Bring Many Names

I thought I knew where I was going when I went wandering out on the internet looking for material for this week’s blog. Well, I ended up off track and will write about this side journey before getting back on track.

I started by looking up the words for the hymn “Bring Many Names” by Brian Wren (see text for the words) and I ran into some commentaries on the hymn that made me reconsider my thoughts on the hymn.

To quote from
a commentary on the new Canadian hymnbook

These types of changes and new texts represent precisely what is most troubling about the new hymn book. This hymn “Bring many names” by Brian Wren is a helpful sample of the theology behind the new hymn book. For this kind of religion, we name God, as it pleases, or suits, or helps us.For classical Christianity, God is simply beyond our naming, but indeed he has revealed and named himself, supremely by and in Jesus Christ. One of the early church writers and teachers, Justin Martyr provides us with a helpful correction and warning in this regard:

“For no one can give a name to God, who is too great for words; if anyone dares to say it is possible to do so, he must be suffering from an incurable madness.” (Apology in Defence of Christians).

So the new hymn book would have us ‘bring many names’, and sing and name God as:

Womb of life, and source of being,… Mother, Brother, holy Partner; Father, Spirit, Only Son: we would praise your name forever.

and from another commentary there are questions about this hymn; how can one refer to God as a Mother; the Bible (almost) always refers to God as a father?

The beginning lines of the 2nd through 5th stanzas are:

Strong mother God,
Warm father God,
Old, aching God,
Young, growing God,

But they are not names for God; they are descriptors for God. They help us understand the nature of God by letting us relate to what we know. This certainly is not new – think the 23rd Psalm; does anyone really see God as a Shepherd guiding sheep? No, we see this as a metaphor to help us understand God’s nature. To most of us in modern society, a shepherd is someone we know only intellectually – but a mother, a father, a God that takes on the worlds problems and a God that leads us into new ways is something we can understand.

Finally, I want to quote the entire last stanza – isn’t this something we all agree on?

Great, living God, never fully known,
joyful darkness far beyond our seeing,
closer yet than breathing, everlasting home:
Hail and hosanna, great, living God!

This is clearly well outside my competence – it isn’t chemistry or physics, it isn’t even choral music directly. But it is hymns, a song of praise to God in some of his many natures. Note, I am not fond of this hymn for singing; while it perfectly diatonic, the meter is strange and often the notes are what I refer to as “yes, I guess one could use that pitch there”.

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Sacred Music and the Quest for the Divine: an introduction

In short, I have great interest in the quest for the Divine, and how the arts are faithful companions along the way.This interest is both personal and professional.My own personal quest for the Divine the first 18 years of my life was contextualized in pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism. Latin liturgies, solemn high masses, and Gregorian chant were coins of the religious realm for me.

I was a university student during the Second Vatican Council (1961-1965) when Roman Catholicism evolved from its exclusively high church liturgical practice to a more inclusive and communal church liturgical practice.

This seismic shift included liturgy in the language of the people, a period of great experimentation and creativity in liturgical practice and sacred music, and, to the dismay of some, loss of a great tradition of sacred music in Latin. Since my university years, I have embraced this reorientation of my religious tradition with enthusiasm, and my continuing quest for the Divine now is contextualized in, but not limited to, post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism.

In my professional life, I teach graduate religious studies at Loyola University Chicago’s Institute of Pastoral Studies. Most all of my students are in church ministries. They help others quest for the Divine. Although Loyola is a Catholic University, about 20% of my students are from religious traditions other than Roman Catholicism. Students from many different Christian denominations as well as Jewish, Hindu, and Moslem students come to learn how to minister at our Institute.

We welcome them all and know that our school is a better place because of the religious diversity represented in our student body. We all learn from each other about the quests for the Divine embodied in the various religious and spiritual traditions.

I have come to appreciate God’s revelation is not necessarily confined to one or another particular religious tradition. Jacques Dupuis writes in Christianity and the Religions, “In short, the question is whether the divine design for humankind might not be much more vast and deep than we had every thought before.” I think he has hit the theological nail on the head.

