A Life in Music

What does it mean to live a life in music?

I remember having completed my first year of study on my Masters degree in Composition. I was in a wonderful and supportive environment at the University of Colorado. My teachers were exceptional, my program dedicated, and I had developed the friends and support system to see me through. In truth, my time at Colorado is the standard by which all other academic (and professional) experiences will be measured. Many institutions could learn a great deal from the way CU runs her music program...

Yet I was profoundly unsure of what I was doing. I was exploding with creativity, yet my craft remained weak, and I had felt battered by opposing viewpoints on aesthetics since beginning my undergrad years. Somehow, regardless of intellectual realization, I was unable to accept pure modernism and abstract art on a soul level. My body rejected it like bad food, which left me utterly confused. Something was not right, and I began to doubt whether or not the musical world had a place for me.

As I entered that second year of graduate study, I knew that my resolve -- and my career -- hung in the balance. I sought guidance on the issue, and prayed feverishly for a clear path forward. As always, answers come from unexpected places.

At the end of a long and exhausting week, ready to go home, my friend Trudy asked if I would volunteer at a conference about Nadia Boulanger. She promised great networking opportunities, lunch, and a free concert of sacred music, so I flippantly agreed. The experience would change my life.

In to the U-of-C poured over 200 of Nadia Boulanger's former students, and the school was suddenly awash in a new kind of energy. I met one of Nadia's last students, now teaching in San Fransisco. I met a sweet old nun who studied with her in the 1930's, and was partly responsible for her conversion.

Nadia Boulanger's students, regardless of their religion, were united in the belief that music was a fundamentally important and fundamentally human excercise. They made no apologies for their rejection of much modernism as mere intellectual drivel, and their music -- as well as the force of their personalities -- all testified to the strength of their position.

I learned of Nadia and Lili Boulanger, and how Lili's death silenced Nadia's compositional voice while unleashing her love of pedagogy. I learned of Nadia's influence on over 1200 musicians, including Lenny Bernstein, Carter, Piston, Thompson, and a certain Igor Stravinsky (pictured above.) I learned of her reversion to Catholicism, her attendance of daily mass, and her incredible piety.

Boulanger, it seems, was a secular nun of music, chaste and faithful, and rigorously demanding of her students.

Truth be told, I don't know if my rather fragile demeanor at the time would have fared well under her strict tutelage. Truth be told, I don't think I would have had the musicianship to last two days in her studio. Yet I remain grateful for the fact that she existed.

"Ye shall judge the tree by its fruit." From the centerpoint of Nadia Boulanger sprang much of the greatest music of the 20th century. Being surrounded by her students, I found myself reinvigorated about both music and humanity in general.

Most shockingly, the name of God and his desire for us was invoked repeatedly by various composers of various beliefs. These people were convinced not only that music was good, but that God wants us to write more of it. As a person of belief, I was honestly shocked to hear such a thing spoken aloud, at a liberal University, by a gathering of composers no less. Yet it pointed to the key missing ingredient in my creative search.

It was a great weekend, and it may have saved my life, let alone my career.
While I hate to write this, I am afraid that if the weekend had consisted of a gathering of former Schoenberg students, I would have likely quit.

What does it mean to live a life in music? Perhaps when I'm 70, I'll have a coherent answer to this question. Yet I'm quite sure I know what such a life is not meant to be, and by knowing the negative, the positive can begin to reveal itself.

Princeton Professor Skewers Pro-Choicers

As Americans, we have the freedom to hold a diversity of opinions. We have the freedom to disagree, and the expectation to do so civilly.

Certain issues, however, do not hinge on opinion. Certain issues, when examined in a full and honest light, pull only in one direction. Such is the so-called "debate" on abortion and human life. There is only one right answer. Which is why I continue to write and post articles on the subject, working in the hope that viewpoints may be illuminated and cleared of intellectual filth and clutter.

Take Princeton Professor Robert P. George's essay, "Obama's Abortion Extremism." The following is a quote in which he compares the abortion argument to the slavery argument:


"Would we describe such people, not as pro-slavery, but as "pro-choice"? Of course we would not. It wouldn't matter to us that they were "personally opposed" to slavery, or that they wished that slavery were "unnecessary," or that they wouldn't dream of forcing anyone to own slaves. We would hoot at the faux sophistication of a placard that said "Against slavery? Don't own one." We would observe that the fundamental divide is between people who believe that law and public power should permit slavery, and those who think that owning slaves is an unjust choice that should be prohibited." (taken from article.)

If you're curious, head over to the Witherspoon Institute's website for the entire article. Kudos to Professor George!
http://thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2008.10.14_George_Robert_Obama%27s%20Abortion%20Extremism_.xml

Truth is Beauty is Love is Music is God is Truth

John Keats was right: Beauty is truth. There is something about the Mozart Requiem that can get a choir full of otherwise irreligious heathen to sing as if their immortal souls depended on it.

Yet what of the statement "beauty is in the eye of the beholder?" It is believed to have originated in 3rd century B.C Greece -- a time perhaps more thoughtful than our own. Since then, it has been misused grossly and, in our own time, become yet another piece of bumper-sticker philosophy used to justify the sanctity of personal opinion.

In composing the Requiem, was Mozart expressing an individual opinion? If so, where are the valid contrasting opinions? If Mozart's work happened to hit on a popular opinion of the time, why has his work reserved for itself a seemingly universal appeal which transcends eras and their populist thought?

