Choose the music for your religion

Lent 2020 - Day 14

Music is an important part of any religion; ideally its purpose should be to raise the human consciousness to a higher state of awareness, touching Eternity.

Polish Catholicism does not place an important store on church music. Hymns are there to be sung by the entire congregation joining in, so the tunes are basic. Unless there's a choir, hymns are not sung in parts; there's one melody - and often sung at a dirge-like tempo. Even joyous Easter hymns are dreary. Larger churches, in particular monastic ones, abbeys, will have treat their flock to the marvels of polyphony. Mediaeval English church music - Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, still has the power to elevate the spirit in a way that Bądźże pozdrowiona just doesn't.



I also have much time for American-style revivalist Baptist music, both black (think the Rev. Cleophus James at the Triple Rock Baptist Church) and white (ol' timey material bringin' songs of salvation to salve the soul).

The effect that music plays upon our consciousness is partly the result of our experiences, coming of age, dancing, falling in love, musical memories that trigger when the right sequence of notes is played. But strip away memory - are there universal cues that work for you, me, them, everyone? Do specific successions of notes, musical intervals, major and minor keys, harmonies, tempo - do they have the same subjective effect on everyone's consciousness? Are there cultural differences? Is this something we've gotten used to over time? And is it just consciousness - is it biology too? Certainly musical beat and heartbeat have something in common. And why does a minor chord sound sadder, darker - than a major one? It's only sound, vibrations through air, after all...

Music has its place in the mystical experience. Church music should elevate the spirit and put one in the right state of consciousness. Music holds atmosphere, klimat. But not all music equally. Compare the Romantic composers to what came before. Johann Sebastian Bach to me sounds overly mathematical, his music doesn't carry in it an atmosphere that would take me to a time and a place. Fryderyk Chopin's music, however, immediately whisks me off to moonlit water meadows and coppiced willows alongside meandering riverbanks in Mazowsze - just as Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan-Williams transport me to Edwardian England. I have similar strong associations sparked by American popular music from the 1930s to the 1950s. The power of music over our conscious minds transcends the here-and-now.

Listening to T-Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music or Pink Floyd - takes me right back, totally, to the klimaty of the early 1970s. I am there in spirit. And yet I can feel that same momentary spatial-temporal congruence listening to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys' New San Antonio Rose (1940) or Lowell Fulson's Reconsider Baby (1954). And I'm there, I'm back.

Music and memory are inextricably linked and again linked to identity. From Christmas carols to national anthems to dance-floor anthems, we are bound together in communities by music. But is it just a matter of familiarity? Is there something that makes one piece of music intrinsically better than another? Or is it just a matter of taste? De gustibus non est disputandum - in matters of taste, there can be no disputes. Or can there? From any objective measure, a Chopin nocturne is far more sublime than a Disco Polo song.

Science is nearer to understanding how different aspects of music - timbre, tempo, musical interval, tone, beat - in particular, their complexity - is received by the human brain. Instinct will help you find the beat and move your feet. But how a piece of music is received by your consciousness, the nuance of mood, the pictures in your mind - the subjective experience - is a different matter. Today, we're assailed by music from every corner - mobile phone ringtones, adverts on the radio with a simple, whistled tune designed to be catchy; snatches of pop songs in shops.

But can you imagine the silence of the Middle Ages, where your communion with God each Sunday in the village church would bring hymns into your life that you'd hum and repeat over the week while working in the fields, or earlier still, in the African Savannah, literally inventing rhythm and song with the birth of humanity.

And if a tune has with it lyrics of profundity that touch on the essence of what it is to be human - then so much the better.

A handful of pop musicians make it to a higher plane. And usually it is only a handful of their works that makes the cut. Songs of mystical transcendence. Jimi Hendrix was one. His music transcended mere time and place, he is gone but that consciousness will be back again and again, each time at a higher level of awareness, on the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth that connects an evolving universe.

So - in building your own religion - what would be the music played within your temples? What songs would bring people together and take them up towards God?

In my playlist I would definitely include Gorecki's 3rd Symphony in its entirety. Takes me there.


This time last year:
Photo round-up of the week

This time two years ago:
Do the laws of nature govern or describe our universe?

This time seven years ago:
A selfless faith

This time eight years ago:
Ul. Profesorska after the remont

This time nine years ago:
Lent kicks off again, for the 20th year in a row for me

This time ten years ago:
Half way through Lent

This time 12 years ago:
Spring much closer