“Singing Hymns with New Power”

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choir, Clayne Robison

This morning, I was thinking about composing, remembering the metaphor of “leaning your ladder against the wrong wall,” and I stumbled across Clayne Robison’s 1977 Ensign article. He begins:

I awoke early this morning, and my mind was drawn to recount my moving experiences with music these last months. I wept.

My wife awoke and comforted me. When I could speak I assured her of the extraordinary joy that was in my heart. We talked for a while about the spiritual blessings that had come into our home during these last months. Then the thought came to me, “Today you should write down what you have experienced.” . . .

The crucial ideas behind the experiences came from Elder Boyd K. Packer’s fireside address at BYU in February 1976. I am a musician, and a statement Elder Packer quoted struck home: “There are many [LDS artists] who struggle and climb and finally reach the top of the ladder, only to find that it is leaning against the wrong wall.” (Ensign, August 1976, p. 61.)

He continues by describing how he came to sing and conduct with greater power, in a way that he wasn’t doing it for musical greatness but for God’s glory (though with a byproduct of excellence). It was a touching reminder to me about what our values should be, particularly in our church music.

Read the rest of the article here.

Careers in Music: Aphorism

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Careers, Friendship

A career in music is not about the music you write or play—
you will create whatever you create and your pride will ensure you do your best.
Instead, a career in music is about the people with whom you connect
and the experiences you share with them.

It should be obvious that there is no competition in this.
Auditions and gigs come and go,
but it’s through friendships we find our livelihood
and in them we find our well-being.

Raising the Bar of Musical Excellence

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Bach, Christ, improvement, performance, standard, temples

In 2003, the Brethren announced during a session of World Wide Leadership Training that they were “raising the bar” for missionaries.  Certain standards were laid out regarding spiritual preparation, worthiness, and physical ability.  These standards were elevated to create a missionary field more prepared and able to preach the Gospel.  I think this same sort of thing needs to happen with our church music on the local level.  We need to raise the bar for LDS music making.

Local LDS music should be as beautiful as we can make it.  The Lord teaches us to receive revelation with our heart and our minds (Doc & Cov 8:2).  I believe the same principle applies to music making.  This is echoed by Johann Sebastian Bach, probably the greatest composer of Christian music, who said, “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul”—in other words, making the best music we can with our hearts and our minds that appeal to our hearts and minds.

Some people will argue that “our musicians are amateurs and volunteers who are doing the best they can.”  I understand that many church music leaders are amateurs doing their best.  One of the best aspects about our faith is that it’s operated by a lay-clergy and volunteers, not professionals.  We can respect their limitations, while still expressing the expectation that they will do everything they can to perform beautifully.  Others express the concern that “we’re not supposed to ‘show off’ or ‘impress.’  We’re just supposed to ‘bring the spirit.’”  I agree that our goal is not to impress but rather to express.  Yet striving for high performance standards is not the same as “showing off.”

Proper preparing of musical performances should parallel our attitudes in building temples. Temples do not become beautiful merely from good intentions.  The Church designs these edifices to be aesthetically beautiful, and builds them to a high construction standard with some of the finest material we can find.  This is not to show the surrounding communities how lavish we can make our places of worship, but express how we approach our most sacred edifices.  We are striving to make them akin to a heavenly environment, and point the soul to Christ.  Our music can be the same: Beauty that points to Christ.

Once we have the desire to improve our musicianship as much as possible, we need to make sure that the general church population has access to resources that will help them improve their skills.  They need to be taught how to find beautiful and appropriate music, how to conduct, how to sing as well as teach singing, how to play and voice the organ.  I’m not saying that we all need to become experts in any of these given fields, but, again, we should strive to reach a higher standard.

The church has made a few resources available on their website.  While this is a great place to start, it does have limitations in what material it covers.  There are some great resources made by musicians who are members of the church.  Here are some examples.

For singing, I recommend Betty Jeanne Chipman’s Singing with Mind, Body & Soul.  For organ skills, I’ve heard great things about The New LDS Organist.  For conducting, I highly recommend Masterful Choral Conducting written by my mentors Ronald Staheli and Rosalind Hall.  I recommend the latter so much, I think that every stake in the church should get a copy for their library and let all musicians use it either privately or in small groups.

We should also keep in mind that the resources outside the church for these subject are plentiful and provide some of the best learning we can get.  After all, Brigham Young sent artists to France on “art missions” to study painting with France’s finest artists before they painted the murals in the Salt Lake Temple.  One examples is Timothy Seelig’s The Perfect Blend for teaching choral singing techniques.

While improvements in our musical performance wont happen overnight, study and practice will help us get better over time.  We can make weak places strong.  Keeping our performing standards high and seeking to improve answers the call that President Hinckley once gave to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: “Keep getting better.”  With beauty of heart and mind, let us point to Christ.

Popularity and Lasting Value

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Greatness, Popularity

Over on the LDS Composers facebook page, Marden Pond asked, “What makes any specific piece of music endure? Or what makes certain music ‘popular’? Is there any relationship between the two?” To this, I responded, “Physicality makes a work popular, and insight makes it endure.” Here I wish to elaborate on that somewhat enigmatic response.

