Choir As an Icon of Community
When I first heard Br
Christopher refer to the choir as the icon of community, I was struck by the
rich ground it offered for contemplation. With so many others things to do and
think about, however, I let it slip into the back of my mind until it pushed
itself forward as I was writing last month’s article. As often happens, not
thinking about something for a time leads to better insights later on. In
last month’s article, I drifted back in time to the early Church in Rome. It
was a time when there were no icons or set doctrines or a structured Church.
There were also no choirs or set musical forms or a structured system of music.
One
reason I’d put forth for the lack of icons is that the saints and events that
were later depicted were still so fresh in memory as to be a living presence
for those gathered into Christian communities. And it was also a period of not
thinking, while simply living with that experiential knowledge in the
context of those communities: a period allowing insights to gestate into what
could only later become icons. Unlike a photograph, an icon is not a static
image of a particular person or scene at a given time; it does not freeze a
moment for eternity as an aid to memory or preserve it historically. Rather, it
is a dynamic image to be engaged with in prayer and contemplation. Ideally,
icons present the essence of the subject in the context of eternity. How close
icons come to reality, however, is limited by a human’s incapability of fully
grasping the eternal, in addition to the “skill and experience” and the
“prayerfulness and receptivity to grace” of the iconographer at the time of
painting.
These
icons are visual images of bodily people and historical events, which could now
be captured on film (or rendered on a computer). And while one could take a
photograph of a choir or depict it with iconographic techniques, neither image
would convey anything other than a group of people who happen to sing together.
The same applies to community. I lived in a co-op in Manhattan for five years
but only knew the superintendent. I lived there, but I was not part of the
community of 435 E 85th. Similarly, the earliest Christians lived among the
native populations of whatever region and culture they happened to reside in,
but they were a community unto themselves. They were subject to the laws and
customs of the people among whom they lived, but given that they were part of
the local Christian community, those laws and customs were secondary to their
fidelity and allegiance to Christ their King. Before any other considerations,
they were to love the Lord their God with all their mind, heart, soul, and
strength, and then to love their neighbors as themselves. They were to be one
in the Body of Christ, living in harmony within the Christian community and, to
the extent possible, among the discord of the secular culture. They were never
to be isolated from the rest of the populace, but to live and go among them as
the living Word: in spirit, in practice, in simply being, and when necessary by using actual words.
Language
falls short in depicting this vision of community, and visual imagery even
shorter. Both can portray aspects of community, but neither can show the
dynamic stasis of interconnectedness, fullness, richness, or synergy of the
living experience of such an idyllic community. Enter the choir, which is
nothing but a living experience of that type of community when it is
engaged in the practice of realizing a musical composition. To be clear,
however, the experience of community in a choir lies not in the personalities
and personal interactions that make it up, but in the character and relational
qualities of the tones they give voice to. Persons and personalities are still
in play, as they always are in any community, but they need to be put aside so
that all can be subsumed into the aural landscape being presented by this
pared-down representation of community. The iconic community represented by a
choir can only capture the essence of community when the interpersonal baggage
is set aside, just as a painted icon forgoes the realism of a Rembrandt or the
dimensionality of a Dali in order to bring out the essence of its subject.
I’m
not sure that any and every type of community could be iconized by various
types of choirs. Certainly, a piece of music could express something of Klingon
culture and community, but would you have a choir if singers not only obtain
their seats by physical strength, bloodlines, and political maneuvering but
attempt to render music using those same attributes? I don’t imagine it would
be anything other than spectacle as different individuals and factions battle
to take “their” place at the head of the choir without regard and respect for
the musical landscape. No, a choir—or at least what the best choirs strive to
be—is a group without “stars,” individualism, and ego, whose goal is to sound
as one. Surely each individual has unique tonal and expressional qualities that
differentiate them from the others, but the point is not to stand out in
distinction to the rest, but to blend into the whole and affect the overall
timbre rather than emphasize their own uniqueness and importance.
Moreover,
there can be no individual goals and separate agendas apart from or above
rendering the notated score as truly, as beautifully, and as faithfully as
possible. However it happened, the human animal and human spirit alone obtains
a sense of satisfaction, joy, and completion from the sounding of consonant
musical intervals. This phenomenon is innate to human beings across cultures,
with anthropological evidence preceding civilizations across the planet. The
development of musical systems and technologies and the accumulation of an
immense catalog of compositions rival the same sorts of developments of the
written and spoken word. The only reason I can see for humankind investing
itself in music for as long as it has invested itself in language is that music
serves some sort of inner purpose that the external and utilitarian aspects of
language cannot. Poetry does to some extent … and conversely there is a
signaling function along with genres of music that serve utilitarian purposes
to some extent … but the driving force behind humanity’s continual interest in
music must be sought in something internal to each individual’s spirit while at
the same time bringing a deeper sense of communion with others.
