My Lenten Musical Discipline

“How’s your Lent going?” a colleague asked me a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t know how to respond at first. My eventual honest answer was, “It’s going fine for the church, but I haven’t really internalized it.”

Fortunately, that simple but penetrating question was posed early enough to give me an opportunity to develop a Lenten discipline, or rather, repeat a discipline I have adopted the last four Lents. In each of those years, I have chosen a classical piano piece to learn – not to perform, mind you, but only to learn. (DO NOT ASK ME TO PLAY THESE PIECES IN PUBLIC!) I’m far from proficient on the piano. I cannot “sight-read,” which means I have to spend a lot of time finding all the notes and learning how they all fit together. And there is a decided limit to how much difficulty I can manage. I don’t have the virtuoso talent of others who are blessed with the uncanny ability to master the works of composers who pressed the limits of what an 88-note keyboard could produce.

But, for lesser musical mortals like myself, great composers mercifully produced slower movements of otherwise challenging sonatas, and short, relatively simple pieces that, while not easy, are at least accessible – and often achingly beautiful.

So, one year I learned the second movement of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata. Another year I taught myself a Rachmaninoff “Moment Musicale.” I’ve also picked up a “Nocturne” by Ottorino Respighi and one of Mendelssohn’s “Venetian Boat Songs.” This year, I’m working on Liszt’s “Consolation No. 3.” None of these come easily for me. They are just hard enough that I have to struggle with them, but not so hard that I cannot learn to play them well enough to enjoy them.

Each year, this has been a spiritual experience. When I begin, I have to break through the frustration of finding every note and coordinating all of them as

directed by the composer. I nearly always reach a point where I’m ready to give up. But I fight this temptation, and little by little, the piece makes more sense to me. I begin to notice patterns and harmonies. Even then, though, it remains technically challenging. There is usually a point in this exercise when I can clearly hear the intricacies of the piece in my head but cannot reproduce them with my fingers. That’s a different kind of frustration.

Before I get comfortable playing the whole piece from start to finish without stopping, I reach an incomparable moment when some challenging feature of the piece that has eluded me becomes playable. For example, the Liszt Consolation is “polyrhythmic,” like a lot of other pieces written during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. There are lots of “two-against-three” passages, which is something I learned how to play when I was a high school piano student. But this piece also includes four measures – in four different places – of “three-against-four.” (The left hand divides each beat with eighth-note triplets, while the right hand plays the same beat in four sixteenth notes.) This makes for a dreamy sound when played well. But it just sounds like a muddle if done poorly. When I first started working on this piece, I fought those measures with increasing frustration. I kept repeating them, trying to make them come out right, but they were incomprehensible to me. I had just about decided I would have to admit defeat when I woke up one morning hearing them playing in my head. They sounded different to me. I went to the piano and slowed them down until all the music drained out and only the mathematical relationships were left. And at that slow speed, I “heard” what three-against-four sounds like. Then, I gradually sped up those passages until I had returned to the right tempo.

It’s hard for me to describe the absolute thrill I felt when I knew I was able to play three-against-four without fighting it. I let out an audible whoop and actually clapped. Once I had broken through the technical barrier, I was free to play those passages expressively, channeling the music instead of clumsily reaching for the notes.

I’m still working on this piece, but it is no longer daunting. It is inviting. As with other such compositions, I am amazed that I have the privilege of communing with a genius composer from another era – actually playing the same notes that flowed from another’s creativity. I’m not just hearing the music. I’m literally in it. By participating in that creativity, I enter a communion with the Creator. This can be an overwhelming emotional encounter.

I know that not everyone is able to play the piano (or any other musical instrument, for that matter) but there are many ways of reaching the same spiritual experience. All of them are what we call “art,” but they are not limited to what are typically called “the arts.” They might be found in music, painting, sculpting, photography, or writing, but I’ve also watched carpenters, masons, plumbers, and mechanics approach their craft with artistry. I’ve witnessed people who work in backyard gardens or in rolling fields tend the soil with an affection that impresses me as a kind of art. The best physicians, attorneys, teachers, librarians, and scientists have reached a level of artistry with their vocations. I’ve listened to people who artfully ask questions and respond to others in ways that engender closeness between people who have never met. When you’ve mastered the mechanics, or the skills, necessary for any type of work, you are free to pour yourself into it. You do it well. It is not just “good” work. It is beautiful. And all such artistry brings great pleasure to the Artist who is the source of all creativity.

I believe this is how we are to understand Jesus’ admonition for the righteousness of his disciples to “exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.” Six times in the Sermon on the Mount he repeats a commandment from the Law of Moses and then calls us to a higher level of righteousness. For instance, “You have heard it said, “Love your neighbor,” but I say to you, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43-44). Far from abolishing the law, Jesus transcended it – or, as he said in Matthew 5:17, he “fulfilled” it. Like Moses and the prophets before him, he envisioned his disciples so internalizing the spirit of the law that its literal letter would no longer be necessary. He inspired a community where the law would be “written on our hearts,” rather than left on stone tablets. The Apostle Paul was articulating exactly the same vision when he admonished early believers to live “not under law, but under grace.”

When I learn a classical piano piece, there is a genuine thrill in getting free of the page. That doesn’t mean I am free to ignore the notes, the tempo, or the dynamics specified by the composer. But, no longer fighting to learn the mechanics, I am liberated to play the music. Similarly, the indwelling presence of Christ enables us to move beyond the technicalities of life (the law) and live artistically (by grace). “I came that they might have life,” Jesus said, “and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). I get a taste of that “abundance” when the notes on the page produce music through my fingers.

©2018 by J. Mark Lawson

Comments

[Michael Salamone]

A beautifully written bridge between whatever one considers art and faith! How wonderful it feels to live in Christ without having to watch the "dials" of our spiritual life. Thanks , Mark!

[Deb Record]

So... when are you going to take a "leap of faith" and play one of your learned compositions for us?