I believe that when people say they want to be “moved” by music, they’re speaking less metaphorically than they think. I think our physical relationship to music is the first aspect of it we respond to, both the interaction of our bodies’ rhythms with the music’s and the sympathy we feel vocally to a work’s melodic traits. Thus, I don’t think humanity’s general attraction to music with a strong beat and a catchy tune has nearly as much to do with comprehensibility as it does with physical resonance. (I also think that music is a physiological art form that happens to be conveyed through sound rather than a sonic one, but that’s another post.) I would say the vast majority of popular music has these traits, though not all music having these traits will be popular.

As for a specific piece enduring, I think there are different reasons. Some pieces endure for sentimental reasons: they speak to the times and seasons of an individual or a people. Marcel Proust wrote an essay on how this effect particularly allows bad music to endure. Other pieces endure because of their reputation. I doubt most people understand why the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms endures, yet these same people would call those composers great because our culture says it is so. Lastly, I think that music endures because it has inherent insight, both musical and human. I can’t identify what that means in technical terms, but in terms of my response, it means that I am moved in some way by the music, that it surprises me and opens up a world of understanding, and that it always offers new insights each time I hear it.

So what does this all means for us as composers? I think the answer is actually “not much.” I don’t think our purpose is to be popular or to write “enduring music” (whatever that entails). Instead, I think it is our task to be as articulate, thoughtful, and sincere as we can in our music and let the rest take care of itself. I think that the relationship Witold Lutoslawski described in his journal is ideal: “I have a strong desire to communicate something to people, through my music. I am not working to win myself many ‘fans’; I do not want to convince, I want to find. I would like to find people who in the depths of their souls feel the same way as I do. They are the people who are closest to me, even if I do not know them personally. I regard creative activity as a kind of soul-fishing, and the ‘catch’ is the best medicine for loneliness, that most human of sufferings.”

Most music will not appeal to everyone, and much of it will only appeal to a handful of people. But to that handful, the music they love means the world. And that’s okay.

Composing Responsibly

To what extent are ‘Latter-day Saint composers’ responsible to the LDS people at large?

This becomes an interesting question since much of the music we compose is not meant for sacrament meeting or really any kind of church use. In fact, there are probably a good many church members who would probably, uh, have rather negative reactions upon hearing our music. I had an interesting conversation the other day with a piano salesman friend who basically said, “you’re not giving the people what they want.” So where does the university educated, professional composer (who is LDS) fit in, if he isn’t composing for the whole church?

Here are three possible answers that I have found for myself:

1. I do write some music that is appropriate for church use, including some hymns and musical arrangements. They probably push the ‘sacrament meeting appropriate’ boundary just a little bit, but they are definitely appropriate for at least some kind of church setting, both musically and doctrinally.

2. Someday I will write one of those big Mormon works. You know, the oratorio of destiny that rivals even Handel’s Messiah. Someday. But in all honesty, and with due respect to those composers who have gone before in this tradition, this is already sort of ‘niche’ market. This kind of thing is likely to be enjoyed mostly by LDS classical musicians and their patrons, and though you may find “The Restoration” at Deseret Book, it isn’t likely to be the Sunday-morning-music the average LDS family turns to. Even a work like Wilberg’s recent “Requiem” recorded by the Tabernacle Choir is seen as something of an odd-duck in the output of that respected institution. So, in composing this sort of ‘church art music’, a composer is only reaching out to a certain (narrow) part of the general church populace. Should I feel guilty about that? I don’t think so! And I don’t think it is naive to think that an increasing amount of members will find this kind of music uplifting and edifying.

3.  I am Latter-day Saint. I am a composer. Not everything I write has an LDS ‘spin’ to it, or is meant for church use, or proclaims the doctrines of the restoration with the voice of a trump. BUT: I am still LDS, and everything I write fits into that lifestyle, and does not contradict, hide, or deny my heritage. By striving towards righteous success as a composer in the secular academic field, I will never compromise my ideals or shy away from those of my works that do have an obvious LDS aspect to them. In that way, pursuing a career as a composer (and being LDS) will be like any other career pursued by an LDS person. We do our best at it, and we try to let our light shine wherever we end up. By excelling in our discipline (and being good Latter-day Saints) we help give the church a good name in our corner of the (musical and academic) world.

Of course this is a whole snake nest of issues, but those answers at least give me at least a measure of peace.

Beginnings of a Conversation

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Building Zion

Yesterday I went to see two musicians whom I greatly respect, Mariah Wilson and Jared Oaks, perform at Mariah’s Honors Thesis recital. After the recital, I had an interesting conversation with Jared Oaks about the state and future of Mormon music, which echoed one I had with Matt Nielsen a few weeks previously. I noticed (1) that as young Mormon musicians, we have a lot of common interests and concerns, (2) that we really like to talk about these things, and (3) that the opportunity to do so doesn’t seem to come as often as we otherwise would like.

I started this blog, because I thought we musicians could use a place to these things. I imagine this blog as a place for all of us to post our thoughts, accomplishments, and aspirations. I imagine us:

• reporting on concerts of Mormon musicians
• discussing the role of music in the church
• talking about how we can build up the church through music
• exploring the Western tradition we’ve inherited both within the church and outside of it
• . . . and more, all related to our combined experience of being musicians and LDS

As the future performers, composers, conductors, and producers of the church, what we start now will lay a foundation for the next sixty years of Church music and beyond. By talking together now about these issues, I hope that we can form strong bonds that will help us throughout our careers both in and outside of the church.

All the best,

Joseph