O Gracious Art!

Come into his presence with singing.

(Psalm 100:2b)

 

O Gracious Art, in how many gray hours

When life’s fierce orbit encompassed me,

Hast thou kindled my heart to warm love,

Hast charmed me into a better world.

Oft has a sigh, issuing from thy harp,

A sweet, blest chord of thine,

Thrown open the heaven of better times;

O gracious Art, for that I thank thee!

 

(from “An die Musik” by Franz Schubert,

words by Franz von Schober)

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on Christ the King Sunday, November 25, 2007

Volume 2 Number 20

 

 

The University of Toronto is home to a lush laboratory, lush being an adjective not ordinarily used with the word laboratory.  It’s true, though.  Dr. Sandra Trehub’s lab is no sterile model of antiseptic whiteness.  To enter this lab is to be enveloped by a riot of color — a brilliantly painted mural of trees and forest creatures, purple flowers and wavy green ferns, toys strewn across the floor and oversized orange butterflies and yellow bees dangling on mobiles hanging from the ceiling.  Sound more like a day care than a laboratory?  Yes, but make no mistake, exciting discoveries are being made in this lab.  It may have the appearance of a simulated rain forest, but you won’t hear the cries of tropical birds.  Instead, you hear the crying of babies.  Dr. Trehub’s research is on a quest within the infant brain for the biological roots of music.  

 

Thousands of moms and infants have passed through this facility over the past thirty years, each receiving a diploma for their part in “the advancement of science and the understanding of child development.”  Part of her work has been the history and universality of lullabies, monitoring thousands of baby’s responses to their mom’s singing.   Sandra has scientifically documented the power of a lullaby to decrease stress hormones in the child, and has sought to show that mothers have a distinct pitch when singing to their infants, a pitch not duplicated when they sing alone or even when to other children.

 

Her most significant discoveries have to do with how babies demonstrate music as a universal language.  A test I found particularly interesting is the Anomaly Test, using, for example, the notes of the Western scale of music, do re mi fa sol la ti do (as knows anyone who has watched Julie Andrews glide with arms outstretched through the mountains of Austria in The Sound of Music).  At first the baby seems indifferent, but when an anomalous note intrudes into the recording the baby will suddenly turn its head toward the speaker.  Infants catch on to the Anomaly Test quickly and easily, reacting to changes in various tunes in almost the same degree as adults, detecting even subtle changes in well-structured music.  To be sure, our perceptions of music are shaped by cultural influences, but infants have shown that basic musical recognition is innate and, to a degree, universal.  These studies have galvanized biologists, psychologists, and neuro-scientists to ask, “Is music a part of our genetic makeup, or is it just auditory cheesecake, pushing pleasure buttons.   Fun? Yes.   Inspiring? Yes.   Still, quite unnecessary?” 

 

Count me among those who think it’s very necessary.  Moreover, if you ask me, the results of this study should come as no surprise to people of faith.  If I might use the Anomaly Test a bit differently, it seems clear that at precisely those moments in our lives that might be described as Anomaly Moments – sudden moments of surprise and transition – we own an urge to experience the presence and power of music.  Music approaches the level of sacrament at major transition points in our lives, reaching into the core of who we are as human persons and evoking response. In the Anomaly Test of human nature, we need music.  We need music at those threshold moments when we are leaving one experience to embark upon another.  Music helps us cope with such moments, bolstering us with courage to face the unknown, reminding us that others have gone this way before.  

 

This may be as simple as the ritual of singing “Happy Birthday.”  You are about to leave the age in which you’ve resided for a full year to embark upon a new experience.  Whether you are turning ten, fifty, or ninety, you are headed into an arena of life you’ve not yet seen.  Music helps you make that transition with a smile, with the joy of knowing others who care for you.

 

We ritualize music, not only in the playful celebration of birthdays, but at other moments of anomaly in our lives.  We graduate seniors into a new existence with Pomp and Circumstance.  We wed lovers into marriage with The Bridal Chorus as the bride crosses the threshold.  And we bury our dead, committing their bodies to the ground and their spirits to God, with music.  Perhaps we sing Amazing Grace, or How Great Thou Art, or Rock of Ages, or Hymn of Promise, not for the deceased, but for our ourselves, we who will step out of the chapel into a new experience of life without this one who has been by our side.

 

These are Anomaly Moments of our lives, thresholds in which we step out of the known into the unknown.  Music helps us navigate such transitions. 

