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I enjoy the music on Sunday Mornings on the Satellite radio. Be it Millennium of Music or Baroque and beyond, there is a certain ethereal beauty with much of the religious music of the middle ages and baroque era JS BAch especially. I always enjoyed Gregorian chants. This was not something which I was ever exposed to growing up. I lived in a town of Philistines where it is doubtful few had ever ventured their minds and interests outside of their immediate thoughts. But when O got to college, started learning about art, music, and aesthetics, I found early on that the chants of a Gregorian choir can elevate the mind the something more transcendental. Perhaps that is a part of why I enjoy the Episcopal high church tradition, with the music of the choir reaching ethereal proportions
It is something which I find purely beautiful.
There is an interesting article HERE about music and the transcendental.
Neuroscientists have described how the auditory response with the right sounds, can decrease stress and anxiety. I believe that the key here is that the "right sound" is more subjective than objective. I find medieval ,Renaissance, baroque, classical religious music to be aesthetically pleasing and moving, especially later Gregorian chants I have never found the same response though, with traditional hymns, gospel or contemporary religious music, of which I am generally not fond. I think that this is why I find a Latin mass or a high church Eucharist to offer an aesthetic experience, as the music incorporated therein reaches more of a mystical level of beauty which I find absent from the others.
Perhaps too, coupling the monastic chants with the sound reverberating off the high arches of a gothic cathedral, which allows for an acoustic experience that was meant to, and often reaches, a vision of heaven, as imagined by the listener.
Good post. I love Gregorian chant. I have a couple of CDs that play on repeat in my vehicle while I'm driving. It literally never gets old.
Nice post LKC.
(Funny I didn't catch your title properly on first reading and thought you were going to be writing about atheistic music in religion.)
I always enjoy reading about things that bring people joy in life. Can't say I have quite the same appreciation of Gregorian chanting that you do, but i do appreciate how beautiful it can be. It is certainly calming to the soul (if my heathen soul has one )
I guess in a similar sort of way I have come to love and appreciate medieval Christian art. I can completely understand how it drew people in for centuries. There's something magical and ethereal and other worldly about it.
They used to do a Christmas presentation with a medieval choir singing in Latin (you'd get the English translation in a pamphlet) accompanied with medieval instruments. It's done in a smallish room, limited tickets.
You may also recognize the Bury St. Edmunds Cross from there. I was researching for a parent art project for my daughter's class years ago and stumbled upon this book. It was a good read! Cloak and dagger stuff in the art world.
I enjoy the music on Sunday Mornings on the Satellite radio. Be it Millennium of Music or Baroque and beyond, there is a certain ethereal beauty with much of the religious music of the middle ages and baroque era JS BAch especially. I always enjoyed Gregorian chants. This was not something which I was ever exposed to growing up. I lived in a town of Philistines where it is doubtful few had ever ventured their minds and interests outside of their immediate thoughts. But when O got to college, started learning about art, music, and aesthetics, I found early on that the chants of a Gregorian choir can elevate the mind the something more transcendental. Perhaps that is a part of why I enjoy the Episcopal high church tradition, with the music of the choir reaching ethereal proportions
It is something which I find purely beautiful.
There is an interesting article HERE about music and the transcendental.
Neuroscientists have described how the auditory response with the right sounds, can decrease stress and anxiety. I believe that the key here is that the "right sound" is more subjective than objective. I find medieval ,Renaissance, baroque, classical religious music to be aesthetically pleasing and moving, especially later Gregorian chants I have never found the same response though, with traditional hymns, gospel or contemporary religious music, of which I am generally not fond. I think that this is why I find a Latin mass or a high church Eucharist to offer an aesthetic experience, as the music incorporated therein reaches more of a mystical level of beauty which I find absent from the others.
Perhaps too, coupling the monastic chants with the sound reverberating off the high arches of a gothic cathedral, which allows for an acoustic experience that was meant to, and often reaches, a vision of heaven, as imagined by the listener.
KingCat you have discovered an important aspect of my Synthesis in your experience and preference for music. Our preference in music reveals the level of spiritual development we have achieved, IMO. It also explains why spiritual concepts tend to come into conflict with the spatiotemporal view of modern physics as described by Milic Capek in these excerpts:
. . . In the temporal structure of the perception of melody, features can be discovered which appear irrational in any visual-mechanical model of physical reality: the primacy of events, the absence of infinite divisibility, the compatibility of novelty and mnemic causation, the compatibility of continuity and individuality, the fusion of becoming with its concrete content.
. . . The positive significance of the auditory experience is in the fact that from it a certain imageless dynamic pattern may be abstracted which will probably offer a key to the understanding of the nature of the type of 'extensive becoming' that seems to constitute the nature of physical reality.
In my Synthesis, our living soul is breathed into us by God at birth. It begins as the seed (insemination) of a spiritual embryo developing in the womb of our brain. Our task is to control the development and maturation of our soul toward its eventual rebirth as Spirit upon our physical death.
