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.

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"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.”

"A Place the Music Played for Me"

"Once upon a time" is no time. . . . In reality . . . it means "at all times, in all places."  It is a declaration, announcing that what you are now going to hear is the Truth.

     —Erik Christian Haugaard, Portrait of a Poet: Hans Christian Anderson and His Fairy Tales

C.S. Lewis on creating Narnia:  "I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal form for what I had to say." 

From one of my favorite books of all time, The Wind in the Willows, a children's book for grown-ups . . . If you have not read it, now is a good time to start  *smile*

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"'It's gone!' sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. 'So beautiful and strange and new. Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!' he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.

'Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,' he said presently. 'O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.'
The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. 'I hear nothing myself,' he said, 'but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.'

The Rat never answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported, trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.

In silence Mole rowed steadily, and soon they came to a point where the river divided, a long backwater branching off to one side. With a slight movement of his head Rat, who had long dropped the rudder-lines, directed the rower to take the backwater. The creeping tide of light gained and gained, and now they could see the colour of the flowers that gemmed the water's edge.

'Clearer and nearer still,' cried the Rat joyously. 'Now you must surely hear it! Ah— at last— I see you do!'

C.S. Lewis once said, ‘the sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.’

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Recommended Reading:  Click on Book to order
Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination, by Vigen Guroian
From the School Library Journal:  "Guroian's aim in this intelligent and persuasive book is to encourage parents in their efforts to "form moral character in the young" through stories that are rich in moral messages and Christian mystic vision."

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Music as an Avenue of Beauty

©Greg Ferrell

I could not blog about Beauty without spending some time thinking about the moral power of beautiful music.

As another of the God-gifts, music can inspire, music can soothe, music can heal, music can remind us of who and what we were created to be.

If the shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story, let me illustrate with a bit from The Shawshank Redemption.

Andy DuFresne is an educated man, a banker, condemned to life in prison because he was wrongly convicted of a crime.  In the film the prison environment, including that of its overseers, is seemingly hopelessly corrupt, a situation in which it would be very easy to lose one's integrity, even one's soul.

After he is assigned to work in the prison library, Andy begins writing a barrage of letters asking for donations for the library to keep his mind alive.  Although this angers the corrupt warden and guards, who are  not interested in rehabilitating the prisoners but rather using many of them in their own corrupt schemes, Andy persists.  In one shipment of books, he finds a recording of Mozart, which reminds him of the missing beauty in his life.  Because of his position of trust, he has access to the warden's record player and loudspeaker.  The brief clip below will tell the next part of the story better than I can.

Red, an inmate who narrates the story, remembers the effect it had on the men:

"I have no idea what those two Italian ladies were singing about.  Truth is, I don't want to know.  Some things are best left unsaid.  I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it.

"I tell you, those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream of.  It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those drab walls dissolve away.  And for the briefest of moments every man at Shawshank felt free."

Andy played the music to the others even though he knew that he would be placed into solitary confinement as punishment.  When he got out, he explained to a fellow prisoner that it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be because, "I had Mister Mozart to keep me company."  When they expressed surprise that he would be allowed to have the record player in solitary, he pointed to his head, "It was in here, and in here," pointing to his heart.

"That's the beauty of music, " he said.  "They can't take that from you. . . . You need it so you don't forget.  Forget that there are places in the world that aren't made of stone, that there's something inside that they can't get to, that they can't touch, that's yours."

"What are you talking about" one of the men asked."

"Hope,"  he replied.

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

Spending my life working with teenagers, I have been a first-hand observer of the ability of music to have an influence on behavior and character.

Click HERE to see if this would have had the same effect.  I'm sure you will get my point.

Of course, you may have to click HERE now to get that "bad taste" out of your mind.
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The Wisdom of Delight

      Click for larger image- ©A. Rutherford

Still reflecting on the "music of what happens," I read this sonnet below by Robert Frost last night, and I was struck by the fact that of all the poetry by Frost I've read in the course of all my study and teaching, I don't remember paying any attention to this one, if indeed I had  read it at some point in time.

Perhaps it's like certain verses or passages in the Bible that jump out at you at certain times in your life and you think, "Hmmm, I've never noticed that verse before." And yet you know, because of where it is in the book or chapter, you know your eyes must have seen it dozens of times, but your mind or your spirit or your heart never noticed it before. It didn't speak to you then because of where you were in your life or who you were . . . but now it says something that causes a response in you or answers a burning question of your "now," or comforts a sorrow you didn't have before— all of a sudden there it is.

I'm not sure why all of a sudden this poem spoke to me last night.  I'm not even really sure what it is saying to me now . . . it is so understated . . . as Frost often is.  He usually doesn't come right out and tell you what the message of a poem is to the extent he does in his poems "Wild Grapes" or "Birches."

But after reading the poem and reflecting on it this phrase popped in my head, so it must have something to do with the poem, or where the poem meets me—the “wisdom of delight.”

