MUSIC AND ART: THE PATHOS OF OUR FALLENNESS

As I'm sitting here, I'm listening to an orchestral piece on the radio, and am reminded of how much music has affected my life. The piece was "A Hero's Life" by Richard Strauss. I had not heard it before, but what struck me was how strongly so much of the music that has been composed over the centuries, seems to reflect the pathos of a humanity that lives in the power of death that so dominates this world. Not that this piece was special in this regard; certainly I have heard that same pathos...like the cry of darkness crying for light, or of emptiness agonizing for meaning. So often, there is such deep sadness that emanates from the music. I find myself weeping often when I hear really powerful music, though not always as an outgrowth of that pathos; sometimes it is a tremendous feeling of beauty, or of a profound feeling of  something undefinably moving, as if it were a messaage from another dimension. Perhaps I should just mention a few pieces that have struck this chord of pathos. I'm not trying to persuade you, just share. Off the top of my head, I first got this sense of pathos in music when listening to Sibelius' symphony #5, many years ago. It made me feel like I had accidentally broken into an infinite celestial song that had no beginning and no end, and what was encapsulated in this symphony was just a little snippet that somehow had been cut out of the whole, which explained to me why the piece itself seemed to not have a starting place or an ending place - that the start and end of the symphony was merely random.  Next, I think some of  Samuel Barber's work speaks in the way I've been talking about here, Mahler, Bartok, Berg, others...I can't seem to tug them out of my subconscious at the moment...Oh, yes, another: Lucas Foss. I remember a piece I heard a long time ago, and never since, entitled, "A Parable of Death." That, too, spoke to me of this deep pathos; the sense of near despair that emanates from lots of music. But I think it is the human way of expressing something that is perhaps too painful to confront directly, or perhaps even more appropriately, something human beings don't want to confront because we instinctively know  is a confrontation with our own hearts...hearts that run away from God

But that also reminds me of a potter/artist friend I had back when I was a practicing artist (pottery, painting, sculpture), and was teaching it at an art school. This friend began to make clay masks, and I recall seeing a picture of one in particular - the minute I saw it I had that same feeling that here was an expression of humanity trying to break free of it's bondage to the P/S+D (power of sin and death). Years later, that picture jolted my memory when I saw Han Solo encased or frozen in some kind of death wrap, in one of the Star Wars movies. The visual arts are perhaps a bit more able to make clear statements about this profound pathos; as in, for instance, Edvard Munch's "The Scream."



I regret that the arts no longer seem to find a place in Christian life. There are some fine Christian artists around. I like the wood engravings of Jim Dignon,who made a neat book of plates illustrating the Gospel of Mark. Each page contained a wood engraving illustrating the particular text. I'm particularly fond of one double page plate from the book he gave my family one time when I took our then, young children to his studio. It's framed and hanging on my living room wall, and I've often thought about how neat it would be to have a complete set of the plates with their text, framed, and hanging around the perimeter of the sanctuary where I am pastor. But I don't know if Jim is even still working. He loves the Lord.

Maybe I should stick a painting in here entitled, "My Father's Woods"

Another painting, by Paul Gauguin, makes a pretty direct statement by a man who was looking for answers, but unfortunately didn't find them. His painting, entitled, "Whence? What? Wither?" puts the existential dilemma pretty boldly. From whence do we come? What are we? Wither do we go? In the painting there are several young girls; one is reaching to pick fruit from a tree. In the background is an older woman working - preparing food. In the center of the picture is a silvery grey idol that clearly was made of lifeless, powerless stone.

In the lower left corner, a dark grey brown haggard woman is seated on the ground: arms drawing her knees up against her body. Next to her a bird is waiting, like a bird of prey, for death to make its claim to her eternity.
Those three questions plague the heart because they are expressions of Pascal's "wretchedness." And the artist, after living a dissipate life can only wait in his uncertainty. It's the condition of so many, many people today. They comfort themselves with a false assurance they have made up out of their own mind, that when you die it's all over, and life was a cruel hoax. Jesus gives us a different answer, and it isn't one of those "I-hope-so-isms.." Still another example of this atmosphere of pathos and sense of despair and aloneness I have noticed in the work of a rather famous artist, who just happened to be the art teacher in the high school I attended. It as he who motivated me to attend the Boston Museum School of Art after graduation. Now in his nineties he paints faceless women, dressed in identical long white, or more often black dresses, often with their backs to the painting's audience, staring longingly out through tall, narrow, black tree trunks, at an ocean that makes no waves. They seem to be waiting, as if expecting someone to come, yet, somehow, almost resigned that they will not - fishermen, husbands, the future, but with uncertainty and a sense of foreboding. It is not just one woman; nor is it just one painting, but an ongoing series that seems to be penetratingly spiritual. Even in those paintings where there are lots of these women, there is no connection between them, each one is so terribly alone, staring out at nothing.  More later. (For more on the spirituality of pottery click on the "More on Pottery..." page on the sidebar )

