Music and Morality 4: The Problem of Culture

In my first course on Gregorian chant, Fr. Gerard Farrell, OSB, spent one class on the affects of the modes. The idea is that Mode 1 (in modern parlance "Dorian," the scale that goes from D to d using only white keys on the piano) connotes joy, strength, and so forth, whereas Mode 2 (same notes, but utilizing a lower range) connotes mystery, reserve, reflection. While the distinctions are not completely universally valid, there is much to be said for them. It is not a coincidence that the antiphons for the Divine Office of Easter Sunday are almost entirely set in Mode 7, the mode said best to connote exuberance and rejoicing.

When I mentioned this once to a novice who had studied ethnomusicology, he laughed out loud. It would seem, from the perspective of this modern and very useful discipline, that these connotations are strictly the work of inculturation and bear no intrinsic value. In modern music, for example, we often distinguish 'major' and 'minor' triads and keys by linking them to feeling of happiness and melancholy. Does this not happen simply because from an early age, we sing happy songs in major keys, (Happy Birthday, Jesus Christ is Risen Today) and darker songs in minor keys (Pray for the dead... Beethoven's Fifth)? Could we condition ourselves to hear keys in different ways?

In support of this cultural relativism, it is often pointed out that what was considered a noisy racket a generation ago is mainstream today. Fifty years ago, Ed Sullivan would only broadcast Elvis from the waste up. His music sounds almost silly compared to the hard rock and heavy metal trotted out today. When Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" was premiered, the crowd rioted. Today, we hardly bat an eye at the harsh sounds demanded of 'new music' orchestras, that is, if anyone attends the concerts.

This phenomenon of novelty creating a stir is not itself new. Here is a quiz: guess the century of this quote and the style of music being condemned:

Indeed, when such practices are taken to excess, they can more rapidly stir up the urgings of the lower regions of the body than devotion in the mind.

Answer: John of Salisbury (ca. 1150 A.D.) condemning the polyphonic compositions at Notre Dame of Paris, the distant forebears of the music of Palestrina, today held up as the style closest to Gregorian chant in appropriateness for the Divine Liturgy.

In attempting to assign affect to musical practices, are we really dealing merely with a case of de gustibus non disputandem est? Must we simply learn to put up with 'other peoples' preferences' and be suspect of our own, rather than holding ours up as exemplary and risking insensitivity or even musical colonialism?

Much of what I hope to write in this series will deal with this difficult question. In fact, there are two ways of attending to this problem. The first, which is somewhat easier perhaps, is to acknowledge that communities do, in fact, inculturate their members and ought to. Communities cannot survive, and by extension individual human beings cannot survive, without common standards of behavior. In any community, there will be a tradition of music which will be used to elicit proper emotional response in certain circumstances and also music whose use will be highly circumscribed or even outright prohibited. In such a case, we can limit ourselves to studying the rules of specific cultures or communities and see how music is linked to the passions by conditioning (see the previous post), and then draw conclusions about the morality of the use of music within this particular culture or community. I intend to do some of this, but we must admit that it veers somewhat close to moral relativism or situation ethics, that any type of behavior can be justified given the right circumstances. From a more positive perspective, I intend to treat the Church as a highly specific culture in which the restrictions on music are higher than they are when we function as members of our respective cultures in the world.

However, my own conviction, one that is backed by recent scientific studies about the biological effects of music and sound on the human body, is that certain musical gestures bear intrinsic moral weight, so that there are absolute rules for music that would transcend culture. This possibility is more easily entertained if we share some assumptions regarding the ordering of the cosmos. I hope to write on this aspect of the argument next. For today, we can restrict ourselves to obvious points. Loud sounds, especially when alternated with quiet sounds, can damage the human ear and tend to provoke irritation that disposes to violence. Loud sounds are also effective for announcing the threat of violence, as is the case with many car stereos today. Long exposure to steady rhythms has been shown to alter mental states, with the tendency to provoke a lowering of normally maintained personal boundaries, both physical and emotional. And so on. It is well established that certain styles of music assist the body and mind in healing (Pythagoras believed that certain illnesses could be cured by playing the flute; modern science has confirmed the underlying idea!).