But now it's like a puzzle that I have to figure out, although I’m sure it’s connected with our talking about learning to become musicians of the everyday.

Mowing

There was never a sound beside the wood but one, 

And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. 

What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; 

Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, 

Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound— 

And that was why it whispered and did not speak. 

It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, 

Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: 

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak 

To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, 

Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers 

(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. 

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. 

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

As I wrote yesterday . . . “As musicians of the everyday, we would be more attentive to the ways of nature and of our own emotions.  We would bring a musician's or an artist's sensitivity to all issues of daily living.  We would always have a sense of the beautiful or the harmonic in everything we do.”

Is that why the mower seems to feel the rhythm of the scythe?

Is that why he notices (attends to) the flowers amongst the grasses even though they are "feeble-pointed" and don't stand out in the environment?  He even tells us that they are "pale orchises."  

He notes the snake, and he goes on to describe it (bright green) which seems to indicate a deeper visual awareness . . . 

He seems to delight both in his everyday work (the earnest love that laid the swale in rows) and in the environment.

. . . . Has the mower tuned his heart to the music of what happens? . . .

His scythe whispers . . .
not a "dream" (false promise) of the easy life ("idle hours")
or easy money ("gold") coming out of nowhere by magic ("fay or elf")

but it whispers the “truth” (line 9)

His conclusion seems to be “The fact (truth? reality?) is the sweetest dream that labor knows.”

But, says she scratching her head, exactly what is the “fact” that “is the sweetest dream that labor knows.”

Frost makes it seem like a secret or lesson that is important to know!

Yes, I think that's what I sense in the mower in Frost's poem . . . he is doing a very mundane task, repetitive and tiring, but he is so in tune, in the present moment, with the rhythm of what he is doing and where he is that the material world around him fades away, leaving him to see the minutiae of the environment . . .  flowers . . . the snake . . . and to delight in them and to hear the music of his scythe and the hum of the earth, even as he is laboring.

Come, Thou fount of every blessing, 

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace. 

Streams of mercy, never ceasing, 

Call for songs of loudest praise.

            -Robert Robinson

©A.Rutherford

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Being Present in the Moment

                                               ©A.Rutherford

the Present - the period of time now occurring

There's one or two in every class or crowd . . . invariably at the beginning of the school year, whenever I would call the class roll for the first time, amongst the consecutive chorus of "Here!" responses, there would always be one or two students who answered "Present!" It would always seem to evoke a response of a few giggles or chuckles from the rest of the class, but I would always give an attentive look of inspection to that student or students because usually I found these were the students who would indeed prove to be "present" in the class, not merely "here." They attended to the class, in the old sense of attend . . . pay attention to . . . they were very much "present" in the class.  They paid attention to its (and my as their teacher's) presence in their lives . . . they lent their full presence to the class with their attention and participation.

Through the years by the examples provided by my students, I too learned important lessons about the value of being present to one's experiences. The ones who were truly and fully "present" in class were the ones who had the most success and who enjoyed the process of their education the most, and who took the most from it of lasting value.

I always want to be the one who can answer "Present!" to even the most mundane experiences of my daily life and find the value and Joy in them.  But of course, being Present to the moment must be practiced as a discipline.

Thinking about this sort of attentiveness made me remember a very old Celtic legend about the Fianna, an ancient Celtic group of people who lived apart from society.

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     Once, as the Fianna were sitting around resting, a debate arose among them as to what was the finest music in the world.

     "Tell us that," said Fionn, turning to Oisin.

     "The cuckoo call from the tree that is highest in the hedge," cried his merry son.

     "Indeed, that is a good sound," said Fionn. "And you, Oscar," he asked, "What is to your mind the finest of music?"

     "Ah, the best of music is the ring of a spear on a shield," cried the stout lad.

     "It is a good sound," said Fionn.

     And the other champions told their delight: the bellowing of a stag across water, the baying of a tuneful pack heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the laughter of a gleeful girl, or the whisper of a loved one.

     "They are good sounds all," said Fionn.

     "Tell us, chief," one ventured, "what do you think?"

     "The music of what happens," said great Fionn, "that is the finest music in the world."

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I suppose this is a metaphor for the way we view the world and our life in it.  As musicians of the everyday, we would be more attentive to the ways of nature and of our own emotions.  We would bring a musician's or an artist's sensitivity to all issues of daily living.  We would always try to cultivate a sense of the beautiful or the harmonic in everything we do.

. . . . makes me want to tune my heart to the music of what happens . . .

"If you cannot find joy and peace in these very moments of sitting...

you will be incapable of living the future when it has become the present.

Joy and peace are the joy and peace present in this very hour of sitting.

If you cannot find it here, you won't find it anywhere.

Don't chase after your thoughts as a shadow runs after its object....

Find the joy and peace in this very moment."

                                                                                                  -Thich Nhat Hanh 

And finally a bit of wisdom from a source which always straightens my head and my heart out:

"Yet he has not left himself without testimony:

He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons;  he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy."

                                                                                    - Acts 14:17

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