Music for the Soul

With what I am about to write, I risk offending someone. I hope all who read this will understand that I am hoping to open a dialogue, not cast criticism on anyone. I want all who read this to think more deeply about music and what it does to the soul of those who hear it.

I was brought up in a musical household, even though neither Mom or Dad played an instrument regularly. Every Sunday during our sit-down, stay in your Sunday clothes eat on the good china dinner, we listened to classical music on the phonograph. As we grew up, we were required to listen to an equal amount of “good” music to balance the popular stuff played on our transistor radios. We each had to take piano lessons as well as being encouraged to participate in a school ensemble of some type.

I hated my first eight years of piano lessons. Mom would not let me go out to play after supper unless I had practiced my piano lesson. In high school I took up the coronet, later the baritone, and found that my ability to read music (thanks, Mom) allowed me to advance to first chair in every band I played in. At sixteen I finally had an eccentric, but wonderful teacher who made me discover a love for classical piano music. A couple of the pieces I played for my senior recital will still fall off my fingers if I sit at a piano today. I can enjoy, or at least appreciate every style of music there is, from the old classical to the new electronica. Again, thanks Mom and Dad.

Because of my training and my broad tastes, I judge music more critically than most. I find that most contemporary musicians are either completely without talent, or else they hide behind electronic gadgetry to produce a muddled sameness of dull repetition. I admit to listening to so-called ambient music which embodies that last slam against popular music, but when I do, it is for mindless background. If I put real music on, like Bach or McCartney, it distracts me; ambient music stills my thoughts and helps me concentrate.

A Facebook friend posted an article by Jon Henschen that bemoaned the loss of musical intelligence or musical literacy. The author rightly blamed the chronic cutting of music from public education programs for this cultural demise. Henschen also decried the lack of obvious musical talent in the popular scene today. Even though every generation has “invented” its own music, I have trouble imagining people 300 years from now listening to punk rock the way many of us still enjoy J.S. Bach. Henschen suggests that the last real music was being written in the 1960s. Maybe that explains why young and old alike still crave the Beatles or Eagles or Simon and Garfunkle.

I was struck by Henschen’s article because of the lack of creativity in typical modern worship music: same chords, same patterns over and over and over. (Please! No offense intended.) Like the article said, most young people don’t have the training or the listening experience to fuel their creative engines. Unless I go back to Michael W. Smith or Phil Keaggy, I can’t think of a contemporary Christian artist doing really inventive things. (They aren’t exactly contemporary, are they?) I don’t even want to get started on the theological or psychological aspects of the repetition ad infinitum in many worship services these days.

Music is the language of the soul. It reaches a place that mere words cannot. Rhythm, melody, and harmony combine to affect our inner being. Martin Luther said, "Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world." Michael W. Smith writes, “forever, until the world ends, music is the most powerful language there is. It can transform your life on every level, not just the spiritual. It can help people reconnect with why they’re here.” I suspect Michael would agree that why we’re here is to worship God. Period.

Most of us are not as fortunate as the people of Leipzig to have for our worship music leader a J.S. Bach who said, "I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.” Yet in this globally interconnected world, finding good music is as easy as… no, it is not easy. It takes training and gifting by the Holy Spirit. The task of the worship leader is no less a spiritual assignment than that of the one who prepares the message from the Word of God. The worship leader must find the music made by God, to paraphrase Bach.

It was Francis Schaeffer who wrote about the connection between truth and beauty. Because we worship the God who is Truth, we owe it to Him to make our music beautiful. I know we joke about making a joyful noise unto the Lord, but those who create what we offer in worship ought to have the natural talents and spiritual gifts to write truly beautiful music. Those of us standing in the room following the worship leader don’t have to have performance level voices – there is your “joyful noise.” But the worship leaders have the responsibility to seek out the best there is in music or write it themselves if they are capable. Anything less is an unworthy offering.