My Journey with Bach

In my Music Appreciation class -- my first ever -- I essentially get to talk about Bach (and Baroque music) for the next two weeks as much as I want. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I was never able to appreciate much about J.S. Bach until only about 4 years ago. Up to that point, all I really knew was that his keyboard pieces were very difficult for me and that he was the "fugue master" and the pinnacle composer of counterpoint. Those things didn't really mean much to me beyond a superficial level, and I had only played enough Bach by that point to believe I was incapable of performing Bach well at the piano.

In 2014, I went to Germany with the TAMU Century Singers. I don’t have the best memory, but I remember going to the Bach-Haus in Eisenach and the Bach Museum in Leipzig, seeing Bach’s Calov Bible commentary (or just a replica) that was all marked up with his notes, and then listening to the Motets for what was actually the second time (my first time being a live performance of all 6 Bach motets by Conspirare in 2013). Very soon after our tours through Bach's world, I purchased and downloaded the album of Bach Motets by the Monteverdi Choir.  When I got around to studying the text, I was blown away by the fact that Bach was using verses from the book of Romans as well as text from extra-biblical sources that were woven in to perfectly fit the thematic context.  Jesu meine Freude quickly became one of my favorite pieces of music, as I immersed myself in it and the other motets. It was this Biblical and spiritual lens through which to experience his music that changed the way I would look at Bach forever.  Only weeks after the Germany trip, I got to hear Conspirare perform the St. Matthew Passion at the Victoria Bach Festival.  The music and the text hit me in ways that I can only assume weren’t previously possible.  I’ve since come to appreciate the importance of his innovations in counterpoint and polyphony, so that I can appreciate his instrumental music almost as much as his vocal music.

Because the "sounds" of Baroque music (the timbres, instrumentation, melodic patterns, and harmonic progressions) are so idiomatic to that period and alien to our modern ears, I still sometimes have to resist "tuning out" when listening to Bach.  But even so, beyond the textual depth and musical intricacy that I have to appreciate, there are moments when the music itself (melody and harmony) are just as emotionally pleasing and moving to my 21st century ears as something written today might be.  One specific citation I can make here is the baritone aria Mache dich mein Herze rein from the St. Matthew Passion.

I can't casually reference that aria without talking about the text to just point out a small example of Bach's ability to take the Biblical text to the "next level."  The singer of this aria is portraying the character of Joseph of Arimathea, the man who volunteers to bury Jesus' body in a proper tomb following the crucifixion. But what text does Bach have Joseph sing?

Make thyself clean, my heart,

I will myself entomb Jesus.

For he shall henceforth in me

For ever and ever

Take his sweet rest.

World, begone, let Jesus in!

Bach takes the story and actions of Joseph of Arimathea and takes the opportunity to turn it into metaphor: "burying" Jesus in our hearts, where He takes the place of the things of this world and lives within us.

In light of my new perspectives on Bach, I approach playing his music in a totally different way.  I realize now that his music is more difficult than I previously thought, and yet at the same time, much easier when you allow the music to say what he wrote.  I no longer taking for granted the impeccable counterpoint, the importance of every single note, and the motivation behind all that he did: soli Deo gloria.


"...with Bach -- the essential Bach -- there is no "music itself." His concept of music derived from and inevitably contained The Word..." - Richard Taruskin

On Christian Musicianship, Pt. 2

So, why?  Why do I find a deeper Christian value in playing music?  (And I’m going to focus on classical music for the most part).  Here is my answer: when I play a carefully crafted piece of music, I am perpetuating the ideas of beauty, logic, objectivity, antithesis, and truth, all of which only function consistently within a Christian Worldview and in accordance with Biblical premises.  By doing these things, I am reflecting the character of God.  Here’s what I mean:

God’s first recorded act was to bring order out of chaos.  To take nothing and make something, then to take what was “formless and empty” and make it into something beautiful and orderly (or in His words, “good”).  In the same way, when I take all the various notes on a piano and the infinite ways of playing them and put them together to create something orderly, I am imitiating Him on a microcosmic level.  Adam was commanded in the dominion mandate to “subdue the earth.”  I believe the dominion mandate is for all people, and one way we fulfill it is by taking the raw materials and making something “good” out of them — gardening and cultivating.

J.S. Bach is a great example of all this, as he was incredibly meticulous and thoughtful in his writing.  Every note serves a purpose in Bach’s music.  The notes he writes are weaved together to create an incredible tapestry in which each individual thread is a legitimate melody on its own.  (Kind of like how each of us is a unique thread in God's grand and sovereign design).  Bach took the logic, reason, and order of a 12-tone system of music and essentially exploited it to its fullest potential, all the while writing intentionally for the glory of God, signing all of his compositions with the phrase “soli Deo gloria.”

Another parallel to the Christian life that I enjoy is the notion that I do not own the piece of music (e.g. a Beethoven Sonata) sitting in front of me.  I am in some sense a “steward” of something that belongs to Beethoven in this case, and he has laid out very specific parameters for how this piece of music ought to be played.  In the same way, we are stewards of the earth God has given us — even stewards of society as a whole — and God has told us how things (money, marriage, church, agriculture, work, relationships, criminal justice, etc.) should operate.  If I am to honor the composer, I am charged with playing the piece in a way that would most accurately express his original intentions.  If you want to get really weird, to intentionally "butcher" someone else's composition in your performance -- a composition that was generously given to you to play -- might be akin to a violation of the principle of God's law in Deuteronomy 22:6-7.  It assumes "lordship" rather than stewardship.

