Living Wittily

The Saxophone and Sacred Longing

Last night I was writing a responsive liturgy for one of our Baptist communities. It's intended to invite all those who work and serve within the church to rededicate their gifts of time, energy and ability - and to seek the blessing and strength of God. While all this was happening I was listening to Christian Forshaw's CD, Sanctuary. I first heard this during advent two years ago, sitting outside Parcel Force while Sheila collected our mail, with Classic FM on. The track that was played was 'Let all mortal flesh keep silence'.

I sat transfixed. It was one of those brief interludes when something other than the music is heard, but which can only be heard through the music. It was as if the Holy Spirit pulled up the blinds, and left me with my eyes screwed up against early streaming sunlight. And that moment was recpatured last night, as again this stunning piece of music simply opened my eyes - the eyes of my mind, the eyes of my imagination, the eyes of my soul - whatever part of us it is that needs to be opened in order to see the glory and beauty of what always lies beyond our senses.

Christian Forshaw is the Professor of Saxophone at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. One of his great passions and current interests is music as an experience of purity and intensity, particularly as music within the context of worship.

'I first began working with the church organ in 1995. I was intrigued by the way the saxophone could sit within the sound of the organ, but could also add a far more expressive dimension. The sound of the organ is static once the key is pressed, whereas the sound of the saxophone is ever changing and moving.'

On this disc the combination of human voice, church organ and saxophone make possible enormous variety and subtlety of mood, of pace, of sound. There are episodes of rumbustuous joy and passages of gentle, persuasive assurance; at times I find the invitation to worship which is inherent in this music, an irresistible grace, and at other times the longing and yearning conveyed in tones ranging from the shrill to the plaintive, is more reminsicent of the flickering sun and shadows of the Psalms at their most poetic and disturbing.

The rendering of Come Down O Love Divine, ends with a passage of saxophonic improvisation that expresses my spiritual longing more authentically than any words I could ever write. This is a track of the most sublime sacred music - by which I mean music that makes the sacred not only plausible but audible, not only imaginable but desirable with that desire that is fuelled by the eternity that God has put in our hearts.

The CD can be found on the Quartz website here. You order it from them as it isn't easily available in High St megastores. (Which makes me feel unreasonably and sniffily superior!)

Prayer through sound, but without words

Last night went to a music concert in Paisley Abbey. The music was unfamiliar, but the New Cologne Chamber Orchestra played to a good crowd, in a building brightened by evening sunlight, and it was a good place to be at the end of a busy burst of work in between holidays. I was able to listen without much visual distraction because we couldn't see the performers! A level church nave, a seat well back, and some big people in front of me, ensured this was a primarily auditory experience. And the pew seats were clearly designed to prevent sleeping through anything going on at the front!

The flute concerto was the highlight. I've always found the flute a wistful, playful, gentle sound, which can express all kinds of yearning, joy, loss and love. Looking down to the magnificent stained glass window, brightened by a sunset, and hearing the sound of flute accompanied by strings - it was prayer through sound, without words. Not unlike my description earlier, prayer as 'a wistful, playful, gentle sound, which can express all kinds of yearning, joy, loss and love.'

On a more discordant note - the connection between flutes and drums, in military music, and in the West of Scotland and Northern Ireland, I find offensive. Whether the band is Irish Republican or Orange Lodge, I find the whole performance of marching music commemorating religious conflict inimical to a gospel of peace and reconciliation. One of the most effective exposures of the brutality and hatred that underlies flute and drum music as an expression of religious hatred is in Bernard MacLaverty's novel, Grace Notes. There is a scene well into the novel where the philabeg drums feature as the destructive, rhythmic symbol of the violence they both foment and portray. The flute is capable of such beautiful, creative, life affirming sound, made by the shaped and directed breath of the performing musician - but so likewise the flute can be made to serve the violent, commemorative sounds of ancient hatreds kept alive by musicians performing for quite other reasons. As an expression of religious conviction - on whichever side plays them - they are a shame and an embarrassment.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God - the flute music I heard last night, in the setting of a place of worship, with the sun streaming through stained glass, in a pre-reformation building, was a gentle defiance of all that would pull our human lives into discordant conflict.

Music is feeling, then, not sound

When stopped for speeding Oscar Levant, the American pianist and composer explained, "You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's seventh Symphony and go slow!"

