conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

the musician's soul

I am working through another book for CPE. I have been through two thus far. The L'Engle book took us to some interesting places. I have spent some time with Paul Westermeyer lately through email and his book entitled Te Deum. It is a great book on the history of church music. It is a significant romp through two thousand years of chant, polyphony, hymnody and Jesus freaks. I would encourage anyone who is a professional church type or takes their church music seriously (not always a common pairing, sadly) to read that book. The Church Musician by Westermeyer as well is a good book. Read it and then write your job description. Wow.

I am now reading through James Jordan's book entitled The Musician's Soul. It is not written with a Christian audience in mind, so some translation is needed to make it apply to what I am after. But CPE is not about being Christian per se, so it will be a good addition. An inter-religious voice may be useful when I present my project in August. Jordan is a musician at Westminster Chior College. I once had fantasies about attending there. That was many moons ago, but I held on to the cd that comes with the orientation materials. Anyway, let us look at the first chapter of his work.

I believe that within every artist in contained, deep within the "soul," a fundamental set of truths; without it, he or she would probably not be an artist. I do not believe that persons who do not practice expression have them, too, but they continually slip away if not uesed. Hence the reason why people sing and play and have a basic love of music and the arts. Innate sensibilitiesabout fundamental profundities of life: birth, re-birth, struggle, separation, trust, compassion, hope and the contemplation of the end of one's life, death. To quote the old hymn, "Give me some old time religion."

The usual line of our conversations on this blog often go deep into the specifics of Christian faith. We are going to have to put that on hold for a while to speak with Jordan. Jordan's main focus in this book is to get musicians, especially his undergrad students, to start thinking in terms of their spiritual lives. Being a good technician is very important, but there are other things at work in the midst of performance and musical creation. He suggests that young artists are hung up on the "how" or "why" of music, but not the "who." He is not speaking of incarnation like L'Engle was, though I am tempted to take him down that road. What he wants artists to do is to bring themselves to the artistic endeavor. Though one might presuppose that this is unavoidable, it is still a concern. According to Jordan, musicians can become too task oriented. This is a pedagogical failure and a cultural failure (chicken/egg). Still, the student needs to learn to bring who they are to the music, to learn who the composer was/is through the music.

His next section is about the regionlessness of faith. I think he is steering away from a polemic, but it is interesting to note.

The fact that one practices their faith as a Fundamentalist Christian, Catholic, Jew, or Buddhist is a matter of choice. What one brings to one's artistic life is one's faith, or more directly put, one's spirituality. If one examines the lives of Bach, Britten, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, Vaughn Williams, and Ives, one can study how they chose to practice their faith. However, if one listens to their music, one hears their faith and their spirituality, never their religion.

How can a musician care for themselves in such a way as to bring their deepest selves to teh art? This is what he next asks. The reason why the faith of these composers is apparent to the listener and performer is because they brought themselves to their music. My thought is that the artist always does this. Thus, sometimes we have drivel. Sometimes profunditiy graces us. Does it matter? Are we ever constantly in league with God, expressing our deepest selves? I am not so sure. That would be sainthood achieved, no?

Maybe if Jesus wrote music, we would get a sense of it. More realistically, I think of Hildgard von Bingen. She prayed with and through her compositions. Taize is a great current example. That is more what I think Jordan is after. Bach had this same gift. Thus he makes the list. Byrd, Tallis...not Rorem (ha!)...Is there anyone else that comes to mind?

Jordan continues with a few thoughts on faith brought to music: "wonder and awe." I could post a quote, but a summary may be better. Unless you have a spiritual life of your own, the spiritual life that is ithe community of composition and performance will never be available to you. Unless you bring yourself, a spiritually enlightened and disciplined self, to the conductor's stand then all you will do will be empty, technical and "soul-less." Somehow our own awe in the face of mystery must be explored. This is both an individual and communal discipline.

If choirs are taught to sing from the origin of their own spirituality, then composers will be given the voice that they truly deserve.

Posted by tripp at January 11, 2005 06:16 AM