Musical and Social Meaning… Part 14

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 14

 Christian musicians at times seem to forget that although baby boomer’s musical views will probably not be altered much by the music that a worship leader is trying out on the congregation in order to be trendy, children and teenagers will be forever changed by what and how a Christian community musics. Music has the potential to change how millennials and little children will view the world and even more seriously their paradigm of God. All too many congregations of believers are subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) being catechized that that traditional forms of sacred musicing are not meaningful or relevant to 21^st century worship.

Remember that metalanguage, as used here, means that music communicates beyond the restraints of spoken or written communication. A faith-based music philosophy that is based on current knowledge of how music triggers emotional states of mind and on Bible based principles of musicing should consider that, since music is so emotive, it is capable of bypassing reason and restraint. Considering music and musicing as metalanguage and metacommunication helps in the development of insight into understanding the world of emotions and passions triggered by musicing that help to develop an ideologically informed paradigm and ultimately a person’s worldview. 

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 13

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 13

As was mentioned earlier, a host of current and former music philosophers have in the past and now believe that all musicing is unavoidably done in community.  When it comes to composers, arrangers, performers, and worship leaders, no musician is an island and no musician stands alone.  Christian musicians, who believe that if one ignores these theories they will go away, are naive and short-sighed.  Christian musicians should remember Jesus’ words recorded in Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” 

The way we music in the context of public (and private) worship helps to form musical and cultural listening habits that are shaped by these ideologically informed critical metalanguages of music.  We are not only “what we eat” but also “what we music”.  Christian musicians may scoff at the belief that Church Music Matters but every time one musics in church an ideology is  being formed or at least a musical paradigm is being carried out by the music leaders doing. The way a church musics develops of a set of shared musical habits within that body of believers. These musical habits become beliefs that influence the way a Christian community thinks, acts, and views the world.

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 12

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 12

Understanding the total fabric and landscape of the music a worship leader utilizes in the context of public worship is essential.  How the formal properties of the music are arranged is important. The ingredients of music (the fabric of the music) matters, and the associations that surround it giving it an unavoidable landscape has moral implications.  Two brands of medication that help control gastric reflux were recently pulled from druggist’s shelves because they both contained a carcinogen.  Thousands of people took this cancer causing chemical because these users blindly trusted without understanding what the medications contained.

 Uninformed church leadership and  worship leaders often proceed with the same blind trust.  Ministers of music should not use music simply because they found it on the shelf of some music store, on the internet or because using it is trendy.  Remember that the powerful musical discourse in Ephesians chapter 5 is prefaced by the admonition in verse10, “Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord” and Ephesians 5:15 also warns, “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise…”

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 11

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 11

 Recently, studies that have concluded that the music signs, triggers, codes and symbols etc. that exist in the fabric and landscape of music have added much new knowledge about how music communicates meaning.  Why all the fuss about these new philosophical views about musical and social meaning in the fabric and landscape of  music and how churches should apply these theories (along with scientific knowledge) to the music they utilize in the context of worship? It is important for Christian musicians to be aware of what a particular music has the power to do to the whole life of all who experience it. Worship leaders do not need to become alarmists or see a conspiracy in every new musical composition, but neither should they stick their head in the sand and refuse to be aware of current musical scholarship.

 I believe that although St. Luke 16;8 was not referring directly to music and musicing, his inspired observation is worth considering, “And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely [phronimos 5430i.e. prudently]: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”  If Christian worship leaders fail to “walk circumspectly”, (i.e. be very careful how you live and act.)  they will be less wise than “the children of this world”. The English word circumspect which is translated Ephesians 5:15 in the AV from akribos (199) connotes being wary and unwilling to take risks. The conservative Christian musician’s musicing should be done prudently with a reticence toward taking unwise risks .  In the musical discourse in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 17 it states, “Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”  A worship leader must understand the embodied and designated meaning imbedded in a piece of music and ipso facto the “landscape” that surrounds it before he or she is capable of understanding its nature, value and meaning.  Such knowledge and understanding is absolutely necessary in the process of “understanding what the will of the Lord is” concerning the religious music a minister of music uses in the context of public worship.

