I went to the Holy Triduum masses, which include, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. During these masses, I really noticed the effect the music can have on a church service. During more somber moods, more quiet and deep music was played. During rejoice times, happy and light music was played. On Good Friday, no music was played in reverence for the death of Christ. I thought it was very powerful to listen to the music and see what you can learn about scripture, through song. It is very cool to see how music can affect the mass and how it adds to it.

I’ve decided to relearn the saxophone as a side project for this class. I played it during my underclassman years of high school. I switched between the tenor and alto variants frequently. I mostly played classical and jazz as classical was required for the art credit and I did jazz band as a side hobby. I couldn’t continue during my upperclassman years as I had too much of a different schedule but hopefully I can restart and work my way back.

The perspectives of the two speakers were very interesting. I’d never been exposed to Part’s music before and I’d never heard or felt anything quite like it. De Pacem was quite a unique piece. The differentiation between the speakers’ content and their observation definitely added another layer to the presentation.

I believe that Ritter could make music for the church while not personally believing in it himself. I’m not personally religious but I enjoy observing the architecture and practices of other cultures when I’m traveling. After looking around on youtube, I realized that I’ve heard his music before but I didn’t know who made it before.

Last Wednesday in class we had two guest speakers come in who talked to us about Arvo Part, the performed living composer today. Part writes spiritual music despite not being spiritual himself because religion was linked to so many negative things for him. He claims that “the most sensitive musical instrument is the human soul” and he writes to make the soul feel. The human soul can be touched by music, and that is the goal of the compositions that Part writes. Other goals he has are to bring religion to people who don’t have it through music.

Part’s music (note wise) is fairly simplistic, often only moving one tone at a time in a scalar fashion and looks “easy” although in practice it is actually quite difficult to play well. He likes to denote two “voices” in his works: the divine and the human. The divine voice is often simple and sticks to a steady pattern while the human voice is more variant moving all around and occasionally hitting the note that matches the divine. In addition to this, the divine voice is lower than the human voice, grounding it.

Class on March 28th brought two guest speakers. I like it when we have the guest speakers because it’s a new perspective on the topic we’re going over at the time and it’s a nice change of pace. I liked that the speakers both were engaging with the class asking us a lot of questions about what we heard and what we thought about the music that we were listening to. I had never heard of Arvo Part before but his music was pretty interesting to listen to. I also was intrigued by the video we watched especially when he was tapping the bells listening to the sound they made. It was clear that he was already thinking about what kind of musical piece could be created out of these sounds and that’s something that is really cool to think about and see happen.

In class on March 26th, we looked at the work of the composer John Rutter. I found it really interesting that he was not of the Christian faith necessarily but was still able to create works that all people in the church could use as a tool for worship. It reminds me of several other artists from the Renaissance who may not have been a part of the church but still painted beautiful works that would make any person viewing the work believe that the artist was indeed a member of the church. The one thing about John Rutter that I don’t really agree with is when he said that he throws himself into the religion of whatever it is he is composing for only for the amount of time he is creating the piece. In my own religious beliefs, we believe that you need to be all in with whatever path you’ve chosen, you can’t just jump in and out of different beliefs. I respect that he believes differently but I don’t necessarily think that becoming a Christian temporarily would make a person a better artist.