where is your night music?

January 14, 2012

Just got back from the latest symphony concert. Any casual reader of this blog knows that I am hopelessly music-dependent. I can get into just about all forms of music, but we have been season subscribers to the Kansas City Symphony for many years. Tonight, guest conductor Jeffrey Kahane directed the orchestra from the piano as he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 25 in C Major. After intermission, he and the orchestra tackled the formidable Rachmaninoff syphony No 2 in E Minor.

Sergei Rachmaninoff 1873 -1943

You may not care a lick about classical music, but you have undoubtedly heard the music of Rachmaninoff and been stirred, even if you had no idea who wrote or performed the music. I promise you that is true. I was certainly stirred tonight along with many others in Helzberg Hall at the Kaufman Center.

Here’s a quote that got me thinking. When asked about the nature of music, Rachmaninoff answered, “What is music? How does one define it? Music is a clam moonlit night, a rustling of summer foliage. Music is the distant peal of bells at eventide Music is born only of the heart and it appeals to the heart. It is love. The sister of music is poetry and the mother – sorrow!”

Sergei Rachmaninoff was no stranger to sorrow. Born into the Russian aristocracy, the Rachmaninoff resources were confiscated in the Russian Revolution in 1917. Rachmaninoff sought refuge in the United States but never overcame his deep homesickness for his native Russia. Anyone who has ever been homesick will immediately be drawn into the ethos of Rachmaninoff’s music. Though a musical genius, Rachmaninoff’s first symphony bombed. He waited years before attempting the second, and even then it pained him.

Other composers also found indescribable beauty in sorrow. Beethoven even grew angry and bitter as his deafness grew complete. Yet some of Beethoven’s most magnificent work flowed from the pain of his deafness.

Country may be your thing, but everyone has heard the jokes about country music being about losing your pickup or hound dog. Seriously, you don’t have to even think about it much to realize that history is replete with beauty arising from pain and sorrow.

Job is chronologically the oldest book in the Bible. Looking into Job’s pain, young Elihu did not have the maturity to see all that needed to be seen, but he did have a grip on a true principle. There was nothing untrue about what he said to Job and his three friends except that he was clueless how to apply it.

In Job 35:10 Elihu was upset that none of the older men were throwing themselves down before God in their pain. He said, But none saith, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night.

Yes, God gives songs in the night. Elihu may not have comprehended the depth of that statement, but it is confirmed elsewhere in scripture.

Psalm 42:8 proclaims, Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

The psalmist Asaph said in Psalm 77:6, I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search.

This same thread snakes its way through the Bible, but these few examples give the idea. Sorrow is capable of giving birth to wonder and beauty.

Recently in our Why Church series, we constantly remarked about six characteristics of disciples in the Book of Acts. One of them was suffering. Do you remember the other five? Suffering is used of God in our lives.

Why do we struggle to see this wonderful truth? Could it be that we are quicker to be whiners than worshipers?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Enrique-Ginocchio-Reeves/100000624193979 Enrique Ginocchio Reeves

I read once about people being the “melancholic” type, that most of the music composers are part of this group. It´s one of the misteries of God´s creation, how sorrow gives birth to the most beautiful music, poetry, etc. And remember, the masterpiece of God, the Church, was born of the greatest sorrow in God´s heart: the death of His own Son.
Nic Neufeld

My present focus of musical study is in Hindustani classical music, and there are complex systems of categorization where ragas will be grouped based on “samay”, or time of day most appropriate for the raga, so there are literally ragas that should only be performed in the dead of night. With that, there is the concept of “rasa” or mood that a performance conveys, although other than my own perceptions I’ve got a limited handle on that. But even at the granular level, the swara, or notes themselves, can each have a strong mood or feeling they convey, and none (to me) convey the essence of sorrow more than a mournful komal gandhar, or minor third, whether in Western or Eastern music. Each of the 11 chromatic notes, in the context of a fixed key, has a unique quality to it, to me, that can be difficult to express.

The idea of music as something God explicitly gives to us, as opposed to something we create and give to him (some perhaps esteeming it as little more than a practical vehicle with which to get a congregation to express praise lyrics in unison), is quite a beautiful concept, and it bodes well for musicians to remember that music is His creation, not our own…any more than the music is the creation of the piano, or the guitar, or the bansuri.
Lidieth

Talk about pain and sorrow…Please, Please watch this short video…
http://yucatanmissionsbc.blogspot.com/2011/12/medical-needs-video.html

NO entiendo porque es tan dificil lograr que individuos (medicos, enfermeras, dentistas) tengan el deseo de servir a tantos….que no tienen ni salud fisica y mucho menos espiritual.
Please help us!
Lidieth

Jeff Adams

where is your night music?