I
imagine that this paring away of the “baggage of person” so that one can be
immersed in the active pursuit of beauty, by means of rendering the notes as
truly as possible for no other reason than the sheer love of it, is as close as
we can come to getting a sense of what it must be like to be in communion with
the beauty, truth, and love that is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I’m not
talking about any specific melody, harmonic progression, style, or type of
music, just the act of losing oneself in blending with others into one, for the
singular purpose of breathing life into a score in order to experience the
fullness of its beauty. What makes this iconic of community, and particularly a
Christian community, is that this living experience of choir that I’ve been
describing is precisely the inner drive and disposition that we need to garb
ourselves with, in every facet of our lives, if we are to truly live together
as one in the Body of Christ right here on earth … right now. Knowing that
inner feeling from the praxis of choir, and holding on to it as an experiential
icon, allows us to gauge our inner disposition and drives in our day-to-day
lives against the reference of our disposition and drives in choir.
We
tend to focus on the words of the gospels and apostolic letters as our way to
knowing and understanding Jesus and through Jesus coming to know the Father.
But words are not all that the living Word left us. Even before sending the
Consoler, Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus to a couple of disciples, who
afterward asked themselves: “Didn’t our hearts burn within us while he spoke to
us and opened the scriptures?” I like to think that their desire to penetrate
more deeply into the truth and beauty of scripture out of the love they felt
for Jesus as he spoke to their hearts is in some way mirrored in what we ideally
find in choir—when we yearn to penetrate more deeply into the truth and beauty
of the score out of the love we feel for the tones speaking to our hearts.
The
earliest Christian communities were so close to the living memory of the Jesus
event and to those who would only later be recognized as saints that they did
not have or need choirs (in the modern sense), just as they did not have or
need icons. They were already walking with Jesus in their living communities
and feeling him in their hearts, so they did not need icons of either image or
experience. As time went on, though, Christianity became commonplace. Their
outsider status and the threat of persecutions no longer bound small
communities, and the people of Christ began walking down many different roads
with destinations other than Emmaus. Jesus still and always walks with us and
talks to us, but we sadly fail to recognize or feel the reality of him most of
the time. Is it possible that God inspired the idea of choir to arise and
increase in complexity, subtlety, and depth of feeling as a countermeasure to
the decline of the ideal of Christian communities? I’m willing to entertain
that and similarly that God encouraged the emergence and development of visual
icons the further removed we became from the physical presence of Jesus, the
apostles, and the events surrounding their lives by the simple passage of time
and the complexity of thought that developed in our efforts to understand. The
intellectualization of the former nearness to the actual presences helped to
preserve and deepen knowledge. The iconizing of them allows further scope and
dimension for that knowledge to mature into wisdom.
Now
let me try to wrap this up and tie it together with my previous two articles. I
began with the idea of preplanning a funeral service for my parents, went on to
talk about my setting of the Requiem Mass, and now elaborate on this idea of
choir as icon of Christian community. All along I’ve been saying that the
funeral is intended not for a closed circle of family and friends but as an
opportunity to bring together every and anyone into a community of prayer for
not just my parents but also for any and every one of the deceased whom the
guests wish to pray for. I’ve also indicated that I see this service as a grace
from God to help illumine and concretize the vocational path I’ve been
following. This is no more a one-time event than the Crucifixion was. A single
historical moment of Kronos time, yes, but where it stands in Kairos time has
(A) already been determined by God and (B), if I’m correct, will be brought to
its fullness only by our … not mine alone, but collectively our … faith and
perseverance. The very fact that I’ve felt it necessary to write three articles
about this as a prelude to actually planning the service is enough to convince
me that this is not rooted in earthly time or ambition.
If
I only wanted to hear the Requiem it would be easier, more to my advantage, and
probably cheaper to hire the choir and record the rehearsals than integrate it
into a funeral service. And it would be much easier and equally meaningful to
have a modest service with familiar music from Palestrina or Duruflé. But that
would be ignoring what I feel inside and denying the possibility that a higher
call and purpose is involved. Either of those composers’ music would provide an
aura of prayer, but they’ve become so commonplace to professional choral
singers that they could be sung with ease and without much thought. This is
much the same situation as with the post-icon Christian communities cited two
paragraphs ago. In a sense, the icon of community has become the graphic art of
entertainment. Okay, that may be a bit extreme, but nevertheless, when you have
hired people coming in to do a job they’re very familiar with, they can do it
by rote and without much involvement. Give them something new and challenging
to sing, and it’s a different story. On top of that, as part of the rehearsal
process, I would need to describe the setting and theoretical basis in far
greater detail than what I wrote last month. The more invested they become in
the intentions, theory, and feeling of the piece, the more they become a
community of prayer and the more they resemble an icon of community.
And
likewise, further articles for blogs and other publications along with word of
mouth from those involved in the rehearsals should hopefully attract and open
up a wider audience to not passively listen to something they’ve heard 1000
times, but actively engage what is being presented in a spirit of prayer that
they can direct toward their own loved ones. The experience and intercession of
prayer I hope to provide my family and friends for my parents’ sake is not
something that should be possessed by us alone for a fleeting moment of earthly
time. The Church is not the building we gather in but the community
constituting the Body of Christ. The more of the Body that we can gather
together in focused attention to all of our dearly departed, for the greater
glory of God, the better.
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