Today, advocates of health food, non-smoking bars and green consciences are only too happy to make it moral obligation to restrict what is put into our bodies. Why is it considered controversial to suggest moral restrictions on what we allow into our ears?

Music and Morality 3: the Passions

I have asserted that music is related to morality by way of the passions, and so some reflection on the nature of the passions and their relation to the moral life is in order.

According to Fr. Jordan Aumann, O.P., "The passions are movements or energies we can use for good or for evil, but in themselves they are neither good nor evil.  When placed at the service of the good, the passions can be of incalculable assistance, even to the point that one could say that it is morally impossible for a soul to arrive at great sanctity without possessing a great energy or passion directed to God.  But when placed at the service of evil, the passions are converted into a destructive force that is truly terrifying ." [Spiritual Theology, p. 184]

The passions are related to what we more normally call 'emotion', which is perhaps the better and more neutral term, derived as it is from the idea of motion or change, in distinction from the word 'passion' which connotes something unwillingly undergone.  In monastic tradition, the word 'passion' usually has this darker connotation, and the goal of the spiritual life for the earliest monastic theorists was in fact 'apatheia', the condition of no longer having to suffer the passions, but instead having control over them by reason.  Th term apatheia is still used in Orthodox moral theology.

St. Augustine contributes to the later Latin moral theology, especially that of Aquinas, with his reflections (perhaps overly grim at times) on concupiscence.*  This is the state in which we find ourselves because of the transgression of Adam: we are not normally able to govern our passions to direct them toward the good; rather, our passions are often out of control and even go so far as to warp our rational abilities.  A person who cannot control his eating is colloquially said to 'think with his stomach', for example.  We lighten the punishment for 'crimes of passion' and distinguish them from crimes committed 'in cold blood', that is, with deliberation.  Of course, I would add to that the deliberation of a cold blooded murderer is usually one in which the passions have been allowed to distort the murderers mind to such an extent that he believes that murder is a good.  Often this happens by the suppression of our consciences when we want something that we know it is not licit to have or when someone stands in the way of our passions' desire.  "Com-passion" would require us to consider the pain we cause our victims and their families, to empathize with the sufferings of others--a good use of emotion, but instead it is possible for us to suppress this natural movement.

This last point is important: we do have some control over our passions.  It is possible to discipline them, so as to eat proper amounts, to make proper use of our sexual energies, to use the energy of anger in order to oppose evil even when such opposition is costly, to feel sorrow with the sorrowing, and so on.  Because of the reality of concupiscence, the disordered present state of our passions, many people today draw the conclusion that we have no control over our emotions: "That's just how I feel!"  Habitually giving in to the passions strengthens their hold on us (we call the eventual stranglehold 'vice'); but the opposite is just as true.  The more we discipline our bodies' energies, the less the passions overrule us.  By consistently choosing the good, we develop the virtues.

One place we have a great deal of choice is in the music to which we listen.  Aside from unpleasant experiences in grocery stores and restaurants, we normally have freedom to decide what type of music we hear, at what volume, and so on.  So if we are willing to admit a connection between music and emotion, then we can help ourselves out, as it were, by choosing to listen to music that strengthens in us appropriate feelings, and we can avoid music that tends to stir up inappropriate feelings.  (I use the words 'appropriate' and 'inappropriate' advisedly, for reasons that I will develop in the next post.)  I have already noted that it is a good for soldiers to hear music that gives them courage and a sense of camaraderie.  If a whole society is listening to this sort of music, however, we might suspect them of being overly bellicose.

