Music and Spirituality

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Music and Spirituality
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Revelation All is Number, from The Hidden
Sky

• Music and Lyrics by Mark Foley

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• The Hidden Sky is set in a post-apocalyptic world
  where scientific and technological advancement
  have been outlawed, mathematical computation is a
  heresy, and seeking knowledge is forbidden, in
  order to protect humanity from destroying itself
  again. Ganil, the protagonist, has been recruited
  by a group of underground scientists who have
  taught her mathematics. On her own, she discovers
  a miraculous set of numbers when rendered
  graphically, the series creates a particular type
  of spiral which can be found throughout the
  natural world. Ganil is completely transformed
  by her realization that numbers lie beneath all
  the wonders in the world.

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• From the numbers comes the series,
• Comes the ratio, the Golden Mean,
• The balance and the link between
• The shapes that form the spiral.
• A graceful web around me, weaving all around me,
• Weaving into everything around me
• A graceful web emerging from a single thread,
• And the thread is number, a single thread of
  number.

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• Passing through me, passing under me and over me
• and in and out and then around and back again
• All creation from a single thread,
• That pulls me in my heart, that passes through my
  head,
• That pulls me so I follow where Im led
• On from zero into one and moving higher, passing
  one, two three, and higher still,
• And higher still, and higher to infinity

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• From the spiral in the heavens to the spiral in
  the seashell, from the swirling of the clouds to
  the whirling water, in the cabbage and the corn,
  from the spiral in the seashell to the spiral in
  the rams horn, in the fist, in the ear, on the
  tip of your finger, all is number.
• From the leaves of the linden to the needles on
  the pinetree, in the leaves of the elm and the
  oak and apple, all is number.

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• Oh, I must have been sleeping,
• I must have been sleeping,
• I must have been sleeping,
• But Im wide awake now.
• In the eye of the spiral, all around me the one
  great thought, the one great thought,
• The Absolute, the Truly Real
• Its coming out of my head and into my heart, and
  out of my heart and into my head, coming out of
  my heart
• Nothing is random at all!

• Two petals on the nightshade,
• Three petals on the iris,
• Five petals on the daisy,
• All is number
• All is number

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• Where there is a pattern, there is a purpose.
• There is a pattern!
• There is a purpose!
• An undeniable design

• One mind
• One plan
• One thought

In the spiral in the heavens, yes! In the spiral
in the seashell, yes! In the swirling of the
clouds and the whirling water, yes! Yes!
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• Three petals on the iris, five petals on the
  buttercup, yes! Eight petals on the daisy, yes!
  Yes! Yes! Yes!O, the Absolute, the Truly Real,
  the Beautiful, the SimplicityI believe, I
  believe, I believe, I believe that

• All is number, all is number. I believe, I
  believe, yes! O, the wonder, O the love, the law,
  the Absolute, the Beautiful, the Simplicity, the
  passionate creation of God!

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• I have seen the face of God!
• One plan, there is one foundation
• I believe that I have seen the face of God!
• One mind, behind all creation
• Praise God for my longing heart!
• Praise God for my sacred part in the infinite
  art
• Praise be to the mind of God!
• Praise be to the mind of God!

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• Back before the stars were hung,
• God spoke in His native tongue
• symbol and sign.
• Then the light of the glorious sun unfurled,
• And in symbol and sign, God wrote the world.
• All is number
• In symbol and sign, God wrote the world.

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Objective Reason and Music

• Through a comparison with the deep and surface
  structure of language, Bernstein has argued that
  at a profound level all music is grounded in that
  set of vibrations which accompanies any tone sung
  or played the harmonic series. (Begbie)

Leonard Bernstein 1918-1990
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A tonal analogue of emotive life

• Music can directly symbolize certain feelings
• Complex series of associations of sounds and
  rhythms with
• Bodily functions
• Association with human sounds
• Culturally determined conventions

Picasso Woman with a Mandolin
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Music and Feeling

• The dynamic structure of a musical work and the
  form in which emotions are experienced can
  resemble each other in their patterns of motion
  and rest, tension and release, fulfillment,
  excitation, sudden change, etc. Music is the
  creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.
  (245)

Chagall The Fiddler
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Music leads the mind to the sacred

• by being the bearer or accompaniment to sacred
  words, gestures, or motions,
• by association with emotions characteristic of
  religious psychological states,
• by the manifestation of beauty as the sign of the
  transcendental goal of the human spirit.
  (Viladesau)

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Ambivalent reactions to music

• Pagan associations of music in the ancient world
• Conflict between spirituality and immersion in
  sense experience
• Competition between musical art and the word (28)

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Musics suspect position

• Certain forms of music were associated with
  superstitious and sensual pagan worship.
• Per both Judaism and pagan philosophers
• Music appeared to favor the wrong side in the
  conflict of spirit against flesh.
• Per reinterpretation of Paul in light of Platonic
  thought (15)

Ingres Odalisque
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Real music is celestial, spiritual, and
therefore inaudible.
Plato
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The Music of the Spheres
Boethius
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Liberal and Servile Arts

• Liberal arts effect is entirely within the
  soul (Viladesau 17)
• Music
• Mathematics
• Logic

• Servile arts require an effect in matter (18)
• Painting
• Sculpture
• Architecture

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Audible sound is only a manifestation of real
music.

