Musicing with Understanding-part 2

          Musicing with Understanding-part 2

               When the listener hears the music part of the music i.e. the melody, harmony, rhythm and tone color etc., these elements are heard individually and, since they form a musical composition, the sounds will be heard or experienced as a congruent whole which will have an emotional effect on everyone in the congregation.  Even a person who is deaf can feel the rhythm and beat if it is strong enough to vibrate the walls, floor, windows and the furniture and the vibrations caused by the pounding beat will have an emotional effect on that person.  Understood in that light, one may conclude that no one can completely escape music’s influence.  (For a much more thorough treatment see my new Book published this year called Music Philosophy in Christian Perspective, chapter 5 “Emotions and Musical Communication.)

                A faulty approach to the nature and especially the value of the music part of music in the worship experience is often predicated the notion that it (the music part) is always a benign exercise because it is incapable of communicating anything and therefore is incapable saying anything that is meaningful to real life. This notion renders the music part of music incapable of representing, referring, or arousing any of the complex emotions that are related to spiritual life.  The only thing that is wrong with the bold statement of some music philosophers that “music can say absolutely nothing” is the fact that it is a hypothesis that has never been proven to be correct.  So, Christian musicians who are followers of this unproven notion are basing their musicing on a very shaky belief.  Since the way one musics to a congregation is such important business, it would seem that they should consider what their musicing could do to the whole-life of the worshiper and the seeker.