I also suggested that much of the popular music of the past 150 years or so tends to generate melancholy feelings, a non-directional sadness of the sort that St. Paul warns against [see 2 Cor 7: 9-11].  Much current popular music can be quite violent.  It should be noted that the phenomenon is not to lead immediately to a dismissal of this music.  Perhaps if we understood better the cultural context of what the performers and listeners to sad or violent music are responding to, we can find a way to redirect the passions appropriately.  For example, as a friend of mine commenting on these posts suggested, gangster rap or contemporary hip hop is in fact often angry at not only perceived injustices in society, but real ones.  That the anger is afterward perhaps misdirected is an obvious social bane, but simply banning violent music will not therefore make us moral people.

Finally, I would add that the passions are often pre-rational indicators of real-life situations.  Most of us have intuitions that tell us when something is wrong before we can identify any tangible danger.  Our initial responses to certain types of persons: attraction, repulsion, warmth, disinterest, are indications of the objective state of our souls and characters.  We must use our reason and conscience to train our feelings to respond lovingly and patiently to all types of people, and the presence of distrust or antipathy can help us to locate the places where we need to grow.  Music can actually help us then in addressing the imbalances of our emotions, used moderately and wisely.

Next: why discernment is necessary in the government of passions and how music is connected to this project.

* The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about concupiscence: "Christian theology has given [concupiscence] a particular meaning: the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason....Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin.  It unsettles man's moral faculties and, without being in itself an offense, inclines man to commit sins.

Music and Morality, Part 2

When speaking of the moral life, we focus on actions.  The science of morality comprises learning to choose actions that are in accord with human flourishing and training ourselves to accomplish them.

This is another reason that we are often reluctant to make judgments about the goodness of music.  When we speak of artifacts rather than actions, it is not always valid to draw ontological conclusions about their moral implications.  Is a knife a good thing?  For cutting your vegetables yes, for stabbing someone, no.  We often can only make moral statements regarding the use of human artifacts.

On the other hand, some artifacts imply the presence of injustice and so will not be needed in the Kingdom of God.  The fact that in the eschaton we shall pound our swords into plowshares suggests that swords, even as implements of justice, are inherently more problematic than plowshares.  By its nature and the purpose of behind its creation, the sword implies warfare, which is a tremendous evil.  Though swords can be used for good in a just war, something of the violence of war inheres in a sword.  Many Americans today instinctinvely feel this way about guns, hoping that eliminating guns will eliminate the violence that a gun implies and facilitates.  Others, perhaps more traditionally, understand that until the Parousia, guns are a necessary tool for the implementation of justice (and more specifically that the Second Amendment asserts that it is primarily the citizens' task--as opposed to a professional government class's task--to ensure justice).  Many vocal proponents of gun control consider the gun evil, but it is still merely an artifact and not an action.

We should also admit that there are certain human artifacts that require evil behavior is order to be made.  Manipulative advertising strategies and pornography would fall into this category.  So artifacts do retain some moral status because they are the product of human action and decision.

Music is unusual as a human artifact in that it must be reproduced in order to exist.  There is a sense in which Beethoven's Seventh only exists when it is being performed or at least heard.  Like theater, it must be brought into existence by the deliberate actions of the performers and sponsors.

What is more, music, more than any other art, directly impacts the passions, which exert powerful impulses toward certain actions and away from others.  Plato was perhaps the first philosopher to expound on this point.  Certain musical modes (or scales), he claimed, arouse bellicose passions, and these were good for warriors.  Other types of modes were more sensual, and these inclined the hearers toward an unhealthy relaxation--bad for the warrior or guardian class.  His arguments are notoriously difficult to follow, since we don't have much evidence of what these modes sounded like (more proof that music depends on performance for existence--these songs don't exist any more).