• To the medievals, all proportion was musical
• Cf. Tillichs Objective Reason
• Cf. Foleys Revelation All Is Number

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The Platonic context of the struggle between
spirit and flesh

• Attracted by the usefulness of song for raising
  the soul to God
• Feared that its pleasures will entrap the soul in
  a lower order of beauty (18)

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Spirit in the World

• In the Christian context, Platonic or dualistic
  objections against sacred music can be met by an
  incarnational theology that holds that the whole
  of human life must form part of spirituality and
  worship. (50)

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Intention vs. refectio mentis

• Per Aquinas, singing has a valid place in worship
  even if the words cannot be understood. (22)

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The tongue without the mind must be highly
displeasing to God

• Aquinas is willing to allow a broader meaning to
  mind and therefore can allow a sacred function
  to music apart from its mediation of the
  explicit, verbal level of understanding. (27)

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The Big Question

• is musical experience merely the emotional
  analogue of sacred experience
• or can music and art in themselves be an
  experience of the sacred?

El Greco Annunciation
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• The object of religious experience is
  ontologically identical with the ultimate object
  of aesthetic or moral or intellectual experience
  (41)

• The experience of finite beautyimplies the
  unavoidable (although perhaps unconscious)
  coaffirmation of an infinite Beauty the reality
  that we call God. (43)

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Sacred and secular

• If what we have said about the nature of beauty
  is correct, then this apologetic function is not
  restricted to music that is explicitly tied to
  religious texts or even to faith. (46)

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The Music of James MacMillan

• Seven Last Words from the Cross
• SATB with string orchestra
• Cantos Sagrados
• SATB with organ

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Seven Last Words from the Cross

• In setting such texts it is vital to maintain
  some emotional objectivity in order to control
  musical expression in the way the Good Friday
  liturgy is a ritualistic containment of grief.
  Nevertheless it is inspiring when one witnesses
  people weep real tears on Good Friday as if the
  death of Christ was a personal tragedy.
• Composers program note

Goya Crucifixion
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Seven Last Words from the Cross was commissioned
by BBC Television and first screened in seven
nightly episodes during Holy Week 1994The
traditional textis based on a compilation from
all four gospels to form a sequential
presentation of the seven last sentences uttered
by Christ. (recording note)
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I. Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do (St. Luke)

• Musical elements
• Instrumental ostinato
• Unifies the whole movement maintains stasis
• Plainsong
• Static, insistent
• Imitative counterpoint
• Discursive, learned historical procedure
• Contemporary harmony
• A juxtaposition of serene contemplation and
  violent emotion
• Intense irony in Palm Sunday text-setting

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• Hosanna filio David benedictus qui venit in
  nomine Domini. Rex Israel Hosanna in excelsis.
• Hosanna to the Son of David blessed is he who
  comes in the name of the Lord. The King of
  Israel Hosanna in the highest. (Palm Sunday
  liturgy)
• The life that I held dear I delivered into the
  hands of the unrighteous, and my inheritance has
  become for me like a lion in the forest. My enemy
  spoke out against me, Come, gather together and
  hasten to devour him. They placed me in a
  wasteland of desolation, and all the earth
  mourned for me, for there was no one who would
  acknowledge me or give me help. Men rose up
  against me and spared not my life. (Good Friday
  Responsories for Tenebrae)

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Cantos Sagrados
GOYA, Francisco The Shootings of May Third
1808 1814 Oil on canvas
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In writing this work I wanted to compose
something which was both timeless and
contemporary, both sacred and secular... the
three poems are concerned with political
repression in Latin America and are deliberately
coupled with traditional religious texts to
emphasize a deeper solidarity with the
poorcomposers program note
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3. Sun Stone

• Poem by Ariel Dorfman
• Juxtaposed with words from the Apostles Creed

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Musical elements

• Text of the poem in sung haltingly, in fits and
  starts, at varying tempos.
• Text from the Creed is sung steadily in the
  background, slowly and without variation in tempo.

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• They put the prisoner
• against the wall.
• A soldier ties his hands.
• His fingers touch him--strong,
• gentle, saying goodbye.
• --Forgive me, compañero.--
• says the voice in a whisper.
• The echo of his voice
• and of
• those fingers on his arm
• fills his body with light
• I tell you his body fills with light
• and he almost does not hear
• the sound of the shots.

• Et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto
• Ex Maria Virgine,
• et homo factus est.
• Crucifixus etiam pro nobis.
• He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit
• of the Virgin Mary.
• and was made man.
• For our sake he was crucified.

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Theological implications

• No one has greater love than this, to lay down
  one's life for one's friends. (Jn. 1513 )
• If someone is killed for resisting oppression
  which is the direct result of our policies, made
  to uphold our interests, then in a real sense
  that person has died for our sins, and that
  persons forgiveness becomes extremely potent.
• The dual approach to rhythm and tempo in the poem
  music and the Creed music implies the
  unchangingness of God over against human
  unsteadiness.
• The simultaneity of the texts evokes Gods
  presence behind worldly events.

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Execution and Martyrdom

• No one takes (my life) from me I lay it down of
  my own accord. (Jn. 1018a)
• Love makes the whole difference between an
  execution and a martyrdom. (Evelyn Underhill
  Light of Christ)