Only consider it, and you step perilously close to the idea of a Universal.

Certainly, Mozart's Requiem was a colossal personal statement, the capstone on a short but remarkable creative life. Yet where did the sudden seriousness of this piece come from? Was Mozart experiencing -- whether consciously or subconsciously -- a premonition of his own demise?

Was he expressing the divine?

Truth is absolute -- I even know atheists who will claim as much (you cannot claim otherwise without entering into a glaring logical contradiction.) Yet if truth is absolute, and beauty is truth, is it possible to have an opinion about beauty?

I think not.

If beauty is a reflection of absolute truth, then there is ultimately only one kind of beauty. This beauty, however, being absolute (and divine) is infinite, and therefore capable of encompassing all of us while leaving our individuality in tact.

Think of the mountains. One can experience altitude sickness. One can desire to never live in the mountains. Yet I have never encountered a person who said that "I hate mountains. Mountains are ugly." Personally, I have a healthy fear of the ocean. Yet this fear does not keep me from enjoying a sunset over a calm sea, nor does it keep me from feeling humbled by the awesome power of a hurricane.

To experience otherwise is to be aesthetically unhealthy. It's all about "poetics." There is a reason that Shakespeare is able to inspire feelings within us that our cell-phone instruction manuals cannot -- poetics are a basic part of human nature.

Yet while in the mortal coil, we are certainly limited in our perspective. In terms of God and the divine, we can only experience vague intimations and shadows of ultimate reality. We are like people stuck under twenty feet under water, trying to perceive the sky above. Some live in stormy weather, others in calm ponds. Either way, each perspective is incomplete and imperfect.

Yet we are all trying to view the same sky. (Perhaps some keep their eyes closed, but the sky remains above them, daring them to look!)

I will suggest that the main goal of our lives is to daily move towards God, subsequently growing a clearer understanding of our immortal origin and destiny. Daily, we clarify our perspective of eternity. As a composer, I certainly have a different sense of poetics -- God's beautiful truth -- then a painter or a script-writer. Yet, once again, we're all trying to paint the same sky.

Theologians have often mused that heaven is filled not with saintly clones but saintly individuals. They each have a unique perspective on that one whole and glorious creator. They each have a true -- yet individual -- perspective on eternity. If something is infinite, it can offer an infinite number of viewpoints.

I believe that this is the ultimate purpose of creativity and the arts. We are creations imitating our creator. When we do so humbly and lovingly, we have the potential of deeply impacting the quality of our inner lives, let alone the lives of others.

If you doubt this, imagine a world without art. Imagine a world where traffic-noise is the only music, where the Wall-Street journal replaces literature, and where the Dow-Jones gives us the only drama we could ever experience. Living in such a world, you wouldn't know what you were missing, because you simply wouldn't be human. (This is why art that seeks to imitate such things -- whether through abstraction or otherwise -- may be pretty, or interesting, or perhaps clever, but ultimately fails.)

Much ink has been spilled over the golden ratio, and many artists have become obsessed over such numerology. (For those unfamiliar with the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio) Somehow, all of reality seems to be imbued with this seemingly magic number. Analysis has shown us that many of the greatest pieces of art -- whether consciously or not -- have somehow conformed to this ratio. Yet somehow, no amount of analytical knowledge can lead to an artificial and mathematical reproduction of great art. Such attempts, while sometimes interesting, remain only interesting imitations and spirited attempts.

Beauty is a property of the heart, a type of knowledge equal to rational thinking yet entirely functioning on its own authority. It is a part of the human experience that demands to be felt, yet defies adequate classification. We tremble in her presence and find ourselves helpless before her, yet it is only a mere shadow of our Lord passing by. What better way to remain humble than to seek beauty?

I have witnessed musicians nearly jump out of their skin in ecstasy while performing Faure's Pavane. Were they experiencing a biological reaction to a mathematical formula? Can there really be a Darwinist interpretation of beauty, mindful of mathematics, that does not ascribe a stunning intelligence to the whole affair?

It's right in front of us: the things that move us the most tend to be masterpieces of combined and carefully-calculated ratios. Yet how is it possible that artists who had no real care for mathematics would otherwise "accidentally" create works that had such perfect ratios?

Can it be that their quest to uncover beauty and perfect their creative language led them to an ever-clearer vision of absolute beauty? I can only fathom one explanation: if God signed off on his beautiful creation with such a clever yet absolute signature (one that just happens to meander into infinity, mathematically speaking), then is it any wonder that we are naturally drawn to such proportions?

Robert Pirsig, in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," literally drives himself crazy trying to figure out the nature of "quality," and our seeming intuitive (yet indefinable) sense of it. Little wonder he went nuts -- without a divine foundation, such an inquiry, no matter how brilliant or beautiful it may be -- is ultimately doomed to be fruitless. What a pity that stubborn men would sooner sacrifice their sanity rather than admit to the obvious.

Certainly, there are artists who have actively sought to work against these proportions, even deliberately sought to portray ugliness rather than beauty. Yet whenever their work is successful, it is because of a striking opposition to -- rather than eschewing of -- eternal beauty. There's simply no getting away from it.

The psalmist bemoans: "Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee?" Einstein saw the hand of God in the proportions of the Universe. Igor Stravinsky crawled up to the altar, mindful of his place in the grand scheme of things. C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien saw a divine power in myth, poetry, and literature, one that philosophy simply couldn't encompass.

I concluding these thoughts, I return to the words I began with:

Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

(John Keats: from 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.')