MORE ON MUSIC AND ART: THE PATHOS OF OUR FALLENNESS

I was driving up to Manchester the other morning. I was listening to my local classical music station, as usual. The program was exploring Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings." You might recall that I referred to Barber, and some others in the earlier MUSIC AND ART posting. A gentleman named Thomas Larson, it appears, has recently written a book which, interestingly enough bears the title, "The Saddest Music Ever Written." Just hearing the title, sent something stirring my soul. Now, several days later, I'm reminded of something C.S. Lewis said: "We read in order to know we're not alone." It was a revelation. I had begun to wonder if I was the only one in the world in whom certain pieces of music have the ability to cause choking up, weeping, tears. That's the way it has happened to me. I'm not always sure what it is about the music that does it, but sometimes I have identified profound joy, or a soul gripping beauty, but also a heart penetrating pathos. I don't mean music with words for the most part, although there are some operatic arias that have a similar power, "La Boheme," comes to mind, and sometmes Pavaroti had that effect. Between his remarks about the depression that filled the life of Samuel Barber, and his constant melancholia, the interviewer played portions of "Adagio..." It is, for all of its "sadness," one of my favorite pieces, as, apparently it is for many. Interestingly, Larson says it has been the music of choice in the funerals of several major figures on the world stage, including a couple of American presidents. It has a profound, even awesome beauty that penetrates deep into (at least) my heart. As I often do with music I'm listening to, I started to hum along with the strings...but found I could not. Instantly, I choked up, and the tears began to fill my eyes, but in this case I could discern that the tears were a response to the "Adagio..." It has an amazing capacity to communicate the pathos, the "sadness" Larson speaks of. I spoke about this pathos in the earlier blog, and I realized, deep inside, that the music is, even if unrecognized by its composer (though Thomas Lawson seems to have realized it - consciously or unconsciously)- the music seems to express an agonizing lament, as if the music itself was communicating the utter despair of the world weeping for itself: "Rachel weeping for her children because they were no more," and the world (at least those in it who have ever heard the piece) knows it, because it reveals itself, not to the superficial level of hearing, but to the understanding depths of the heart. The piece reflects all the tears that are shed because of the darkness, and the terrible aloneness that so many of the living feel. Yet how many would listen to this cry of grief without hearing it? I recall the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept." What for? Certainly it was not because of Lazarus' death, for in a few seconds He was going to raise him from the dead. Rather, Jesus wept because of the very existence within the creation, and especially within mankind, of the power of sin and death that dominates every soul as it comes into the world: every life, every human thought, word and deed, a poison that spreads itself like a plague. It is because of this profound pathos that you and I have been called by God to be the salt (preservative), and light (bearer of truth that sets free) - because God's very purpose is to restore the image of God - the power of love, which is the antidote - the only antidote that can provide the healing balm that overcomes the awful aloneness that the power of death, in the hand of the enemy of our souls, seeks to spread abroad in God's creation; "The thief comes only to steal, to kill and to destroy, but I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly."

Some people don't like to talk about negative things, such as the pathos of the world and the power of sin and death. I'm inclined to think we don't talk about it, or even think about it enough. It should be obvious (but I'm afraid it isn't) that without the first six, and especially first four chapters of the Bible (the "bad news"), the entire rest of the Bible (the good news), would make no sense. Human fallenness would be regarded simply as the way things are, the normal state of this world. There would be no answer to why Jesus should come, live, die on the cross, be resurrected, and all the rest. It would be an "every man for himself" world. The world would be what "Adagio..." reflects in terms of the pain and suffering and isolation of humanity from itself, much less from God. Listen to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings." Listen for the revelation of the human soul's condition.

Posted by DJinno at 10:53 PM 0 comments