When it was premiered, the critics panned Beethoven's Seventh, one review accusing Beethoven of being as drunk as the music itself when he composed it. I've lost count of the times I've listened to it - and it never lets me down - it always lifts. Wallace Stevens' poem about wistful piano playing says something about the spirituality of music:

Just as my fingers on these keys

make music; so the selfsame sounds

On my spirit make music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound.

Today, driving back from Laura's Teashop at Carmunnock, Classic FM played the whole of that last movement. To my knowledge I didn't speed - but music like that is to me what a double espresso is to some of my pals!! There is a dynamic payload of energy in it that makes Oscar Levant's mitigation plea perfectly plausible. How a deaf composer was able to celebrate and synchronise sound into such joyful, aggressive, in your face vitality I've no idea. Part of the miracle that is Beethoven at his best, I suppose. But for me, Beethoven clinches Wallace Stevens' argument - when music touches deep in our spirits, "music is feeling, then, not sound."

And maybe Beethoven was remembering the critics when he said:

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak

Music is a powerful, persuasive, subversive force in human culture, having a capacity 'to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.' Decided recently to have a summer of rediscovered favourite music and newly discovered shouldn't have missed it first time music. So I've added a sidebar called Music Redivivus - the albums there list the music I'm now making time to listen to. My usual stuff includes Baroque, Beethoven, assorted Country - mainly female vocalists, Joan Baez and bits and pieces of other stuff. So I've asked several folk to give me the name of a CD they think would help me recover from my self imposed philistinism and restore a sense of cultural connectedness!! Over the next couple of months I'll occasionally update on my progress on a musical refresher course, curriculum dictated by other people's tastes.

But first, a singer I am revisiting. Several years ago I discovered Carrie Newcomer. Her work was profiled in Sojourners, never a recommendation I'd ignore. I discovered a singer and writer whose major key is hopefulness, who combines faith with justice, and laughter with serious critique of all that makes laughter hard. She tells stories of the hopes and dreams, the struggles and courage of immigrants, single mothers, refugees and others whose place in the world is threatened and whose life chances are made fragile by 'the way it is'. Her songs vibrate with a sense of life's mystery, how frustration mixes with fulfilment, sadness with joyfulness, loss with new possibility. She is a wonderful apologist for music as a deeply formative shaper of moral response and a hopeful worldview. Here's one of her songs from the CD My True Name.

When one door closes another door opens wide
It's hard to believe all of the locked doors I've tried
And you can't pray for what you want or what you'd have instead
You can only offer up your heart and ask that you be led

Life's gonna take you, where you never thought you'd go
When you finally think you've got it down, It isn't so
There are windows and doors, you're not finished with yet
It's not always getting what you want, but wanting what you get
Chorus

It's not gettin' easier, so I'm not going to pretend
That I know this story from it's beginning to it's end
Oh believe me when I tell you, believe me if you can

If I could turn down the noise of my own will and choice
I could hear the truth of my life in a clear voice
I will bow down my head to the wisdom of my heart
Cool my heels and hold on to the best parts

Composing, conducting and performing a human life...

The Russian cellist, composer and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich has died age 80. One of the finest cellists of the 20th Century, his playing so accomplished and passionate that major composers were prepared to compose pieces designed for his playing. In his own view, of all that he wrote and composed, the most important was the letter he sent to Pravda in support of Alexander Solhzehnitsyn in 1970. He campaigned on behalf of Andrei Sacharov, and publicly criticised the authorities of the old Soviet regime. He was persecuted and banished for that - but this noble, humane, composer, cellist and conductor embodied the spirit of freedom and resistance to totalitarianism and the abuse of state sponsored power. In 1991 he even joined Boris Yeltsin in facing down the Communist pusch and defending the pro-democracy movement as the old regime crumbled.

For me there is an almost metaphysical connection between the gifts of composition, conducting and performing music, and the gifts of composing, conducting and performing a beautiful and humanising life. As one young Russian said, 'may his soul rest in peace and glory.'

Rehumanising music

Margaret sent me the following link here which proves beyond all possible doubting, that human beings are beautiful - and that God made all of us for beauty, and goodness and glory.

'Life in a human being is the glory of God; the life of a human being is the vision of God.' (Ireneaus)

Thanks Margaret - to watch this clip is a rehumanising act of admiration for all this human beauty set to music, such passionately hopeful music.