There is a special joy for a Christian in teaching, because for every subject there is a backdrop of God’s reality and presence. For instance, in the teaching of mathematics, the lesson is about truth and distinguishing truth from falsehood: God is the God of all truth. In the teaching of biology, we discover that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” In the other physical and natural sciences, God is the Creator, and we wonder at the cosmos, His creation. In language and literature, He is the Word. He has created all we know and can know and beyond, and no matter how “secular” the subject, the teacher conveys the truth of God, regardless the teacher’s intent or consciousness of the Ultimate Subject.
This is particularly true and evident in the arts.
Though the tapestry that hangs behind every work of art is now tattered and besmirched by sin and disorder in our culture, the truth of God is still visible behind each work of art if we will but see it. In music, God stands aside a little, so that we can utter His praises, echoing the spheres, opening the heart from which it can flow.
There is a hidden truth about music: in every work of music, there is a sub-text that is spiritual.
This is true whether the music is sacred or secular. That spiritual component is exactly what we look for in a great performance. The performer may play or sing with great or even prodigious skill, but if the spiritual component is muted or missing, the performance will seem flat and forgettable. On the other hand, the strong presence of the spiritual will overcome any little flaws in the execution. The spiritual component is what we are experiencing when we conclude that a performer has a deep understanding of the music.
The spiritual is not just a part of the music: it is the music.
It is not separable from the music. It is the purpose for the music. Without it, music devolves to mere organized sounds, pleasant but not moving. When the spiritual component is primary, we are moved; we are touched; we perceive the Hand that touches the harp in our hearts. In the performance of great music, as we give ourselves over to it, we fall under the spell of the composer’s genius. At the end, we find the music has impressed its truth, its rightness, its orthodoxy, and its conviction on us, and we are changed.
The spiritual sub-text is precisely the presence of God in the gift of music.
We were made in the image of God to express and appreciate music (and all art). It is part of our design. The well-springs of music lie deep within. For most, it takes many years of the development of musical craft to expose them.
Though burdened with the necessity, and often the frustration, of teaching technique, the Christian teacher of music has this goal and privilege: to awaken the student to the reality of the spiritual sub-text, to feel it, to know it, and to express it. No amount of technique can achieve this. The seed must be within the student to begin with. And it is! No mere technical achievement can cause a student of music to pursue decades of effort towards mastery of music without this. The teacher must find it, nourish it, help it to sprout and grow.
In the end, this is holy work.
Robert McAnally Adams is a retired mathematician and curator of The Christian Quotation of the Day. See cqod.com
