There's Power In The Song

From The Christian Reader:

There’s Power in the Song


by Eric Rauch



By now, most people have at least heard of Susan Boyle, the unlikely vocal sensation who stole the show on last year’s broadcast of Britain’s Got Talent. Although she’s mostly been forgotten as yesterday’s news, there is something very timeless about her audition. If you haven’t seen the YouTube clip of Susan’s performance, you need to click here and watch it. Take note of the almost immediate change in the attitude of the audience once Susan begins to sing. This clip is one of the most-watched video clips EVER on the internet. There is something purely magical about the whole scenario that clearly illustrates the power of music. Susan’s song in the auditorium that night transcended everything else that might have been on people’s minds. A thousand mockers and skeptics were instantly transformed into fans, and it made no difference that the majority of those people probably weren’t even familiar with the song or the play from which it came. Susan Boyle became an instant celebrity and a roomful of strangers became a community because of one simple song.



It should come as no surprise to Christians that music is an integral part of God’s created order. Thirty years ago, Douglas Hofstadter wrote his much celebrated book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, where he attempted to explain the symbiosis between math, art, and music in terms of patterns and sequences. In the Preface to the twentieth-anniversary edition of the book, Hofstadter writes this: “In a word, [this book] is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter.” While Hofstadter was convinced that his quest for meaning would have a materialistic answer, he was never able to explain how or why these patterns emerge.



A natural and fundamental question to ask, on learning of these incredibly intricately interlocking pieces of software and hardware is: “How did they ever get started in the first place?” It is a truly baffling thing….For the moment, we will have to content ourselves with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than with an answer. And perhaps experiencing that sense of wonder and awe is more satisfying than having an answer—at least for a while. [1]



Hofstadter never seems to be bothered by the limits of his religious commitments and never even asks the question of why evolutionary materialism should even make “a sense of wonder and awe.” If humans are just as much a product of the evolutionary process as are trees and rocks, why should anything in the material world inspire or impress us? How does a notion of transcendence arise in a purely materialistic world? Hofstadter never tells us because he doesn’t have an answer—and never will. His materialism can only take him so far.



Music has been a part of the human experience from the very beginning. Early theologians likened the story of creation in Genesis to a song being sung by a Master Songwriter. Gregory of Nyssa described creation as “a wonderfully wrought hymn to the power of the Almighty: the order of the universe is a kind of musical harmony, richly and multifariously toned, guided by an inward rhythm and accord, pervaded by an essential ’symphony’; the melody and cadence of the cosmic elements in their intermingling sing of God’s glory, as does the interrelation of motion and rest within created things; and in this sympathy of all things one with the other, music in its truest and most perfect form is bodied forth.” [2] Song in Scripture is the language of celebration and deliverance for God’s people. Moses, Miriam, and the sons of Israel sing after they cross the Red Sea; Moses teaches Israel a new song before his death and before they cross over the Jordan into the promised land; David writes Israel’s history into song in his Psalms; Mary’s Magnificat is a song of the covenantal faithfulness of God; Jesus sings with His disciples; Paul sings in chains; multitudes sing in the new heaven and earth. Is it any wonder that music is such an important component of the Christian worship service?



The image of cosmic music is an especially happy way of describing the analogy of creation to the trinitarian life. Creation is not, that is, a music that explicates some prior and undifferentiated content within the divine, nor the composite order that is, of necessity, imposed upon some intractable substrate so as to bring it into imperfect conformity with an ideal harmony; it is simply another expression or inflection of the music that eternally belongs to God, to the dance and difference, address and response, of the Trinity. [2]



In other words, true music is not an escape from the world, but a reflection of it. We do not impose order on otherwise random notes of sound, the sound flows from the Creator to His people. Music is a gift from a God, and a confirmation of His power and glory. We sing because God sings.



It is for this reason that we can begin to understand why music has such a powerful hold over us. As I watched the crowd leap to their feet after Susan Boyle began to sing, I was reminded of a scene from the Cameron Crowe film, Almost Famous. Crowe’s movies are always powerful and memorable because he understands people. Somewhat autobiographical of Crowe himself, Almost Famous is the story of a young kid who gets a job as a reporter for Rolling Stone. The scene that most people remember from the movie is the one from the tour bus, when Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” is playing on the radio.



Just as Susan Boyle moved people through her performance, Elton John’s song is able to cut the tour bus tension. But unlike Boyle, where the audience is mostly passive, the tour bus is active, with everyone joining in on the song. It is nearly impossible to remain upset when a song is being shared. And this is the true power of music: bringing continuity out of discontinuity, encouraging community by discouraging individuality. Music is a tool of reconciliation invented by the Master Songwriter Himself (click here to read more on this).



Notes:



[1] Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books, 1999 [1979]), 548.

[2] David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 275.







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