The Classical composers, most notably C.P.E Bach, Haydn and Mozart, consciously aimed at musical moderation in order to model the restraint of the passions and build up the good character of citizens as understood by the Enlightenment mindset.  In the Romantic reaction, composers such as Schumann, Wagner and Chopin aimed more consciously at arousing stronger passions, believing that artificial restraint was actually less enobling.  It is perhaps worth noting that the Classical composers were paid by the nobility and ruling class, whereas the Romantics began a move toward more popular patronage (eventually leading to academic funding, which has produced, in my opinion, the worst type of 'serious' music).  In any case, the link between music and the passions, and therefore with morality, persisted in common parlance well into the twentieth century.  Though widely pooh-poohed in academia today, the average listeners among quite naturally feel the link when we examine our response to different kinds of music (the fact that these can be culturally conditioned within limits will be examined in the next post).  When Bobby McFerrin sang "Don't Worry, Be Happy," he used 1) a major mode, usually associated with brighter feelings; 2) a gentle reggae beat; 3) a strophic form, implying simplicity, lack of strain or effort.  It would have been absurd or ironic had he used a minor key, a military beat with dissonant trumpets and intellectually demanding counterpoint in this song.

Now that I mention it, it sounds like fun trying to compose a song with those parameters...

Once we enter into the realm of the passions, we are much nearer to moral reflection.  Passions must be properly governed in order for us to make good moral choices.  Anger must be restrained, confidence and joy cultivated, sadness resisted, etc.  Deliberately arousing baser passions makes moral choice exceedingly difficult.  Music designed and performed in order to arouse baser passions thus inhabits something akin to the moral area of, say, pornography or much advertising today (which almost always uses music to help).

Music and Morality, 1

We all innately sense that some music is good for us and some is not; yet few of us are willing to go so far as to say that there may be some music inherently immoral.  In fact, few of us are willing to specify certain types of music or even pieces of music as good or evil.

There is some justification for this, even if social pressures push our reluctance to issue judgments in tricky areas to extremes.  This is surely a tricky area: often times music that sounds bad is simply unfamiliar, and cultural gestures that smack of the obscene in one context are quite acceptable in another.  When we read that many Church Fathers, for example, favored outlawing the flute from Church liturgies, some of us scratch our heads and wonder if they have gone too far.  Certainly we would not be inclined to take such a prohibition seriously in today's Catholic Church; then again, in many Eastern expressions of Christianity no instruments are allowed.

I hope to discuss some of the connections between music and morality with the purpose of exploring whether the Church's tradition upholding Gregorian chant as the exemplar of sacred music is rationally justifiable or simply upheld because of pious associations that chant possesses for the pious.  A group of priests has urged me to write a mongraph on this question, and I've completed enough research at this point to offer some reflections, hopefully without giving away the contents of the proposed book.

I would like to begin by saying again clearly that a 'liberal' critique of musical absolutists has merit, analogous to the legitimate concerns raised by 'situation ethics'.  Both the liberal critique and situation ethics, however, push the idea that actions must be judged relative to circumstances to an embrace of a thorough-going relativism that is equally false and more pernicious.  I mentioned yesterday that the action of hitting someone on the head cannot be said to be absolutely wrong; it must be located in a context with a motive.  Hitting a drowning man on the head to save his life is justifiable.  Hitting the same man on the head in order to kill him is evil.   

There are actions that must always be considered wrong, and this is why God instructs us by the Law.  But adherence to the letter kills; we must press on the the Spirit that illuminates the life-giving Lawgiver.  The Spirit allows us to discern in the tricky cases.  Tough cases make for bad law, but a good understanding of good law makes for clearer judgment in tough cases.

The goodness of a piece of music depends a great deal on what the composer meant to accomplish, and whether he or she is a skilled composer and so able to accomplish what he or she intends.  It depends in the same way on the performers and listeners or sponsors of a performance.  Finally, and perhaps most crucially, it depends on whether the use for which it was intended is the use it gets.  Thus, "The Hokey Pokey" is a legitimate wedding reception song (though had I married, I would not have permitted its use at the reception), but is not an appropriate song to be played at the wedding itself.  Similarly, Gregorian chant is splendid for the worship of God, but it can also be performed at a sports bar.  Not only would this profane the chant, but it would be a disservice to the patrons of said bar.

