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“Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous.
Praise befits the upright.
Praise the LORD with the lyre;
make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.
Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.
For the word of the LORD is upright,
and all his work is done in faithfulness.”
–– Psalm 33:1-4
Surely, I sounded the fool to the person I had never met when she answered the phone. Lesson learned –– It would probably be good to have at least some understanding of a person’s experience, skill, and knowledge before asking them to assume the significant difficulty of a task on short notice. We were planning the memorial service for my mom, and given that she was an accomplished pianist, I was feeling the pressure of selecting music that would appropriately honor her passion. What a wonderful idea, I thought, it would be to ask the pianist (a substitute) to play for the prelude a piece from my mom’s repertoire that I had often listened to her practice: the First Movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, No. 8.
I had thought enough to ask Zach, our maestro of all things keyboard, what he thought before I made the call to request it. His assessment, “Well, it has a lot of notes.” I should have heeded his warning, because the sheet music looks like Ludwig had downed five cans of Red Bull before composing it. The lines of thirty-second notes appear like a rush hour traffic jam on D.C’s beltway. Dang! I guess mom really could dance on those ivories.
Not surprisingly, there was an extended pause when I offered the suggestion to the substitute pianist back in Missouri. Tactfully, she emailed me, offering to play the Second Movement of the Sonata, which is a quiet, meditative, slow-paced piece often played by young piano students by their third recital, certainly not the rousing prelude that would bring our mother’s feisty character to mind. We compromised on a classic hymn tune for the prelude, and instead chose to honor mom in the service with the congregation singing another Beethoven melody, Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee. After all, I can stream any number of versions of Ludwig’s chaotic opening to his No. 8 whenever I want.
What strikes me is how powerfully a piece of music can evoke a memory, suddenly awakening you to a specific moment or encounter. Abruptly, you feel what you felt in that moment. You sense the aromas of that setting, see the people, even strangers, who were there. You can even feel the humidity in the air from that moment, or possibly the heat of the sun or the chill of the wind. In a way, music is a form of transportation, taking us to places and times we want to remember, and even places and time we’d rather forget. Over the years, when planning a memorial service with a family, I have probably had as many requests to not include a particular hymn as I have to include a favorite one. Music has the power to trigger bad memories as well as the good ones. Music touches the spirit, intensely. Therefore, it is no surprise that songs, hymns, and spiritual songs play a significant role in worship as we enter a presence so glorious that our voices need the addition of melody and harmony to meet the moment. “Tune my heart to sing Thy grace; Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise.”
Recently, thanks to the wonders of modern media, I watched an iPhone video clip of a child watching a movie created from the video of a live concert (How many degrees of separation is that?). The child was thoroughly, intensely into the experience, singing every note and every lyric along with the megawatt artist. The child was at one with the music, and a memory was created that will still have life within this child decades from now.
Music in worship provides a vehicle for God’s Spirit as the Spirit draws us into the presence of God, granting that sense of at-oneness that will live within us, the memory reminding us that we are never forgotten or alone. “Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise.”
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