The Music of the Spheres

A Worship Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Presented to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday April 17, 2005

Reading

Martin Luther on Music

(Excerpted from James Luther Adams’ essay “Music as a Means of Grace”)

“I most heartedly desire that music, that divine and most precious gift, be praised and extolled before all people.  I am so completely overwhelemd by the quantity and greateness of its excellence and virtues that I can find neither beginning nor end nor adequate words or expressions to say what I ought.”  “A person who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.”  “Next to the Word of God the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world … there is no art its equal.”

Prayer and Meditation

On Creativity

Jonalu Johnstone

From the void of darkness reaches the creation of the universe.  Out of silence sings the music of the spheres.  In the stillness begins the dancing of the planets.  From the chaotic babbling emerges the meaningful word. Empty to rich, chaos to clarity, barren to profound.

Creative Spirit, which lives and moves in, around, and through us, we are thankful for the art arraying the world – natural art and human art, art we can see and hear, art we understand and even that that we merely wonder at.  We welcome the movement of creation in ourselves and in our companions, known and unknown. We appreciate the enriching of our lives, the gifts given to us here and elsewhere.

May truth from creativity deepen our wisdom. May the gifts of creativity inspire us to give more in love. May the beauty of arts of all kinds offer us refuge, comfort, delight, and awe.

May we find what we need in the silence here and now.  AMEN

The Music of the Spheres

A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday April 17, 2005

HEAVEN is mirrored, Love, deep in thine eyes,

Soft falls its shimmering light upon thy face;

Tell me, Beloved, is this Paradise,

Or but Love’s bower in some deep-sheltered place?

Is that God’s burning bush that now appears,

Or but the sunlight slanting through the tress?

Is that sweet song the music of the spheres,

Or but the deep andante of the breeze?

Are we blest spirits of some glad new birth

Floating at last in God’s eternity?

Or art thou, Love, still but a man on earth,

And I a woman clinging close to thee?

The words of Katrina Trask and her poem Aidenn seem ask a question that with slight redefinition provide as good a place as any to start as any this morning.  She asks “Is that sweet song the music of the spheres or but the deep andante of the breeze?”  Is that something we feel the cosmic pulse of the world or just a gentle slow and passing wisp of breeze?

As modern people we listen to a piece of music like the “Te Deum” our choir performed this morning and ask a similar question.  Not versed in Latin or classical theology, we rely on written translations to discern meaning from words and music prepared originally to be a religious rite.  Is what we heard just notes and harmony arranged in a wisping order or is there something eternal and cosmic, which has, been birthed into our midst?

Things have an original meaning, the meaning their authors and composers plan and intend.  They also possess the meaning we give them as we experience them.  “Is that sweet song the music of the spheres or but the deep andante of the breeze?”  I suppose the question we struggle with today is, which meaning is which?  Whose meaning is primary—a now dead author and composer or our experience as living participants in an expression of life?

Maybe it is talking a bit “out of school” but I know that there is a tension among us in singing and hearing pieces like the “Te Deum” we heard today.  I know that some members of our choir would revolt if they were asked to sing that piece in English.  I also know that some in the congregation would revolt if we didn’t put the English translation in the Order of Service—fearing that we’re trying to slip something past you.  I am certain that some of you read the words to the “Te Deum” and wished you hadn’t.  Perhaps you ask, why are Unitarians perpetuating a Roman Catholic rituals, theology and music?

It is a conundrum.  This begs the observations that so many of our congregations have a hard time singing because they are busy reading ahead to make sure they agree with the words.  It is a conundrum.  One that led an apocryphal choir director to observe, “We are asking you to sing it, not sign it.”

So why do we ask you to sing, why do we ask you to listen to, that which we would never ask you to sign?

The answer to that question is that sometimes our experience of things is more important than the intent of any author.  I guess this is a post-modern bias—but I think things mean exactly what we make them mean.  The problem is that we can’t go about constantly creating everything every time.  Beyond being exhausting this would be a disservice to our history and our heritage of creativity.  So, nice as it is to sing and hear new things, there is still a value to be found in the mastery of those who came before.  We still seek our knowing and meaning—we just believe that things sometimes have value that outlast original intent.

Classical philosophers like Pythagoras and Aristotle believed in something they called “The Music of the Spheres.”  This was a unifying idea for them.  The music of the spheres was produced by the very placement of the stars and planets.  The harmony of this music, in the classical mind, kept these orbs from colliding and falling from the sky.  There was something of the most basic essence of reality that breathed in and through this music of the spheres.  We no longer believe in celestial spheres—although modern science finds interesting the notion of cosmic harmonics.  Still, there is something to that notion of the Music of Spheres, which seems more permanent than “the deep andante of the breeze.”