So if we posit that there is a type of music most appropriate for the Divine Liturgy, this does not imply that all other music for less exalted purposes is evil.  I suspect that this is some of the fear that people have talking about music and morality.  We might have to give up Pat Boone or Survivor or Mariah Carey if we follow moral logic to extremes.  On the other hand, some challenge to our musical tastes should always be welcomed.  I personally believe that listening to lots of rock or jazz (of a certain type) makes one melancholy.  I feel the same about some Wagner, and the Second Viennese School.  While I lack any expertise in this particular area, I have a difficult time persuading myself that Gangster Rap in large doses could produce anything but violence.

From time to time I will add to these thoughts.  I welcome any questions--this is topic normally close to our hearts, and so tends to raise many questions!

Thoughts on "Co-creation"

From an early age, my sisters and I were creative; I thought up my first song on the occasion of my sister Valerie's birth, when I was five. I could still sing it for you, but it is no Mozartian production, so I won't. In any case, without thinking much of it, in my family, we made up songs, games, wrote short stories and such throughout childhood. We would not necessarily have appeared to be artsy family or an American Von Trappe imitation. It has been something of a surprise, as I've aged, to discover that few children have this type of experience. We rarely watched television. At Grandma's house, entertainment seemed to spontaneously erupt after a few post-dinner Manhattans: the accordion, clarinet, and trumpet would appear from nowhere, someone would sit at the piano, and everyone who could would perform German polkas and waltzes. I participated in these 'jam sessions' several times, even though no one ever taught me any of the songs; you just listened hard and figured out what to play as you went along. I fear that I may be the only cousin of my generation to have learned any of these pieces, and here I am in a monastery.

I continued to write music, eventually making a profession of it briefly before my entrance into monastic life. In college, I came under the spell of the Second Viennese School. I can't say exactly what drew me to it, except that the music of Schoenberg, and especially Webern, struck me as something totally new, whereas I had adopted what I now believe to be a naive stance vis a vis 'classical' music, that it doesn't have much variety, and (importantly) that this apparent quality is a bad thing. (My later study of late Beethoven and the Renaissance music of Josquin changed my mind on this point)

I began composing music 'that had never been heard before'. In fact, much of the music I produced at the time (I was about 21-22) is music that I am quite proud of in a good way. Some of it became simply unplayable. Little of it was ever performed, since performance requires other persons to learn the music and an audience willing to listen. This alignment was rare enough that what came of this period of creativity is limited to a few recordings, mostly 'scratch' recordings, meant to be works in progress.

Later, I encountered many others who wished to create music that 'had never been heard before'. I came to recognize this as a kind of temptation. Often times, we can imagine sounds in our heads that in fact correspond to nothing concrete in the world, and therefore this music cannot be heard literally. Often what is meant is that a person has a feeling that he or she wants to evoke with music, but does not know how to do it, and imagines that no music has ever been written to evoke this feeling. This corresponds to the serious difficulty in modern community life of individuals imagining themselves with totally unique feelings and experiences, assuming that others cannot understand them and therefore completely at sea when it comes to making decisions.

As I suggested above, these, I have come to believe, are temptations of the Deceiver, who wishes to divide person from person. This is not to say that musicians should not try to be original. In my better moments as a composer, I recognized that I could not really help but be original; we really are unique persons. But if I wished to communicate with others, I had to use reference points that others could understand. The idea then is to take the materials already provided and arrange them in a new way. The effect might not be totally new, but why shouldn't that be alright?

Creativity in the human person is fascinating to me. Of course, our creativity is always limited by the Creator, Who set the parameters for making new artifacts with created things. The longing to make something 'that no one has ever heard' can be interpreted as a longing to usurp the Creator's rightful place, rather than at least working with Him.