Energy transmutation is the mechanism underlying its maturation process and energy at the level of quanta is the very substance of our soul. Our true Self (consciousness) is our Spirit in the process of becoming and exists at the level of quanta as a BEC. Our thoughts are the production process for its development to maturity (Death) and rebirth of our soul into its rightful plane of existence as Spirit.
But, pure thought, uncolored with human emotions, is not the type of Spirit we are supposed to produce. For those of us who prefer right-brain imagery and analogy, the musical composition provides the best analog for our existence. In my Synthesis, our mind (Ego) is merely the delayed conscious manifestation of the prior interaction in quantum time between our Spirit and our animal nature. The relative strengths of these two "ingredients" yields the nature of our consciousness (experienced Self).
You can view our consciousness as a mixture of awareness and reaction, just as a piano concerto is a mixture of melody and rhythm. The music is the product of the left and right hands, but it is neither all melody nor all rhythm, and it does not exist except as the product of the rhythm and melody hands. Similarly, our consciousness is the "music" played by our soul and our animal nature through the stereophonic system of our brain.
This is the very essence of cosmic becoming (what you call transcendence), as Capek suggests,
. . . Let us consider a piece of music. It is hardly necessary to underscore its successive character. As long as its movement is going on, it remains incomplete and in its successive unfolding we grasp in the most vivid and concrete way the incompleteness of every becoming. At each particular moment a new tone is added to the previous ones.
. . . The quality of a new tone, in spite of its irreducible individuality, is tinged by the whole antecedent musical context which, in turn, is retroactively changed by the emergence of a new musical quality. Every musical structure is by its own nature unfolding and incomplete; so is cosmic becoming, the time-space of modern physics.
The phenomenon of music and its diversity of character and appeal is readily understood once this composition of the human psyche is fully understood. The amount and kind of rhythm and melody that is present determines the character of the music. Music appeals to both facets of the human psychic makeup.
This becomes clearer when you consider that rhythm and melody occur at separate ends of the sound spectrum. The rhythm or beat appeals to our animal nature. Our animal nature is the serpent or physical partner, therefore it is in the low-frequency range of solid matter. The purest form of rhythm, the low-frequency sound of savage drum beats, represents a predominance of animal appeal.
Our soul is in the high-frequency range of quanta. Since our soul represents an accelerated state of energy or wave frequency compared to our animal nature, it follows that higher-frequency sounds would be more compatible with our soul than with our animal nature.
Furthermore, consciousness can readily detect and appreciate the altered sequencing of harmonious sounds which is melody, and can understand lyrics. The soft, euphonic, high frequency strains of a Stradivarius violin in the hands of a master, would represent a predominance of soul appeal.
The mixture of soul and animal that comprises our consciousness at any one time determines our preference in music at that time. The admixture determines the "resultant frequency" of our consciousness and subsequently determines its compatibility with various mixtures of melody and rhythm in music. That is why for most of us our taste in music is a fluid thing, highly dependent upon our mood or the circumstances we are in.
This is further support for the notion that our consciousness is like the "music" played by our soul and animal nature. When the serpent is in charge, we prefer more rhythmic music. When our soul is in charge, we want more refined music. Most of us seek a compromise that equates to our "mood."
Arthur Schopenhauer captured this significant aspect of music in the following excerpts from The World as Will and Idea,
. . .in its language, which is understood with absolute directness, but which is yet untranslatable into that of the reason, the inner nature of all life and existence expresses itself.
. . . As quick transition from wish to satisfaction . . . is happiness and well-being, so quick melodies without great deviations are cheerful; slow melodies, striking painful discords, and only winding back through many bars to the key note are, as analogous to the delayed and hardly won satisfaction, sad.
. . . The short intelligible subjects of quick dance music seem to speak only of easily attained common pleasure. On the other hand, the 'Allegro maestoso,' in elaborate movements, long passages, and wide deviations, signifies a greater, nobler effort towards a more distant end, and its final attainment.
. . . All that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universal, . . . always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, the inmost soul, as it were, of the phenomenon, without the body.
. . . According to all this, we may regard the phenomenal world, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing, which is therefore itself the only medium of their analogy, so that a knowledge of it is demanded in order to understand that analogy.
While Shopenhauer's sensitivity enabled this discernment, he was unable to employ his own mandate that "a knowledge of it is demanded in order to understand that analogy." His highly philosophical approach was the only way he could support what he knew to be true, since contemporary physics was unknown to him.
Today it is obvious how music and nature are "two different expressions of the same thing," once a knowledge of quantum wave theory is employed. After all, music is merely waves of sound at varying frequencies, and matter is merely waves of energy at varying frequencies.
The almost universal preference for lyric and melody indicates the general superiority of the soul, while the extreme diversity of the melodic character and its admixture with rhythm indicates the tenuous nature of that superiority.
