Welcome to this issue of our newsletter (a 4-minute read)! We are considering the creative activity known as music, first by examining what it is NOT, then by discussing God’s creativity and ours. This leads to God’s commission for human activity, including artistic activity.
We’re finally ready to talk about music. Consider three aspects of music: music is material, communal, and embodied.[1]
Music is Physical
People have said to me “When you play the piano, I can hear the Holy Spirit.” And I think to myself, “That’s the damper pedal.” Music uses physical and material realities, not spiritual or mystical realities. It’s neither magic nor spooky.
Musicians recognize the physical realities involved in making music.
If a singer lacks the proper physical breath or if her throat is too dry, music does not happen. Knowledgeable vocalists walk around with specialty tea (“throat coat”) and an enormous water bottle, staying hydrated because they know how physical it is to make music.
Pianists, too, recognize how their fingers (along with their arm muscles) physically push down ivory piano keys. When that piano key is pressed down, it hammers a set of three metal strings that physically vibrate. The vibrations shake the physical air all the way into a listener’s physical ears. And the listener receives the vibrating air and their brain translates those vibrations as sound.
Again, music is neither mystical nor magical. Music is physical—“wiggly air.”[2] In no way superstitious, music is a set of material, physical practices.
Music is Communal
Music is made in the context of communities. What sort of community? The community is at least the individual who’s making the music and the person who’s hearing it. But we also must recognize the larger context of Western music, of late modernity, and of twelve equally-tempered tones. It is in this culturally conditioned way of organizing tones that Western, modern people like us hear consonance and dissonance in music.
If we were together in a room with a piano, I would demonstrate how certain note patterns and intervals create dissonances that western ears want to resolve in particular ways. Western ears hear tritones resolving out and solfege notes of “ti” resolving up to “do.”
But beyond those small examples within Western music theory, entire pieces of music contain their “meaning” through communal contexts.
How confusing it would be if someone played a recording of Elgar’s “Pomp & Circumstance” during wedding reception instead of a graduation![3] But the piece was written about Shakespeare’s Othello and not used in a graduation ceremony for several years.
Similarly, consider the music that indicates that a bride is leaving the wedding: Felix Mendelsohn’s “Wedding March” from his A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The concert piece was written in 1842, but was not regularly performed at actual weddings until Queen Victoria’s daughter, also named Victoria, used the piece in 1858 for her wedding to Prince Frederick William of Prussia. Now, it is almost exclusively performed at the conclusion of a wedding ceremony when the bride and groom exit the ceremony.
That “meaning” is communal: it did not originate in the intentions of the composer, nor in the initial uses of the piece.
Music is Embodied
The closest music ever comes to serving as a universal language of music can be seen when we recognize how pulsations of music are often related to the rhythms of bodies.
The average heart rate of a sleeping person is between 40 and 50 beats per minute, the average heart rate of a walking person is about 110, and the average heart rate of an exercising person is about 160.
And so we shouldn’t be surprised that music that is meant for sleeping, like a lullaby, is often performed at 40–50 beats per minute. Music that feels purposeful, like a striding and intentional walk, often is performed at 110 beats per minute and music that is meant to encourage cardiovascular engagement is often performed at 140–160 beats per minute.
Science teaches what the mother of a newborn already knows—do not to play the 1812 Overture with cannons when trying to help an infant fall asleep.
Conclusion
How should Christians think about music? It’s not a universal language, but it is deeply related to human bodies. It’s not a social solution, but it is a communal reality. And it’s not a sacrament or portal to the divine, but it is a glorious use of the good physical creation that God has given.
In the next issue of our newsletter, we will explore practical considerations that flow from the work we’ve done!
THE FOOTNOTES
[1] Jeremy Begbie writes, “‘Music’ is to be considered chiefly as a set of material practices, immersed in dynamic and changing communities, inextricably tied to humanly shaped purposes and drives, and deeply embedded in the physical constitution of the world (including our bodies).” Music, Modernity, and God, 7.
[2] Meme from On June 20th, 2018, Tumblr user topherchris (https://topherchris.com/post/175075504723).
[3] The piece was written by Edward Elgar based on a phrase about the military from Shakespeare’s Othello (Act 3, scene 3). He dedicated the original orchestral piece to Alfred Edward Rodewald (1862 – 1903), a wealthy English merchant who financially supported the Liverpool Orchestral Society. The piece was then used as a coronation for Edward VII in 1901. British people added lyrics to it in 1902, “Land of Hope and Glory,” and sing it as departing music for their Rugby team and fans. It was first performed for a graduation in 1905, when Yale University honored Elgar with a doctorate in music and performed his piece at the ceremony.