Tuesday, October 25, 2005

God inspired the trumpet, I think. Humans created it, and have been refining the concept and the material structure of the instrument for hundreds of years now. The trumpet, along with other brass instruments, is unique because of the necessary blend of technique and spiritual quality needed to play well. About three years ago, I was informed about the way in which trumpeters play out of their head, so to speak; apparently there's an inchoate, interior quality, within the trumpeter's mind or spirit, that influences their sound. By this point, three years after the insight was deliverd to me, I have heard the same information from five additional trumpeters, seasoned professionals who work in symphony orchestras.

If you play some other instrument, you're probably familiar with the moment at which the technical aspect of playing fades into the background, into a sort of unconscious yet watchful submerged state. At that point, the music takes over, and no, the musician doesn't enter into a wild state of primal emotive riot (as seen in the erroneous, silly, vapid movie "Red Violin"). Instead, the musician enters a realm of flowing connectedness with musical expression. It's really hard to describe, but once it happens, a musician tends to be hooked, usually for life. That's what happened to me. The experience is, for many musicians, the first glimpse of the realm of the spirit.

The trumpet, and other brass instruments, however, take the musician one step farther, according to players who've talked to me about this. And, listening, I can see the difference between the spiritually-connected brass sound and the other kind. My first experience of spiritually-connected brassplaying came when, at age 13, I first heard a recording by Maurice Andre, delivered as a signing bonus for my membership in The Musical Heritage Society, a mail-order business from which you can order recordings for below market rate. For several years I spent my babysitting money on those recordings, and at the time I didn't know why the music was so compelling. And I'll venture further into this experience with my next post--

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

The intersection of culture and belief gets explored in last May's NY Times magazine; author Jonathan Dee cadences on this: "Most games contain no instructions and only the simplest prelude. You learn how to play by playing. You are faced with a seemingly opaque environment and a confusing, seemingly infinite range of choices. It's easy to despair. What draws us in is our faith in the unseen designer--the certainty that somewhere within that baffling range of options a path has been laid out for us, and to stay in the game we have to find it." He's making a connection between gaming (in virtual realities) and life as it is. This might be a stretch, had he not interviewed a number of Christian game-designers, one of whom says "It really seems that the area of games isn't Christ's territory. It's Satan's backyard. And we're trying to take some of that territory back."

Despite this assertion, I think that gaming doesn't seem to dignify a Christian presence. If, like me, you're not passionate about gaming, you think: Why bother? and then: isn't there something more pressing on which to spend your time? And isn't it a bit dangerous to go where you don't need to go? So I wonder: where's God in this? And if anyone has an answer, I'd be interested in thinking about it--

Friday, October 14, 2005

The influence of music, which I mentioned briefly in my last post, keeps coming up in conversation lately. For instance, I was persuaded to acquire the CD "Lean by Jarre" which contains film music and some other scores composed by Michael Jarre for the films of David Lean. When planning his films, Lean wanted music that would make the audience feel, and enhance the emotional subtext of events onscreen. This is old news to film buffs and composers, but it gets me thinking about music's power. Some of us can feel ourselves being manipulated when watching a film whose music is particularly heavy, emotionally. But I don't feel manipulated by, say, Mahler's First which I was just playing, or by music of Brahms (depends on the conductor in that case, for me), or for that matter, by Holst's two Psalms for voices and orchestra. Why is that? Am trying to decide.

For the last couple years, I've been transcribing music (usually for voice, sometimes for voice and orchestra) for brass ensembles, and the results are, to my ear, striking. The emotional impact of the music changes when transcribed. So the instrumentation, with its colors and textures, makes a big difference in music's emotional impact. Other musicians I know have commented on this also. The sound of a particularly fine trumpet playing a line formerly carried by a vocalist can intensify the impact--though in other cases, in other lines of music, the vocalist may be more powerful in impact. This has to do with the range, I think. My earliest experience with effects of range occurred when I learned how to play in certain high reaches of the violin's E string, and found tears coming to my eyes because the timbre reached back into some place behind my eyes and incited a feeling--not sadness--something more ineffable. This effect did not occur with each high note, but only with certain ones. I won't get any more technical at this point, but I do think that instrumental timbres and range have a huge effect on most (sensitive?) listeners. This effect can be good or evil, and it's powerful enough to be worth some more thought.

Then there is music whose effects on me are definitely negative. For instance, rap music (no offense to anyone--this is a matter of personal taste): When I hear rap music in passing, deluging forth from open car-windows for instance, I feel anger and bitterness and nebulous hate in the texture of that music. And when I'm in a store and there's certain kinds of music on the store stereo, I might begin to feel so bad that I have to leave. Often I don't even know what group or person is producing the music. On one or two occasions I've tried to let students of mine explicate certain kinds of music to me, such as Heavy Metal--or even Christian Heavy Metal--and the effects are still bad, despite my attempts to bring intellect to bear on the listening.

Today's quote: Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Mahler's landscape of spiritual and emotional journeyings is represented in each of his symphonies; in the Fifth Symphony, effusions of melody erupt from the harmonic texture, evoking emotional and spiritual response. Of course it's not so good to confuse the two. But emotion and spirit are connected, and that's at the root of music's influence upon the listener. Whoever opens themselves to the tonal palette, to Mahler's effusions, opens themselves to subtle and incremental spiritual impact. That's why my choice of music is so vital: I can feel its effects on my mind, and throughout my being, for days at a time.

Granted, I'm a particular intense listener. As a schooled musician, I hear any music, or any sound for that matter, in terms of multiple relationships of style, pitch, tone, allusion, and so forth. When I hear a sound, I figure out what's making it, then maybe I think it has a certain pitch. While listening to music, I open so many parts of my mind that, if I dislike the music's effect on me, I react as strongly as most people would to a bad taste in a forkful of food. Some time ago, I began selecting music specifically to help me think, or feel, or recover from an event. Aesthetic enjoyment plays a big role in my listening process--which is not entirely conscious though more so than many peoples' listening--and. while I'm not entirely on Plato's side when he says we should ban any art which isn't good for us, I do think that I choose music that's good for me. It's interesting to observe that there's not much music which is "bad" for me--perhaps that's because I'm a classically trained musician, and that shapes my listening too.

What's "good for me" changes with my interior landscape, but there will always be certain kinds of music and sound that I find "bad for me" especially in terms of my spiritual orientation, since I'm a Christian. I'd like to explore this further in another post at some point.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Just how "Christian" is it to engage in liberal/conservative battling and bashing? Just how sensible is it? Just how intellectually engaging?

In my view, the battles and the namecalling have degenerated to meanspiritedness and chop-logic in all too many cases. Hypocrisy lies in wait for the Christian who gives in to temptations to be defensive, to lash out at different thinking. Discern we must, but to judge is often to take a step too far. So, I decided to experiment: I'm touring blogs that might self-refer as conservative, and I'm reading, and reaching out with comments designed to avoid defensiveness and spark discussion.

Here's what I'm finding: some blogs feature an exchange of hostilities, like the one I visited where a Christian blogger and her nameless opponent spend words regrettably, calling each other "stupid" and "crazy" and "damned". Some blogs encourage a balanced, amicable discussion: hurrah! Some blogs evince a cautious testing of the waters. I'm intrigued, so I'm going to continue my experiment.

Then I found a link to a convention of Christian bloggers: GodBlogCon. That's intriguing. I might attend, if the schedule is workable. But whether I attend or not, I'm thinking that it's absolutely vital for Christians to start walking their talk by reaching out to one another. How can I avoid being a hypocrite? by practicing the love that the gospel advises.