Music Lessons
I like arriving far too early for concerts to wait alone outside the locked doors of the symphony hall and hear the orchestra practice snippets of the concert to come. Sometimes it’s muffled but still powerful, like a thunder storm or erupting volcano in the distance, sometimes soft and delicate to force me forget all else and listen intently. I grow excited for what is to come, but the present moment itself is also precious. What I hear, though incomplete, is beautiful music. Life is being locked outside the hall. As Karl Rahner put it, “In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we finally learn that here in this life all symphonies remain unfinished.” I relish this particular torment.
Having composed 104 symphonies, 14 masses, concertos, operas, and numerous other chamber works, Haydn composed his greatest, an oratorio recounting the course of God’s creation. Starting in stirring chaos, the opus bursts forth a triumphant consonant chord as God first speaks light. Then the music presents the unfolding of creation with each part, from the heavens to the leaves of grass, from swarming fish to soaring birds, expressed through the textures of music and in different instrument combinations. A choir sings as the voices of narrating angels. Haydn recalled, “Never was I so devout as when I composed The Creation. I knelt down each day to pray to God to give me strength for my work...When I was working on The Creation I felt so impregnated with Divine certainty, that before sitting down to the piano, I would quietly and confidently pray to God to grant me the talent that was need to praise Him worthily.” Imitation is a sincere flattery. Creating, then, is divine activity. The artist creates as their birthright, the expression of their inner self and being, the image of God. “When I think of my God, my heart dances within me for joy,” Haydn said, “and then my music has to dance, too.”
Many students find practicing scales to be a chore. I too was one of them. As a kid with a clarinet, I ran through them, content to pass through each once under the correct fingers to move on to the “real” music. Aside from playing a single note and walking away, the scale is the simplest thing to play. Arpeggios or exercises in thirds are more complicated. Even starting or stopping on a different degree would change the color of the predictable neutral scale. Yet it remains the staple of practice, assigned by teachers everywhere, eternally, as the foundation on which music is made.
Now I’m an adult amateur with a clarinet and a violin. If you ask me what I play, the answer is, “Scales, mostly.” I have learned to love scales, to savor them, to play slow enough to let each note speak, self-express, unrushed. It is meditation to me. Scattered, sad, angry, anxious—however I find myself when I start playing, twelve major scales later I find peace.
I suspect the spiritual life is largely practicing scales.
Music lessons can be nerve-wracking if you fear playing a wrong note. The fear, in turn makes it more likely you will lose focus and actually hit wrong notes. Haydn’s student Beethoven accepted few students himself. His students, nervous to play for the irascible, most renowned pianist and composer of the day, were surprised that when they played a wrong note during a lesson... Beethoven didn’t really care. Everyone heard the wrong note, Beethoven thought, so just work it out slowly on your own time. You will have more shots at it. Beethoven cared more about cultivating expression, musicality, beauty. Do your tempo and dynamic changes happen in just the right way to express both violent and subtle movements of the spirit? How are your accents, your staccato, your legato expressing the passions and desires of the heart? “To play a wrong note is insignificant,” Beethoven wrote, “To play without passion is unforgiveable.” Along with Jesus’ parable of the talents, it serves to remind that the fear of making a mistake is no excuse to not live life beautifully.
Beethoven grew deaf, the orchestra eventually sounding muffled as if through those locked doors, then ultimately came total silence and with it, solitude. The passion forgivably lived on. In a letter finally revealing his deafness to his brothers, Beethoven wrote, “Oh, it is not easy, less easy for the artist than for anyone else — Divine One you look into my inmost soul, you know it, you know that love of man and desire to do good live therein.” Twenty years later, though completely deaf, Beethoven composed the work he took most pride in, his Mass. On the frontpage, above the Kyrie, he wrote, “From the heart – may it go to the heart.”
This is how I want to die. As my breath grows heavy the veil will begin to tear. I will hear a single note through the rift. It will stand out against the background noise around and within me. Clear. An “A” at 440 Hertz, likely on an oboe or violin. After a short pause, it will play again, followed by a wall of sound, the whole orchestra tuning. Stacked 5ths ring, amplifying each other. A few instruments break loose playing scales and arpeggios ascending and descending. The wall becomes a fire with tongues flickering out from its core. Its warmth envelopes me.
"Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra @ Oslo" by Miguel O. Strauss is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
