Musical Sound Communicates Meaning Part 1

 Musical Sound Communicates Meaning Part 1

            This series of twenty philosophical posts will be a discussion of musical sound and its relationship to the Christian musician.  If you are new to my blog you will need to know that I will make no attempt to draw final conclusions at the end of each short daily post.  Therefore, you will need to read any daily posts that you may have missed before continuing to read the series.

           First let us consider musical sound in as mentioned in Psalm 89:15 which states, “Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of his countenance.”  There has been heated discussion, disagreement and confusion over musical sound for over a half century.  Although we will not settle the issue once and for all in this short series of posts, I hope that this discussing musical sound will be valuable to you as a Christian musician.   Although these posts will be full of my beliefs concerning musical sound, I will try to support them not only by logic but also with God’s infallible inspired Word. Since both qualities or kinds of sounds exist, the onus is placed on the Christian’s ability to discern which sounds are and are not “joyful sounds”.

            It is important to note that Psalm 89:15 teaches that those who are able to discern which sounds are appropriate to use are able to do so because they walk in the light of God’s countenance.  The Hebrew word translated “walk” (halak 1980) in this verse means “to behave” or “be conversant”. The words “in the light” are translated from the word owr (216) which means, among other things, “continually” or “perpetually” in Jehovah’s countenance (paniyn 6440) i.e. face or favor.  There are several conclusions that could be drawn from this verse.  It most probably means that those who are able to discern which sounds qualify as “joyful sounds” must continually or perpetually be living in God’s favor or presence. If this is correct exegesis, it is no wonder that worldly musicians call evil good and good evil when it comes to the sounds they music unto God.