These are preliminary thoughts on a topic that is not yet well formed in my understanding. I hope that it is interesting for anyone reading!

"Shalom" means "harmony"

"There is a lot one learns from music. When you play music you have to express yourself but, simultaneously, you have to listen to what the others are playing. Just think what a lesson that is for life; how our life would be and how our politicians would be if they could think like this. That is why every child should have a musical education."

--Daniel Barenboim
(quoted in The Telegraph online)

Gregorian Chant as Worldview

As I took some quiet time yesterday to listen to music (Shostakovich preludes and fugues) and read some music criticism, I stumbled upon an interesting editorial trying to argue that the decline of 'serious' (i.e. classical) music since 1945 has to do with the growth of state funding of the arts. The argument itself seems lacking to me, inasmuch as artists from Perotin to Beethoven were funded by those in power in some form or other. Add to that the fact that state organizations like the NEA ultimately have very little sway in the economics of music production. But the question of the sorry state of the European classical tradition is one that any music historian has to grapple with.

In a series of talks I gave to Church musicians and clergy in the Marquette, Mich. diocese some years ago, I formulated a theory which is not new with me (I've adapted it from Plato), but deserves a new look. I haven't settled on the final phrasing but the idea is this:

"The music that we choose to compose and perform and to which we choose to listen embodies and performs ritually the worldview that we hold or that we desire to enact."

Let me put that more simply. The music we play and listen to either represents the world as we believe it to be or as we wish it would be (I also believe that music works on us passively, to help us see new worldviews, but that is more controversial). To give some examples: Bach wrote during the explosion of scientific discovery, especially in the hidden laws of physics. The worldview involved the cosmos as a machine, following laws. Bach's contemporary Rameau was the first to articulate a musical theory of harmonic progression, in which the bass line (real notes or implied 'roots') provides the structure for the working out of the melody, which itself often was governed by elaborate rules of key and figuration. Haydn's classicism emerged as the Wars of Religion gave way to Enlightenment rationalism and interest in the Greeks and Romans. Wagner's Romanticism reflected the loosening mores and political upheavals of mid-nineteenth century Europe. Today, can there be any doubt about the connection between grunge and nihilism, rap and violence, 'country' and patriotism?

This brings me to the reason why monks tend toward Gregorian chant. Monks and other church musicians (probably canons) composed this music and have continued to find it useful for centuries. This says something powerful about the enduring and timeless aspects of revelation and the Word of God. What worldview does chant bring into being?

Chant is notable for its sense of order without fussiness or control; ornate melodies that never devolve into grotesquerie; densely channeled passion that remains chaste; playfulness that is never silly and at the same time sobriety that is never self-obsessed or cheerless; rhythmic vigor that matches the stately and simple motions of the Latin Rite; short snippets of tune that suggest vast mysteries of God the Holy Trinity. Chant, in its way, makes credible the Christian Gospel in a manner that more recent (and probably ephemeral) styles struggle to match, even remotely. This is not to say that everyone would be better off doing chant, but there is a reason that the documents of Vatican II accord chant a privileged place in Catholic liturgy. Sacred music should be composed in every age, but if we wish it to perdure, it probably will need some of the qualities enunciated above.

Best Books of 2007 - Music1

"Just in the last 20 years, there has grown up an ability to examine the living brain when people are listening to music or imagining music or composing music and to define--in a way which would have been unimaginable 30 years ago--what goes on in many different parts of the brain when one listens to music, imagines music, composes music, et cetera. Althought I was experiencing both the power of music and the varieties of musical experience 20 or 30 years ago, I couldn't have given it the scientific backing which is possible today."

--Neuroscientist Oliver Sacks in Discover magazine Dec 2007

The fruits of this neurological research in the perception of music are now coming into print. Had I finished Sacks' new book this year, it undoubtedly would have made the list, but an equally worthy book deserves mention this year: Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music.

