Pentecost

I am a church musician in a church that follows the liturgical calendar. According to the tradition of the church, this Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. It marks the time forty days after the resurrection of Christ, when the Holy Spirit came and the church was established.

A lot of sermons will be preached this weekend about Pentecost, and many will focus on the attributes commonly ascribed to the Holy Spirit. When I was growing up in the 1970s, a lot of churches were struggling as they determined how to react to a rise in "Pentecostalism". People were exhibiting the more spectacular of the "gifts" of the Holy Spirit. They were speaking in unknown tongues, prophecying, seeing visions, and all sorts of "gifts" that made the people who were sitting near them in church pretty uncomfortable.

As music educators and church musicians, we deal with the idea of "giftedness" on a daily basis. We advocate musical training and understanding for everyone, but we also recognize that some people possess musical gifts, or talents, that make them "VIPs" within our musical organizations. Many within the church believe that those talents, or gifts, have come from the Holy Spirit, and should be used to glorify God.

I think Pentecost gives us a good reminder that our time might be well-spent if, instead of looking for spectacular and controversial exhibitions of the arrival and presence of the Holy Spirit, we sought to identify the musical giftedness of the people in our congregations. Once identified, they give us the opportunity to practice good stewardship of those gifts as we lead and teach the gifted. Our Pentecost celebration takes place on one Sunday each calendar, but our stewardship of the gifts the Holy Spirit gives must be our task throughout the year.

As church musicians our real task is stewardship. We are mistaken if we think that our job is determining the musical taste of the congregation, although if you listen to our conversations with one another, you might think that musical taste is our primary concern. God has been worshiped for many millennia before modern musical understandings, and will continue to be worshiped when our current ideas have faded.

Our task is more rewarding and healthy for us and for the church if we strive to identify the musical gifts of the congregation, and create an environment in which the church learns to be excellent stewards of those gifts. And it is likely that a side-effect of that effort will be a steady rise in the appreciation of musical compositions we consider to be of high quality and profound meaning. Promoting good stewardship of our church's gifts is God-centered. Promoting our own musical taste is self-centered.

The Music Musicians Hear

This week the Alabama Symphony Orchestra will perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I sing in the Birmingham Concert Chorale, the chorus who performs with the ASO when they schedule choral/orchestral pieces. This popular work, which everyone knows from the tune "Ode to Joy", has been made more legendary by the well-known fact that Beethoven was deaf when he composed it and conducted its premiere.

In his book "Beethoven's Hair," Russell Martin explains how scientific testing has been done on a lock of hair cut from Beethoven's head and verifiably preserved . The testing solved the mystery of Beethoven's deafness and growing blindness, as well as his abdominal discomfort and generally sour disposition. He had lead poisoning.

Non-musicians find it odd that a composer could compose without hearing. Musicians understand, I think, that music plays in our minds whether or not it is audible.

A few days ago I conducted Mendelssohn's "Elijah." It is a two-hour (plus) masterpiece, full of beautiful singing and orchestral playing. Every year I conduct a major work in the spring as a part of the effort to raise scholarship funds in memory of our organist, Betty Sue Shepherd. Mentally and physically it is the most challenging weekend of the year, and it has taken a few days to process mentally and recover physically.

One of the interesting things that has been said by choir members as we have reflected on the concert has been, "I try to go to sleep and that melody keeps playing in my head." I have experienced the same thing, after learning such a large score. Sometimes I have to start at the beginning and play the entire piece in my mind before I can really settle down and go to sleep.

Music is such a mental exercise that I think the real musical instrument that we all play is our mind. It is assisted by the trumpets, violins, vocal chords and pianos we manipulate. It is reassuring to know that music can't really ever be taken from us as long as our minds are strong. And I have visited elderly patients whose minds were past the point of normal communication or expression, but who showed signs of memory and recognition when familiar hymns were played or sung.

Music is too great to be momentary. We must savor great music, and play it over and over to realize its potential for enriching us. As we sing Beethoven's Ninth this week, we will reach a point where we tire of rehearsing it. But we won't be able to stop it from playing over and over in our minds after rehearsal. In that way we will finally commune with Beethoven, and experience the music the way he did.