Sabbath Thoughts: The Moral Power of Music

Green Bottom Wildlife Management Area, WV  ©A. Rutherford

Plato, the great Greek philosopher, gave much attention to the place of music in the moral education of the child:   “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”   

“Music,” Plato says, “is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.”  And “Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.”

In the poem “The Solitary Reaper,” the great English poet William Wordsworth tells a simple tale to express the power of music on the human soul.  The poet is out walking in a rural setting and comes across a young girl swinging her scythe as she reaps a field of grain.  And as she works, she sings.  He doesn’t understand her song, as she is a “Highland lass” no doubt singing in her brogue and her words are unintelligible to him. No matter . . . it is the expressive mood of her song and the emotions that it evokes in him that are of importance to the poet.  Its fluid beauty stirs a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” in him, which Wordsworth has said in another context is the heart of Poetry. . . this same spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings that is at the heart of Music as well, and Art, and Beauty in all its forms for that matter.

THE SOLITARY REAPER

          BEHOLD her, single in the field,

          Yon solitary Highland Lass!

          Reaping and singing by herself;

          Stop here, or gently pass!

          Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

          And sings a melancholy strain;

          O listen! for the Vale profound

          Is overflowing with the sound.

          No Nightingale did ever chaunt

          More welcome notes to weary bands                           

          Of travellers in some shady haunt,

          Among Arabian sands:

          A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

          In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

          Breaking the silence of the seas

          Among the farthest Hebrides.

          Will no one tell me what she sings?--

          Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

          For old, unhappy, far-off things,

          And battles long ago:                                       

          Or is it some more humble lay,

          Familiar matter of to-day?

          Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

          That has been, and may be again?

          Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

          As if her song could have no ending;

          I saw her singing at her work,

          And o'er the sickle bending;--

          I listened, motionless and still;

          And, as I mounted up the hill                               

          The music in my heart I bore,

          Long after it was heard no more.

In the first stanza, he invites us to take note of the girl in the simplicity of her surroundings, in tune with her rustic setting, responding to it quite naturally in song.  “O, Listen,” he invites us.  And the way in which he issues the invitation causes us to understand that there is meaning and significance here, a lesson to take note of.   In the second stanza, he compares her singing to that of the nightingale and the cuckoo, as though her music comes as easily to her as their song does to the birds, part of her innate nature and her personal expression.  In the third stanza, he wishes he could understand her words, speculates what might be the content of her song, and yet it is clear that she is communicating with him, human being to human being.  He is deeply affected by her melody “whate’er the theme,” and pauses for a while to drink into his memory what he has seen and heard.  The last two lines are a comment on the power of beautiful memories to soothe and sustain the soul.

  The music in my heart I bore,

          Long after it was heard no more.

The poem is a meditation on Art and the power of Beauty.

__________a__________

"Education is teaching our children to desire the right things." Plato

"The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful."  (Plato, The Republic)

Psalm 100:2   “Serve the LORD with gladness;
         Come before His presence with singing.”

Psalm 42:8   “ ... In the night His song shall be with me,
My prayer unto the God of my life.”