Music, Nature and Creation

As a more-or-less full-time piano teacher, amateur composer, and occasional performer, I’d say that musical pursuits take up around 50% of my time. It is, as they say, my bread and butter. I’d be surprised, however, if, since I began my Patheos career back in 2021, any more than 10% of my Featured Writer content has been about musical topics. That’s one heck of a mismatch.

…and I’ve reflected on why this is. In the first instance, musical analysis tends more towards the mathematical than the literary. This, more than anything, is the big yellow bollard your numerically challenged author trips over. Drop into the music section of an academic library, pull down a few books, and see how long you can float in the soup of sub- and superscript; exercises and examples; annotations and abbreviations. It ain’t Shakespeare, you’ll soon find.

Musicology, the study of music, isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; however, you don’t have to get your head around Schenkerian analysis in order to love music. You don’t have to see the mathematical strings that underpin the universe to be swept up aesthetically by the great forces of nature, among which I consider music to be one. I had these thoughts, appropriately enough, as I tried to learn Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata (No. 17 in D minor), 3rd Movement.

Mother Nature, the Worker of Tempests, is a cruel mistress. Our best experiences of nature, as every mountaineer will know, demand a great exertion of effort. I’m no Sir Edmund Hillary; but I did, with some travail one Summer, conquer Croagh Patrick in the west of Ireland. When I reached the top, there was fog all around; and so the views were, on that occasion, crap (unless you’re a fog enthusiast, I suppose.) Ah well, I’m sure the vistas are normally glorious.

There are any number of stories in the Bible to which the “Tempest” Sonata could be the soundtrack. Citing ESV titles, we have: Genesis 6.9-7.24, “Noah and the Flood”; Jonah 1.1-6, “Jonah Flees the Presence of the Lord”; and Mark 4.35-41, “Jesus Calms a Storm”. Each is a record of epic encounters with nature and its terrible beauty; there is biblical grandeur to be found, as well, in the Sonata’s torrent of notes, a no less beguiling work for all this excitement.

Great works of instrumental music, like the “Tempest”, are a huge ask on body, mind, and will. Classical piano brings many challenges, all of which cast a brutal spotlight on our limitations. Perseverance in a piano student is not only desirable; it’s a must-have. This is why so many people, both kids and adults – even those who seem superficially keen; ‘the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long’ – call time on their new hobby when the novelty wears thin.

Our limitations – and you will discover many when you learn the piano! – keep us humble, however they may frustrate us. I, like many, struggle with a limited aptitude for name-recall. My brain’s cringe-folder (everybody has one) stores a memory where I meet a friend for a theological chat over coffee, make some decent arguments, then drop a massive clanger when I confuse Dallas Willard, the theologian, with Bryce Dallas Howard, the Jurassic World actress!

Limitation follows me to the piano bench as well. To confront a Bach fugue, I find, is to face an unbreachable wall, one which guards an infinitely worthwhile object: a level of musical accomplishment I can only dream of. I have to remind myself – in order, above all, to protect my sanity! – that in the great musical pantheon there’s only one Bach, one Brahms, one Beethoven; their best and my best are two vastly different propositions. Amateurism is no sin.

Our primary relationship with God is that of creature-Creator (the Apostles’ Creed begins, ‘I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth’); and so, to behold our fellow human beings exercise their creative abilities, and to such a superlative degree as Beethoven did, is to be overawed. We recall, dependent as we are a higher power, the boundedness of our existence; and this knowledge is followed, in its turn – and to varying degrees, person by person – by the will to transcend: ‘I will not let thee go, except thou bless me’ (Genesis 32.26).

I was happy to be reminded of that last quotation through Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful new book, Reading Genesis. It’s from a passage which the New International Version has entitled “Jacob Wrestles with God.” Whether Jacob’s mysterious adversary was actually God (he refuses to divulge his name), musicians can recognise in the narrative our experiences of solitary struggle, with its toll on our physical bodies (v. 25), in pursuit of some virtuous object.

Franz Liszt, another punishing composer, whose B minor Sonata ranks among my favourite sonatas to listen to, called a set of twelve gruelling piano studies the Transcendental Études. I’ve never attempted them, nor have I the nerve to try. There’s that notion of transcendence again, though. Like Jacob, Liszt had an obvious urge to transcend, which I regard as God-given.

Musicians can be deep thinkers. One friend, a guitarist, suggested in a memorable conversation to me that music touches our hearts profoundly because we’re made of sound. I’m not sure that we’re made of sound – we could well be, for all I know! – but I share his basic insight: all our being is endowed with a common essence. I believe this is because Christ has brought us into being, ‘and without him was not any thing made that was made’ (John 1.3).

I’m open, therefore, to the view that music-making is a deep-rooted, even primordial, part of our nature: as old as man, crucial to the human experience at all times and in all places, but far from an easy task. If it were so simple to make music, would we cherish it in the same way? Probably not, I would maintain. To study music is, to co-opt Lord Tennyson’s words, ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’; and on this, I must end part one. Stay tuned for an encore!