Gospel music can have tremendous soul-stirring power when it successfully merges strong rhythmic appeal with melodic and lyrical expressions of the strongest yearnings of our soul. It is another indication that controlling our animal nature and merging its emotions and prompting with our soul yields the best accomplishments of humankind.
I learned, while taking care of a relative with aphasia from a stroke, that music taps into a different part of the brain, then speaking.
For example, she could not even articulate a single syllable at first, but she could clearly sing happy birthday.
It's no wonder, most religious services begin with music. It creates a type of " communion " among the participants.
Beats, rhythm, harmony etc are a universal language.
Had a thought the other day while listening to something, that a good goal would be to synchronize the beats of my life, with the rhythm of my soul.
I learned, while taking care of a relative with aphasia from a stroke, that music taps into a different part of the brain, then speaking.
For example, she could not even articulate a single syllable at first, but she could clearly sing happy birthday.
It's no wonder, most religious services begin with music. It creates a type of " communion " among the participants.
Beats, rhythm, harmony etc are a universal language.
Had a thought the other day while listening to something, that a good goal would be to synchronize the beats of my life, with the rhythm of my soul.
I learned, while taking care of a relative with aphasia from a stroke, that music taps into a different part of the brain, then speaking.
For example, she could not even articulate a single syllable at first, but she could clearly sing happy birthday.
It's no wonder, most religious services begin with music. It creates a type of " communion " among the participants.
Beats, rhythm, harmony etc are a universal language.
Had a thought the other day while listening to something, that a good goal would be to synchronize the beats of my life, with the rhythm of my soul.
They used to do a Christmas presentation with a medieval choir singing in Latin (you'd get the English translation in a pamphlet) accompanied with medieval instruments. It's done in a smallish room, limited tickets.
You may also recognize the Bury St. Edmunds Cross from there. I was researching for a parent art project for my daughter's class years ago and stumbled upon this book. It was a good read! Cloak and dagger stuff in the art world.
I LOVE the cloisters. I've had MET membership for about years, so I visit the cloisters several times a year. How funny. I wonder if we've ever crossed paths?
My daughter tried to get an internship there but she's very young in her year group and they wouldn't take her until she was 18 by which time she will be off to college.
I LOVE the cloisters. I've had MET membership for about years, so I visit the cloisters several times a year. How funny. I wonder if we've ever crossed paths?
My daughter tried to get an internship there but she's very young in her year group and they wouldn't take her until she was 18 by which time she will be off to college.
I have not been to the Cloisters....YET
Whenever we are in New York, and the last time was last century, we always worked in time for the Met I would like to go and stay for a few days and visit the Cloisters as well as the new Yankee stadium and the other art museums
I have visited St Patricks Cathedral, would love to be in NY on a Sunday and step inside during a Mass.. probably beautiful.
KingCat you have discovered an important aspect of my Synthesis in your experience and preference for music. Our preference in music reveals the level of spiritual development we have achieved, IMO. It also explains why spiritual concepts tend to come into conflict with the spatiotemporal view of modern physics as described by Milic Capek in these excerpts:
......(Edit for space)...
Gospel music can have tremendous soul-stirring power when it successfully merges strong rhythmic appeal with melodic and lyrical expressions of the strongest yearnings of our soul. It is another indication that controlling our animal nature and merging its emotions and prompting with our soul yields the best accomplishments of humankind.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to MysticPhD again.
I was thinking today, on the way home from Easter service, about the concept of god and the Christ-Consciousness as pertaining to the elevation of the human mind towards a higher spiritual purpose (or self-actualization, to make it easier) I was thinking about the Easter season, having 40 days with no weed, and coming to that Mystical awakening of the concept of Jesus being that triumph of the Spiritual over the material.
"Christ" is not some victory over the reality of the material world, but an awakening of the potential of the human experience becoming the best we can be in regards to mental and spiritual health.
The Music today was nothing short of excellent, although I found the hymns to be both archaic and pedantic, which is an ongoing argument of the outdated Christian dogma inherent to not only the Episcopal church but to the traditional concept of Christ not being within us, but outside of us. Easter is supposed to be a very personal internal Resurrection, a reaffirmation of the spirit within, the living victory of the ascension to a higher concept. Sadly, much of this has become muddled in dogma and scriptural myth.
BUT the Music of Bach and others, including Handel, DID make it worth the drive.
Not a fan of Gregorian chant, though I am letting it grow on me, since our church choir is the best on the entire, total planet earth. (Episcopal.) As a former Catholic, it was forced down my throat.
Our choir sings from Bach, from Mozart and other amazing names from back when. I sit and enjoy and pray with joy. When the choir sopranos hit the descant, my heart melts and I often stop singing because I can't weep and sing at the same time.
A favorite secular tune, with a descant to die for:
From "Much Ado About Nothing." Wm. Shakespeare.
When I make it to Hawaii, and one day I will, then I know where to go to a church now thanks to you. I am always up for what you describe and seem to truly find inspiring. Thank You and Happy Easter
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