 

This same principle is seen at high schools and colleges throughout the country when the school’s fight song is struck up by the band at intense moments, urging the team to victory in the next crucial, game-determining play.  Music, you see, possesses power to usher us into our next challenge, to pump up the adrenaline, to diminish fears, to relieve tensions, to boost our sense of solidarity.   Remember the dramatic shift that occurred in our lives on 9/11?  How well I recall the men and women of Congress gathering on the steps of the Capitol to lead an entire nation in the singing of “God Bless America.”

 

There is yet another moment of anomaly when humans crave to hear music as a means of transport from one place to another.  We are all sharing that moment right here, right now.  When we gather to worship God, we come out of the ordinary rhythm of our lives, passing through a foyer of preparation (think of the foyer as a place of detoxification from the world) into a sanctuary.  Foyer comes from French foier, fireplace.  It is as if, coming into the foyer, we pass through the fire, the dross of the world removed so that we enter the sanctuary cleansed, ready to meet God in the symbols of our faith.  Coming apart from the world, entering upon the sacred, is such an anomaly that we recognize the need to have music navigate the crossing of this threshold into the divine presence.   That’s why Psalm 100 admonishes us, “Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth.  Worship the LORD with gladness; come into his presence with singing . . . enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.”

 

Musician Miles Hoffman writes of playing for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., that he and his colleagues shared what he called a “regular, little joke,” turning to each other just before a long piece and saying, “See you in forty-five minutes.”  They meant to say that they would be lost for this hour, that music would take them to another place.  I think it should be just so in worship.  For this hour, we are removed into another place.

 

Through the centuries, Charles Wesley has helped us do precisely that.  This morning our choir and congregation have sung a few of the nearly 9,000 hymns written by Wesley, celebrating the 300^th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest poets of the English language who, with his brother John, was one of the founders of Methodism.  Through Wesley’s music we have Come Into His Presence with Singing. 

 

We Methodists have it in our genetic make-up, I suppose.  Perhaps that’s why Garrison Keillor wrote: “We make fun of Methodists for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of giving offense, and also for their secret fondness for casseroles.  But nobody sings like them.  If you were to ask an audience in New York City, a relatively Methodist-less place, to sing along on a chorus of ‘Michael Row the Boat Ashore,’ they will look daggers at you as if you had asked them to strip to their underwear.  But if you do this among Methodists, they’d smile and row that boat ashore and up on the beach.  And down the road!  Many Methodists are bred from childhood to sing in four-part harmony, a talent that comes from sitting on the lap of someone singing alto or tenor or bass and hearing the harmonic intervals by putting your little head against that person’s rib care.  It’s natural for Methodists to sing in harmony.”

 

The sounds of music touch us at a basic level of our human existence, nourishing our most primal needs, opening us to experiences beyond our notions of self-limitation, and calling us to a higher response than we may have thought ourselves capable.  Simply stated, the sounds of music lure us into the domain of the sacred.   Perhaps that’s why music is our companion in joy, our balm in sorrow, our inspiration in tragedy, and our confidence in uncertainty. 

 

Music has, quite literally, a Presence.  Sound and touch are the only sensual stimuli that literally move us, that make parts of us move.  Sound can be a form of touch, reaching out and putting its arm around us.  Life is movement and movement necessarily brings anomaly.  Music can literally get us moving again when we’ve been stunned or stilled by sadness. 

 

Consider again the words of Franz Schuber, a thank-you note for music:

O Gracious Art, in how many gray hours

When life’s fierce orbit encompassed me,

Hast thou kindled my heart to warm love,

Hast charmed me into a better world.

Oft has a sigh, issuing from thy harp,

A sweet, blest chord of thine,

Thrown open the heaven of better times;

O gracious Art, for that I thank thee!

 

 

Sources:

‘Music to the Ears:  Babies uncover the universal language of music,” by Althea Blackburn-Evans, in Edge: Research, Scholarship, and Innovation at the University of Toronto, Spring 2002.

 

“The Genetic Mystery of Music: Does a Mother’s Lullaby Give An Infant a Better Chance of Survival?” an article by Josie Glausiusz in Discover, August 2001.

 

“Music’s Missing Magic,” an essay by Miles Hoffman originally published in The Wilson Quarterly, from The Best American Spiritual Writing 2006, Philip Zaleski, editor.

 

“Invitation to the Soul,” an essay by David A. Cooper in PARABOLA, Volume 19, Number 1 (Spring 1994, The Call).