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 10

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 10

Philosophers who are called Referentialists believe that music’s meaning is referential meaning, i.e. the meaning is derived either partially or completely (strict Referentialism) from outside of the music itself and that this meaning from outside of the music itself is understandable meaning in terms of real life. However, Referentialists do not always address just how music assimilates this “outside” meaning.  Since music communicates understandable meaning from both inside and outside of itself, I am what I have termed a “modified Referentialist”.

          Referentialists agree that since music derives meaning from the world around the musician, music does not have a closed meaning that is “music’s alone”.  They also deny that music is incapable of relating to real world meaning.   Still others, namely strict Formalists, deny that music communicates any understandable meaning that is related to the world that exists outside of the music itself. I am drawn to the conclusion that music derives understandable meaning from the arrangement of its formal properties, referential meaning from previous experiences with music of the same style that are triggered by mirror brain stem responses to the music, and from associations that are derived from the world (community) outside of music. Therefore, what the music triggers has the power to have either a positive or negative spiritual effect on the hearer.

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 9

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 9

Since music is so highly emotive, the understandable meaning that music communicates arouses emotional states of mind in all who experience it. The more successful the composer, arranger, performer and/or worship leader is, the more emotion will be aroused and the more potential the music has to have a positive or negative affect on the hearer.  Some music philosophers contend that these emotions are aroused by association.  A great number of musicians and music philosophers have over the centuries believed that emotions are aroused or triggered by the way the formal properties are arranged. Others believe that music arouses or triggers emotional states of mind by a number of  factors both embodied (imbedded) in the music part of the music and designated i.e. assigned to the music by association, community, and implied from former experiences with music and musicing.

            The Christian musician must continually be aware that, since it is difficult to know with certainty how triggered emotional states will affect those who experience the music in the context of public worship, every worship leader has the responsibility to “build up a wall around the Torah”, “edify the believer”, “accurately present the gospel”, “properly represent the moral nature of the Trinity”, rather than to inadvertently do harm to those who hear and participate in corporate musicing.  Although we can never do damage to the moral nature of God with religious musicing, we can do damage to His reputation with those who attend worship services when we music with styles and fusions that are a negative metacommunication. By both content and association a worship leader can cause a congregation to misunderstand who God is, what He has done, what He will do for those who love, serve and obey His Word. I am drawn to the conclusion that since it is impossible for a Christian musician to separate social meaning found in the fabric and landscape of a piece of music from the moral implications communicated through some styles of music, the way one musics has the possibility of being spiritually offensive.

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 8

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 8

 So, any philosophical view that all public sacred musicing is done solely unto God is an incomplete view. Of course the Christian sings unto the Lord as an act of adoration and worship, but he or she is also instructed to sing in community in the inspired musical discourses in Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians. Therefore. it is an awesome responsibility for a minister of music to lead a congregation in musicing and thereby be responsible for implanting meaning and in the minds of the people—causing cognitions to take place via the neurological synapses of the worshiper’s brain that are stored first electrically and after repeated musicing are stored chemically which is a much more permanent mental condition.

These cognitions will be replayed over and over in the mind of the person who experienced it (through metacognition and by involuntary mirror brainstem responses) until these memories are stored chemically for a lifetime.  According to Patrik Juslin’s BRECVEMA  research, music triggers the mirror neuron system of the human brain and stimulates emotional states in the performer and the listener. Once these emotive cognitions are stored chemically in the brain the understandable meaning that surrounds the memory of these emotive experiences is very difficult to reverse because of the fact that the cognitions have become thought patterns that keep on influencing that person every time musical metacognition takes place. 

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 7

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 7

Because of this phenomenon, the onus probandi of how and what one musics unto God in the presence of others is placed squarely on the shoulders of the worship leader.  Ministers of music who lead music in worship are responsible for what the music ultimately has the power to do to the whole life of the listener.  Luke 17: 1-2 reminds us all of Jesus’ warning, “Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”  It is foreign to many worship leaders in this century that what and how one musics in the context of public worship has the power to be spiritually offensive and to do damage to the worshiper and therefore can actually be responsible for the debauchment of public worship.  There is no doubt about it, we are constantly bombarded with social and spiritual offences caused by musicing, but these offences should never be caused by a musicer who is a Christian.