The most important thing I want to say in this blog post — the overarching theme — is that all of these facets of playing music inherently assume concepts of truth, logic, and beauty.  They assume there is a “right way” and a “wrong way.”  And my purpose is to perpetuate the assumption of these concepts.  Compare these ideas with the secular worldview (perhaps seen most sharply in postmodernism).  We can even start with music:

As much as I may hate to admit it (being, myself, a product of today's academia), aleatoric music in general cannot be included in the realm of music that fulfills the dominion mandate.  Chance music is not reflective of God’s sovereign and creative character, but instead purports that there is no order in the universe.  Similarly, if I take a bucket of paint and dump it onto a canvas and say “this is beautiful,” I’m not really reflecting the character of God either.  It may be “art,” but it offers no truthful commentary on the world we live in.  It offers no story or hope or even guided creativity.  God did not create the universe in this way.  As stated above, what God did is create order out of chaos, and He has instructed us to do the same in His world.

We take this for granted, but if something is true, then its antithesis must be false.  As Robert DeNiro’s character in The Deer Hunter says while holding a bullet, “This is this.  This is not something else; this is this.”  The truth is the truth, and it demands a certain responsibility.  Why is this relevant?  Postmodern secularism at its core says that truth is either relative or non-existent.  Nothing can be truly known in the secularist worldview, and thus, nothing can be asserted to be truth.  Obviously this leads to profound inconsistencies, e.g. the statement that "I am absolutely certain that I cannot be absolutely certain about anything." In God’s world, however, we can know truth.  We can glean definite, unchanging information from a sheet of music or from reading a book.  Never will the first four notes of Beethoven's fifth symphony ever be anything except for the three repeated G's followed by the E-flat.  In a world governed by chaos, such that matter exists for no reason, what reason have we to expect to hear the same four notes next time we go hear a performance of that piece?

To wrap up, when I assume truth, antithesis (right vs. wrong), beauty, and uniformity in nature, I am living consistently in God’s world.  As a Christian, there can be a beautiful union of my worldview to the way I live my life.  Music is my way of reminding the world that it takes a human created in God’s image to bring order and beauty out of the emptiness and chaos.  The atheist would be hard-pressed to come up with a logically consistent reason to promote the ideas of beauty and order in the world, since he lives in a universe that ultimately doesn’t care, is not governed, is the product of total chaos, and is ultimately heading back into total chaos and nothingness.  Why make music at all in that kind of world?  Is it not ultimately futile?

One last little note: I mentioned eschatology in Part 1 of this topic.  The reason I believe we should be restoring creation, bringing order, cultivating, and making the earth "fruitful" is because I believe Jesus wants us to play the long game and continue taking dominion.  I believe scripture teaches us to win the nations for Christ, here in history; and I believe that we have generations ahead of us in whom we should be investing right now.  The enemies of Truth are sowing seeds for the future -- what are we doing?

One of the battlefronts is Art, and it is here that I have the privilege of fighting to maintain and conserve what we have thanks to the foundations of Christendom of the past.

Credit for all these ideas goes to influential friends, authors, and speakers including: my friend Johnny Simmons, Francis Schaeffer, Marcus Pittman, Doug Wilson, and others that I'm forgetting.  Hopefully Abraham Kuyper and Cornelius Van Til.

On Christian Musicianship, Pt. 1 (backstory)

Why? What's the point? What am I doing, and is it meaningful? How often do musicians ask themselves this question? And is my answer different than the answer of a non-Christian musician?

I used to not have much of an answer for the question of “why a Christian classical pianist?”  To me, a “Christian musician” was someone who used their music directly for ministry purposes.  Since I wasn’t doing that more than one day a week, I had to start wondering what it means to be a Christian and have a “secular” job and what the relationship between the two should be like.  All I had to go off of at first was Ephesians 6:7 and Colossians 3:23, both of which essentially say “whatever you do, work as if you’re working for the Lord instead of for men.”  This was the extent of what I was taught growing up in church pertaining to being a working Christian.  It translated to me as “have a good work ethic; work with a good attitude, work well, and work hard.”  Beyond that, there would also be a lot of talk in my church and at home of evangelism and sharing the Gospel with co-workers.  This still didn’t connect deeply to the aspect of work itself, and isn’t necessarily sustainable if you don’t have a plethora of co-workers.  I was looking for purpose in my work as a musician.  The “best” place I arrived at was the idea that I would be working primarily in university settings and in the fine arts departments in particular — a setting where visible Christianity is relatively rare.  I thought “God will have me in a position where I am one of the very, very few orthodox, Biblical Christians working in my field in an academic setting, and He will use me to help guide or inspire students (if the conversation ever comes up) in order that they might either come to faith or simply be encouraged knowing that there is a Christian faculty member around.”

This is all fine, and I still believe that all three of those above “purposes” (witnessing via my work ethic, witnessing via evangelism, and just generally being a light in a dark place) are valid and important.  However it wasn’t until I started being taught more about the meaning of a Christian worldview, presuppositional apologetics, a more optimistic eschatology, and the continuation of the dominion mandate that I finally saw deeper meaning in my work.  And since then, I have never had to question the validity or value of what I do within the Christian framework and in light of being a true follower of Jesus.  And it excites me more and more every time I think about it.

Continued in Part 2.