Sacred music is both a language and experience that transcends denominationalism, and reflects the much more vast and deep divine design Dupuis writes about. Sacred music has the power to reach into people’s hearts, illuminate their religious consciousness, and sustain them on their never ending quest for the Divine. Sacred music also provides common ground for people of the many and varied faith traditions to come together as they quest for the Divine.

Faithful people experience salvation in their quest for the Divine, not by sacred music alone! Yet sacred music can point the way and ease the path, for those on this pilgrimage. Faithful people are fortunate to have Soli Deo Gloria as a rich resource of tradition and creativity.

I hope to further illuminate the theological dimensions of sacred music through my comments and conversations.

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Introduction (Joel Buursma)

Greetings to all who find themselves at this site! My name is Joel Buursma. I have made my living working with computers for the past decade or so, but I am also a long time choral and classical music enthusiast. I suppose I have been an amateur singer, in one form or another, for most of my life. I come from a home of musicians where fine music was often played and discussed. My religious perspective is that of an evangelical Christian.

Ever since my college days, I have found “classical” music to be my favorite genre of music, with jazz a not-distant second. I find in it the right combination of beauty and complexity, which I find wanting in other genres. I find it so often to be a font of delight to which I can keep returning. I love that great artist works can be examined from multiple perspectives and on multiple levels. I love that the artist is allowed to reflect upon and revel in the great mysteries and experiences of life without necessarily needing to subject them to cold scientific dissection.

But my interest in “classical” music goes beyond that. In fact, attending and especially participating as a choir member in performances of great sacred music (a few of them, actually, under the baton of Maestro Nelson) have provided me with some of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life. At times, I find this hard to articulate (after participating in a performance of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, I found myself quite speechless), but I hope to take a crack at it. I hope also to share thoughts on specific musical works and performances.

Without further ado, let me close this introduction with a quote by author Philip Yancey from his book Rumors of Another World: What on Earth Are We Missing?

“I credit three things — classical music, the beauties of nature, and romantic love — as responsible for my own conversion. The first two convinced me of the goodness of this world, and prodded me to search for the One who had made it….”

Clearly, this is something worth writing about!

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But words will never hurt me — NOT

We all remember “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” I am sure. Of course, as we get older we know this isn’t true; words can affect how we think of ourselves and also how one thinks of one another.

There has been considerable effort in the last few years to modify hymns (remember, hymns are the words – a particular set of of words might be used with multiple melodies) to make them “gender inclusive”. The critical word that is most often modified is man. In old English, man clearly meant a human; wyrman and wyfman would mean a male human or female human (other variants exist of these). Today this of course is not the case. The suitability for “chairman” generic was accepted by 67% of a panel (52% of the women and 72% of the men – your assignment is to figure out what proportion of the panel was female) in a study cited in the article on “man” at answers.com).

Unfortunately, when this is done in music, it can lead to some unfortunate musical consequences. For example, in the spiritual, singing “Gods got the whole world in his hands” instead of “He’s got the whole world in his hands” is awkward – the “he” (or “she” blends with the next sound. I have heard this finessed by alternating “he” and “she”. A similar example comes in the gospel hymn “His eye is on the sparrow” – The sound stop that you get with substituting “God” for “His” is not musically nice. Of course, as a male, I am much less sensitive to gender inclusiveness issue and more with the musical effects. However, two women at our Church this last Sunday were less than thrilled with the change to create the “God’s eye” version.

Years ago, I was on a committee looking at hymnbooks and there was a strong feminist on the committee. She was very enthused about making these changes, except for the hymns she particularly loved, where she wanted them to stay the same.

What can or should be done? Legally, any music under copyright cannot be changed without the permission of the author. Some authors have no problems with changing words; others, including the well-known and popular composer Daniel Gawthrop, has stated that the words must stay the way he wrote them. If you don’t like the words, pick another song is his sentiment. Another example revolves around the tune to “Edelweiss” from “Sound of Music”. In the ‘70’s there was a benediction response written to use the tune. The composer, Richard Rodgers, made it known that this was unacceptable; one could use “Edelweiss” only with Hammerstein’s words.

