Music in Real Life

On my blog, gregorious thoughts, I've been using music in very practical ways recently. Music has really been helping me process through things and be comforted. Sometimes people (including myself) can see music as an exercise in the abstract, getting away from the physical, attempting to interact with stuff we can't see. But music can never be severed from its physicality- at the very least, it's an art form that exists and deals with time, not unlike our existence.

There are certainly times in my life where I find that music, more than many other arts or interests, is more practical. Recently for me music as a practical piece of life has played a very soothing and comforting role. My wife and I have been going through some real junk (not between each other, but a situation we are both in), and I've found there were some pieces of music I was really yearning for. Something that not only met me where I was, but gave me hints of something else. There are plenty of pieces I could listen to that would encourage my state of depression and just leave me there. And sometimes that's a good thing. There are also plenty of pieces that could stir up my hot feelings of anger and leave me there, and that could be a good thing, too. But there are a few pieces that don't just leave me or encourage my current state, but give a sense of peace within turmoil or serenity within exasperation. These are a few of the pieces I've been longing to hear recently.

Bach: Mein Jesu Was Fuer Seelenweh (Bwv 487) arr. by Leopold Stokowski

The translation is, "My Jesus Oh What Anguish" and has been a favorite Bach piece of mine for years. There are grinding tensions and gravity-less melodies. I love it.


Mein Jesu Was Fuer Seelenweh

Barber: Agnus Dei by the Choir of New College, Oxford.

This is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings set to the text, Agnus Dei, Lamb of God. Again, the tensions feel real as do the lightness of the whole piece. I feel that life is like a vapor after listening to this, and the text is so fitting.


Agnus Dei

Bach: Passacaglia And Fugue In C Minor (Bwv 582) arr. by Leopold Stokowski


Similar to Bonhoeffer's use of theme and variations in the Christian life, I feel a strength in this piece from Bach. The major theme goes barreling on, sometimes heavy and deep, sometimes high, and the variations and contra-melodies simultaneously played upon the theme give me a sense of how we interact with God (variations, contra-melodies) and how God moves in our lives (in time and with a forward force that cannot be stopped). There is great comfort for me in this piece.


Passacaglia And Fugue

Miles Davis: Blue in Green from Kind of Blue


This is a great example of musical space and also reminds me of the necessity of space in life. There is not an immediate response to the call, or an immediate reward to the promise. We all live in a kind of quasi-getting-the-reward-and-not-getting-the-reward. There is a piece now, but its fullness has not come. Miles' and Coltrane's lines are genius, and there may not be any one more influential piece for the world of jazz.


Blue in Green