“Truth Resounding through Music”...
A review of Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the Word of Music, by Jeremy S. Begbie.
Review by Kara Martin
Jeremy Begbie is an academic, a theologian and a musician, and has written this book to answer the questions: what is music? How does it work? What does it do to us? And what do we do to it? He is an excellent communicator, managing to go into great technical depth, while still choosing wonderful anecdotes and quotes to keep the reader captivated.
He begins with a survey of music in history, looking at the great themes. He deals in detail with the biblical record of music; but the book is particularly fascinating looking at the relationship between wisdom and music.
Pythagoras (6th C BCE) is credited with being the first to discover that number underlies pitch. The story goes that he was walking past a blacksmith and heard the hammering and wondered at why some banging sounds from some combinations of hammers seemed to harmonise. He analysed the weight of each hammer and worked out the mathematical formulae to predict the combinations that sounded pleasant.
Plato is the first to be recorded commenting on the emotional power of music. Augustine, the great Christian thinker of the 4th century, laid the bedrock for Christian thinking for a millennium, linking music to our spirits as well as our minds and hearts. He said music is grounded in God-given order, and enables us to live more fully in God’s creation.
There came a major shift in the 16th century, with the Enlightenment. Until then music had been linked to the cosmos, something outside ourselves. Now the focus shifted, with music seen as meeting human needs and aspirations. Begbie quotes Daniel Chua: “The harmony of the spheres collapsed into the song of the self”. This led to an emphasis on words; and both these changes we can see clearly in the music we enjoy today. Even most worship music tends to be words-focused and subject-centred on our experience of God.
Why does music move us? Surprisingly, it is Martin Luther who can give us some glimpses. In working through his systematic theology, Luther came to five conclusions about music:
• Music and the Word of God are linked, they are both heard, we were created to listen
• Music embodies order, something we instinctively yearn for
• There is natural music in all created things, for example birdsong, or even a bubbling brook
• Music has the power to commune with our spirit, both teaching us about God and drawing us to him; and
• Music is a good gift from God, bringing joy.
Some of the finest musicians were people of faith. Begbie highlights several, especially JS Bach. Another to be highlighted is the French composer Messiaen. Messiaen was captured by the Germans and put in Stalag 8A during the Second World War. Fortunately he had access to a piano, and he was imprisoned with a violinist, a clarinettist and a cellist who were allowed access to their instruments. In pondering the war and his situation, Messiaen had a deep encounter with God that led to the writing of his Quartet for the End of Time, which was first performed at Stalag 8A in the dead of Winter, 1941. One of the prisoners commented that the music transfigured their misery into something sublime.
The last section of the book deals with a Christian ecology of music where Begbie is working on how music relates to Christian faith and to culture. He has come up with three themes:
• Creator = we have a generous and extravagant God who creates beauty and enjoys being worshipped
• Cosmos = we join the rest of creation in voicing praise to our creator
• Calling = this inner urge to worship God is our calling.
Music is part of all this. It’s as if God has put a song in each of our hearts, and we muck around with different noises until we find that this song only makes sense, only sounds beautiful, when it is sung, in unison, to God. This is also why music has the ability to heal and inspire. God’s song is through all our being: body, mind, heart and spirit. Music brings us to life, and reminds us that we have hope beyond our present circumstances.
This is a wonderful book full of heart-warming wisdom, and to be honest I could only understand half of it! There is so much depth of musical analysis that I, being musically naive, can only appreciate at a distance, while a reader involved in music would get much more out of this book. My regret is that Begbie could have done some more analysis beyond classical music, although his themes cover every aspect of music. Some more tools for interpreting the popular music today would have been a helpful addition. I loved the idea of music teaching us how to live fully. Play on!
KARA MARTIN is a lecturer with Macquarie Christian Studies Institute (www.mcsi.edu.au), and is an avid reader and book group attendee. Kara does reviews for Heart 1032’s Open House (www.theopenhouse.net.au).