How do we perceive pitch? How does the cerebellum track rhythm, and why do we find a 'groove' pleasant? Why we do we tend to like the songs of our teenage years more than kids' music today? Why are some people tone deaf? These questions and many others are explored with the new science and given fascinating, if at times conjectural, answers. Levitin is a gifted writer whose encyclopedic knowledge of musical genres gives him credibility when he has to talk about touchy subjects like musical preference.

If there is a weakness to the book, it is his reliance on 'evolutionary science'. Here and there I have made reference to my doubts about evolution being a genuinely scientific theory. I will save comments for tomorrow's post. I will simply note here that we have no way to test that any human trait that 'evolved' thousands of years ago imbued us with any survival advantage. There is simply no way to test such a claim. So I find such arguments unpersuasive.

On the other hand, I have taken a real interest in the neuroscience part. I found Sacks' quote in the recent issue of Discover to mirror my own feelings with the recent spate of books and articles in this area (music therapy continues to be a growing field of psychological research). My ultimate interest is in the connection of music and morality. Trying to argue that music has moral value is often like arguing that space aliens caused human evolution. As one who holds (with almost every thinker before Kant) that music affects us morally, I find these scientific findings helpful. Scientists, after all, are not afraid to weigh in with the possible moral ramifications of other biological and psychological findings. We are regularly given moral lectures on how and when to exercise, not to smoke or eat trans fats, et cetera, and for a legitimate reason. The good of our own bodies and the good of others is affected by what we put into our bodies and our minds. Now we can see some of the results of certain types of music on the brain. This at least opens up some possibilities of giving 'scientific backing' to assertions about music's effect on the human person.

Don't avoid this book because you think that neuroscience and music theory are too cerebral. Levitin miraculously makes it all understandable and even enjoyable. A great book!

Choir as an image of monastic life, part 1

[Chapter talk of May 10, 2007; Prior's note: Mr. Kevin Allen is our choral instructor, who spends an hour with us once every two weeks.]

I appreciate everyone’s hard work at choir practices on Wednesdays. I’ve been reflecting on the exercises and comments given to us by Kevin yesterday, in light of our lives together in community. It is significant that he kept saying the word ‘listen’ over and over again at the end of rehearsal. I wonder how many of us were aware that this is exactly the word that should characterize our Benedictine spirituality. The importance of this was what he used as a contrast to listening and what inhibited our listening, namely: an over-reliance on the literal interpretation of the words and notes on the page, and lack of good physical technique.

In the first case, I in no way am saying that rules and law are unimportant in our life. These guide us in the true path of charity and virtue. However, there is always a danger in monastic life and in the Church generally to make use of the law as a measuring stick to make sure that I am ‘doing things right’, and therefore in God's favor (more accurately, I am in my own favor in such a case). This goes further and extends to measuring whether my brothers are doing things correctly. You will notice that in the past two rehearsals, Kevin has avoided saying anything about what the correct tempo is, other than some vague ideas about the length and direction of phrasing. Rather, what he has insisted on is that we follow the brother next to us and the brother across the room and watch the cantor. Thus it is not so much a matter of being correct as it is being with my brothers. In other words, it is not a matter of the letter of the law but of the Holy Spirit of love and brotherhood. So it should be in all our observances, and I again urge mutual obedience in the life, not in such a way as to overturn the law, but so as to give the law its inner life and joy.

I will say a word about technique tomorrow.

Bonus Gift from God

I once remarked to a choir under my direction, "Music is a free gift from God," meaning that there is no clear purpose for it, except that it is beautiful, sublime. I did this, by the way, while in the employ of a secular university, and realized my blunder seconds after it slipped out, but I couldn't restrain myself.