          As I have often said, “No worship leader musics to himself (in an artistic esoteric bubble) because it is impossible to do so in the context of public worship.” When one takes a careful look at Ephesians 5:19 it is very clear that as early as the time of St. Paul’s inspired letter to the Ephesians, the philosophical belief existed that all public sacred musicing should be done in community i.e. “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs…” Also, Colossians 3:16 attests to the necessity of our worship musicing being done in community when it states, “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”.

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 6

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 6

 Because of the complexity of how music functions, I am drawn to the conclusion that music which stands alone is beyond written communication and is therefore a metalanguage or perhaps even more accurately a paralanguage. Those who espouse the view that music is a metalanguage and or a paralanguage must of necessity concede that the music part of music is only analogous to and not synonymous with how  written or spoken communication functions.  I contend that music functions in some ways like language, but close comparison reveals that music alone and language do function differently is some ways.  However, the fact that instrumental music (music alone) does not function exactly like written or spoken language does not indicate that it does not communicate real life meaning to the listener.  This view that music as a whole is only analogous to language becomes even more complex when a musical composition includes words.

 All music that includes words communicates understandable meaning to all who experience it through the text and also from how its formal properties (the music part of the music) have been arranged into a coherent whole.  Whatever meaning that the music transmits to the listener is understandable meaning that relates to real life. This is evident because no performer musics in an artistic “bubble” that is detached from the world around him.  Since all musicing is done in community, all meaning that the music communicates to those who experience it has moral implications. Therefore, all religious musicing has the potential to have a positive or negative spiritual effect on the listener. Metacognition, i.e. a person’s thinking about his or her thinking when previously experiencing the music, further empowers what the music earlier triggered in the mind of the observer through brain stem responses.

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 5

Musical and Social Meaning… Part 5

          If these musical “codes” etc. exist in musical compositions, it is plausible that music is a form of metalanguage[i] which facilitates metacommunication[ii] that is made even more powerful by metacognition[iii] on what the listener has previously experienced with the sounds musical, verbal, and nonverbal.  This should cause skeptics of the axiom[iv] “Music is the message” to reconsider that, in light of recent scientific studies, clinical expertise in music therapy, and philosophical writings, music alone unavoidably communicates (transmits) understandable meaning (message) whether or not the worship leader is aware of its existence.  The existence of understandable meaning (some of it social) in the music fabric and landscape causes it to have strong moral implications.  This puts away the unfounded notion that the music part of music is a benign, amoral artform that communicates absolutely nothing to all who experience it.

          Music’s relationship to language has been considered in many ways by music philosophers.  Theories about how music functions include: music is a language, music is only analogous to language, music is a language of emotions, music is a metalanguage, and music is a paralanguage.[v]  Music philosophers have more or less convincingly shown that music does not function exactly like written language.  Music philosophers have also quite convincingly shown that music is emotive, but they have argued about whether the emotions that music arouses or triggers in the human  brain are or are not understandable in terms of having real life meaning.

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[i] Metalanguage as used here means that music is capable of communicating beyond the restraints of written communication.

[ii] Metacommunication as used here refers to communication that surrounds what a person says or musics that also has meaning. This meaning (in the music part of the music) may or may not be congruent with what that person intended to music. Since this communication is implicit and not expressed in words, it may support or contradict the verbal communication of the words spoken or sung. 

[iii] Metacognition is thinking about thinking used here in the sense that the one who has experienced music later muses on his thoughts and emotions that were triggered during the previous musical experience.  These thoughts are self-reflective, so much so, that the person who experienced the music actually relives the musical experience.

[iv] An axiom is a statement or proposition which is regarded by someone as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.

[v] Paralanguage was coined In the 1970s, by Gregory Bateson.  This term has come to mean nonverbal communication such as your tone of voice, pitch, intonation, speed of speaking, hesitation, noises, gestures, and facial expressions. The reason that a Christian must consider paralanguage is that it is a sort-of subset of meta-communication that often affects sacred musicing.  Paralanguage has the propensity to partially or even completely change the original meaning of sacred music. It is sometimes considered to only nuance nonphonemic properties of sacred music—i.e. words whose pronunciation and spelling do not match.  However, such a definition is too restrictive since paralanguage may consciously or unconsciously affect worship music much more than phonetically.