Pythagoras said—“ There is geometry in the humming of the strings... there is music in the spacing of the spheres.”  Two millennia later the astronomer Johannes Kepler concurred: “The heavenly motions... are nothing but a continuous song for several voices, perceived not by the ear but by the intellect, a figured music which sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time.”

A music not perceived by the ear?  A humming of the strings accessible directly to the soul?  What are we to make of this?

Unitarian theologian and ethicist James Luther Adams writes of music and history in his essay “Music as a Means of Grace.”

Plato…held that in authentic music there is an order that comports with ultimate reality, that consorts with the metrical harmony of the cosmos and also with the order of the good.  “The gods,” (Plato) says, “who have been appointed to be our companions in the dance, have given us the pleasurable sense of harmony and rhythm and so they stir us to life, and we follow them, joining in dances and songs.”

There is, according to Adams, and Plato, and Kepler, and Pythagoras, and (I would observe) our direct and personal experience, something in music that goes beyond notes and words—something that expresses deep truths about the human condition.  This is why we look for signs of the spirit even in music whose words we find distant and troubling.

Adams asks that we consider that transrational element in music.  He calls it Grace.  Grace, you will remember, is an expression of unearned goodness.  It reaches and touches and transforms us because it is and we are—not because we are worthy and it is wise.  Adams continues—

What a mysterious, almost fantastic, action is the creating and appreciation of music.  In its purest form, music is not a representational but rather a nonobjective, nonverbal world.  It is a world of its own, almost a creatio ex nihilo, an occasion for immediacy of experience, a nonreducible mode of beauty, of contrasts and resolution, of order and of ecstasy flowing through and beyond the order…  In these qualities of music there is something more than pleasant and ordered sound, something transmusical…  Often the question is asked of an artist, what is the meaning of this piece of music?  And the artist is tempted to reply simply by playing the music again.

Where all this toying with music of the spheres, of singing-and-not-signing, of Roman Catholic theology in a Unitarian worship service, leads me is to that notion (shared by Adams) that there is something more than sound waves and melody encompassed by music.  It has in it the ability to leap across the centuries and create experience right now.  Not to recapture or recapitulate experience but to honestly and earnestly create it.  That act of creation is to me a deeply spiritual act.  Acts of creativity are god-like in their very nature.

As you listened to Albrechtsberger’s “Te Deum” what was your experience?  Don’t think of what the words said or what you thought the composer intended.  What thoughts entered you?  What persons and places and events came to your heart and mind?  What knowledge of your self, your life, of God and Spirit flashed into your consciousness?  The answer to those questions point to why we put so much work and effort, why we affix so much value to music here at First Church.  Music is a means of Grace—and there is a Music of the Spheres constantly aching to break through into our lives.

It is true that the music we heard today was composed as a vehicle for the transmission of words and ideas that are foreign and perhaps anathema to us today.  Still, there is a value in the creation that long outlasts the life and intent of the creator.  I learned long ago, as a preacher, that very often the things that people take from sermons are not the meanings I intend but the meaning they need to find.  Music, I believe, is exactly the same.  Find in today’s music the meaning for which you yearn.

This direct experiential aspect to music is the enduring element that makes it religious to us.  Regardless of the age, the style and original meaning of music—if something lives in it then it can resonate with us where we are—if we let it.  The value to Albrechtsberger may well have been aligning his music with the words of the mass as a prayer to God.  I think we do ourselves an enormous disservice if we demand that his intention dictate our meaning.  Music, if it is to live, must be allowed to live.  We, if we are to thrive, must be free to find the life of everything we touch and feel and see and hear.

Those philosophers who imagined “The Music of the Spheres” as one cosmic string causing others to vibrate in sympathy and harmony were onto something even if they weren’t necessarily onto good science.  So, too, with spirituality and music with us.  The choir sings.  The strings quiver.  The tympani tremor.  More importantly the music touches us.  It transports us to places we don’t intend and can’t invoke.  If we are lucky, and the music is good, we are touched and transformed and made ready for new life.

Kristina Trask asked, “Is that sweet song the music of the spheres or but the deep andante of the breeze?”  I close with my reply.  Something of an opus to the ongoing transformative power of music that outlives the intention of author and composer.

Harmony in life

Music in the spheres

Orchestrating strife

Whispering our fears

It Transcends laughter

Now, pulsing after

The song of life sounds

A wisp of a beat

Life’s measure abounds

Where heart and hymn meet

In tune and in time

With some cosmic rhyme

Sounds from the ages

Whose words now seem lost

On our life’s pages

Feel distant and tossed

Yet some who have ears

            Breathe life in those Spheres

Breathe life in those spheres.  AMEN