The thought came to me again this week during a choir practice here at the monastery. I was explaining the idea of the octave to a brother who has trouble hearing it. The beauty of the octave, in the example I gave, is that men and women can sing different notes (technically pitches) and still sing the same tune. How could God not have wanted to sing after He went through the trouble to set up this coincidence? There is no particular physical reason why women's voices are naturally almost exactly an octave higher than men's. Even better: how does it work out that high and low men's and women's voices make up exactly four parts and this is exactly what you need to make harmonic music work? Can all this be the product of blind chance driven by natural selection, as Richard Dawkins would insist? Pardon me for putting it this way, but that would be a real miracle! Which is to say, on this score, evolution doesn't strike me as scientific.

Music touches on so many aspects of life: it is embodied, yet it can be terrifically cerebral, like a Bach fugue or a Beethoven string quartet. It exists in time and so mimics drama and narrative. However, it also mimics space (especially high and low) and can be likened to a painting. It inspires dance and is like motion. Words escape me in describing music.

How have we come to dignify with the name 'music' the stuff that blares from today's radios and iPods?

Retractiones, I

That's a Roman numeral 'one' in the title. The idea for rethinking or clarifying an older post comes, obviously from St. Augustine.

1) Reference to dynamic equivalence: one might get the impression that I believe all dynamic equivalence to be bad or even dishonest. In fact, I don't have a carefully worked-out position vis a vis dynamic equivalence versus literal rendering. I've done enough translating myself to know that one must strike a balance. Attempting to preserve a Hebrew idiom, as we often do in phrases like 'King of Kings', can be of great assistance in reminding us that we are in the presence of a foreign idiom. On the other hand, a literal one-to-one rendering of Hebrew or Latin can be tedious and an obstacle to understanding. An example would be in the use of relative clauses. Both Latin and Hebrew construct them differently than English, and so some effort must be made to adapt. Another different sort of example would be St. John's quirky Greek, in which he often uses synonyms that lack corresponding English terms. Thus, in John 21, Jesus uses two different words for 'love' and two different words for 'sheep/lambs'. Commentators debate whether this is significant. In any case, the translator, I'm afraid, is best off simply translating both terms for love as 'love': to attempt to grasp the nuances of philia and agape would involve adding words to the English and missing the direct speech that our Lord delivers.

Where I object to dynamic equivalence is an exaggerated form of the accomodation that all translators must make. What is exaggerated is precisely the 'equivalence' of the meanings that can be generated from different idioms. The idea is roughly this: that when a Biblical author wrote something that in our cultural context sounds obscure, sexist or otherwise offensive, we can get at the kernel 'what he really meant' by getting rid of the offensive husk. What is ironic about this is that dynamic equivalence is often used in this manner precisely by those who wish to honor the specific cultural understanding and sensibilities of a marginalized group. But they must resort to marginalizing the Biblical culture to do it. Sometimes, we must simply be willing to live with the scandal of particularity, maybe even learn to celebrate it? I'm sure that's not the end of my thought in this area.

2) Marty Haugen and David Haas: I should reiterate that I cannot name for you a single piece of music by David Haas, and all that I remember of Marty Haugen is his ubiquitous Mass of Creation. What I am concerned about, and what these men and their work stands for in my mind (based on the testimony of almost every parish-going Catholic I know), is the danger of substituting wholesale a new form of liturgical music that lacks continuity with the Tradition. I won't pronounce on whether the pop/folk idiom that much of this music takes is worthy of the Divine Liturgy. I will say that it is wholly unlikely that all of it is, and impossible to think that it is all better than music of the tradition (for me, as for the Council, this means chant, Renaissance polyphony and what I would clarify as traditional hymnody, the Mainz-style hymns that Vatican II undoubtedly had in mind, in distinction to the proliferation of radically different styles of hymnody since the Council). A hundred years from now, we will better be in a position to judge the merits of Haugen and Haas. Today, we surely lose something if we refuse to admit the merits of the music handed on to us.

That said, our Tradition is a living one, and so musicians must be writing new music. Again, this is simply to restate the teaching of the Council. What gets left out is the fact that this new music should draw upon the lessons of the past.