Clearly, in practice one could change the words for copyright music without permission. It wouldn’t be legal; I won’t presume to say whether it would be moral. There is a lot of good music that could be substituted. In older music, clearly it is legal. One must consider carefully if the substitution upsets the musical flow of the work and if it does, do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

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Notes from a Frustrated Composer

I’ve been asked to help write a blog, and I thought I had better take full advantage of the annual lull in the pace of my day-job to get at least one post written before said pace picks up in just a few short weeks, and carries my free time away.

What am I doing here? I’m a pianist, educator and administrator whose work has long been rooted in my love of God, and in my passion for discovering what my love of God has to do with my love of music. The obvious answer is, of course, “everything,” but it seems to me that if the Christian life, which takes just a moment of submission to begin, reaches its fullest consummation only through all of Eternity, then there must be a lot to think about when it comes to integrating the artistic life with one’s faith, and claiming the arts for the Lord. My connections with Soli Deo Gloria are numerous. I can remember hearing about it as a young opthamologist’s vision for the future while riding from Milwaukee to Wheaton years ago in the back of a minivan, and since then I’ve had many opportunities to help behind the scenes, in rehearsal rooms, and even on stage.

When I consider my reasons for being involved with this project, lurking in the background is perhaps the biggest reason of all, which I must confess before blogging any further: I am a frustrated composer. As a child, I was capable of improvising endlessly at the piano. It’s good for posterity that those ramblings weren’t preserved, but I did it anyway. In junior high school, my class notes were often decorated with fugue subjects in the style of Hindemith. (That’s nerdy even by musicians’ standards.) Despite all this, I was either too intimidated or too impatient with myself to produce much more than a few hymn-tunes, one of which serves as a sort of unofficial alma mater for the institution at which I work. Perhaps piano-playing alone was so hard for me that it left no time for another musical challenge. At any rate, I’ve contented myself with being curious about new composers, and have occasionally had the opportunity to work with some of them, at times even closely. I have enjoyed the challenge exploring a new work with its composer, sometimes catching misprints, sometimes having my thoughts on the piece totally overturned, and sometimes even surprising and delighting the composer with points of view he or she hadn’t anticipated. I’ve learned that composers aren’t always the strict, authoritarian figures one might imagine them to be. (When I approached an austere, elderly New England composer on my graduate school’s faculty about a piece of his I wished to play for him, he replied: “ Oh yes. I remember that waltz. I wrote it. I’m sure you can play it. I’m sure you’ve spent more time on it than I did.”)

I am particularly fascinated by how composers address Ultimate Questions. An unfortunate administrator once told a friend of mine that “people at Juilliard aren’t interested in personal things like religion; they are here to study their art.” While there probably are artists with blinders on as this fellow imagined, I suspect they are relatively few and far between. From the ecstatic heights of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony to the epic spiritual struggles of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, to the post-transcendentalist memories of faith in the works of John Adams, one will find few composers who are completely tone-deaf to calls from Beyond. I’ve always been particularly thrilled to discover the voices of composers who are unafraid to let a genuine commitment to God inform what they do, whether they write abstract instrumental works or large-scale vocal works on biblical texts. They may be voices in a wilderness within a wilderness, often as ignored or misunderstood by believing brothers and sisters as by the unbelieving culture at large. Even so, they are being faithful to a call, have much to tell us, and deserve our attention and encouragement. For me, they are saying things that I’d like to say, but can’t articulate through my own Hindemithian doodles.

I’ll try to drop in here from time to time between lessons, committee meetings, rehearsals, practice sessions and domestic responsibilities to comment on things I hear or work on, and people I meet — anything about which I think someone with an interest in music and faith should know. We’ll see what comes of this: I hope it ends up being an interesting and edifying conversation.

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