Dear Pastor: Music is not neutral

It's an old canard, one that gets perpetuated in multiple forums and classrooms, not just in theology but even in music history as well (I used to teach that, remember, so I'm not just talking through my hat): Of the primary reformers, Martin Luther was the music lover, while John Calvin was anywhere from absolutely opposed to music to downright suspicious (in the manner of his theological ancestor Augustine), and Luther enthusiastically embraced congregational singing while Calvin accepted it only begrudgingly.

You'll probably not be surprised, if you know how historical misperceptions get distributed, to learn that this is a dramatic oversimplification, if not an outright falsehood.

It is true that Calvin's musical acceptance was never as wide as that of Luther: he never did embrace purely instrumental music in the church nor the use of music as accompaniment (the churches that followed in his tradition got over that fairly quickly in the grand scheme of things) -- he was not the organ-destroyer that Ulrich Zwingli was, but he wasn't hiring organists either. "Hymns of human composure" weren't favored in Calvinist churches, instead words of scripture -- the Psalms in particular -- were the stuff of singing. And that singing was strictly a matter for the congregation -- choirs and soloists and such weren't part of the design.

Beyond that, though, Calvin's attitude about music in worship was not only as hostile as often portrayed, but also (gasp!) evolved over time; after a time Calvin even came to a place of some enthusiasm about monophonic (or unison) a capella congregational singing. As described by Jeremy Begbie, "when Calvin speaks of Psalm-singing as enhancing and enriching the experience of worship, it is implicitly the Sursum Corda that is in play -- the lifting up of our hearts in the power of the Spirit to Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father, who is in our midst 'conducting' our hymns."*

Pretty powerful image for a supposed music hater.

*Note: the quote is from Begbie, Music, Modernity, and God: Essays in Listening, p.27. Begbie offers a fairly robust discussion of Calvin and music. 

The distinctive musical contribution of Calvin's churches to music was the metrical psalm, a unison setting of a poeticized psalm text sometimes known slightly derisively as a "Geneva jig" for the utterly danceable qualities of many of the tunes (something Calvin would not have approved of). The term "metrical" points to the degree that the psalm texts were not only translated into the vernacular language (French, in Calvin's case), but also then reconfigured into poetic metrical patterns that were fairly easy to set to music.

Another part of the creation of those psalm tunes was the degree to which they suscribed to ancient musical theories about the particular affective qualities of different modes, or scales of music. (Nowadays most music we know is either in major or minor -- the latter often being stereotyped as "sad"; older musics could be in many different scales, typically called modes, according to the pattern of whole and half steps by which these modes advanced from one pitch to another. Any more explanation and this blog might break into a music theory lecture, and I'm no good at that.)

Here's the thing: different psalm tunes created under Calvin's influence were composed in different modes in order to use the presumed affective qualities of the mode to reinforce the particular emotional (or affective) qualities of the psalm text being set. As much as gets made of Calvin's sola-scriptura attitude about the singing of the congregation, Calvin's very tunes were in fact making use of musical affect to "enhance" or "enrich" the text, and therefore the singing of the people, and therefore the experience of worship.

In ways that escape our modern ears, even Calvinist psalm tunes are "affective."

Here's the deal, pastor: music is not a neutral resource for worship. Music always favors one thing over another, namely itself. It demands attention. It must be heard and its particular affects or abilities or powers must be reckoned with, and indeed music mismatched to words can utterly overwhelm the words or uttery undermine them.

In the church, this is far more likely to be obvious or noticeable in choral music in worship. A humble text set to raucous music (or vice versa) can not only fail on its own but can wreak havoc (or whatever the opposite of havoc would be -- somnolence? lassitude? torpor?) on the entire service to follow. That's just one possibility. Even music well-matched to its choral setting can land with a clang if it is out of step with the rest of the service, to the point of the music and worship seeming to be part of two separate and unrelated events.

But these things aren't impossible to find in the congregational-singing part of worship either. It usually happens with the chooser of hymns (you, right, pastor?) starts to feel desperate and decides to throw something in to "liven up the service" without much regard for the text being conveyed or the context in which the hymn or song is placed. It's a virtual inevitability when the congregation's singing is employed primarily as a mood-setter, a program of emotional manipulation with no further design or intent to bring the congregation to an emotional high and then "settle it down" in time to hear the pastor speak.

(Of course, if you're the pastor of a congregation where that is the principal purpose of the congregation's song, let's be blunt about it; you're pretty unlikely to be reading this blog.)

Music as neutral agent in worship is like the square root of -1; imaginary. Music inevitably affects anything to which it is attached. That affect (and effect) may change over time, as what was once radical and daring becomes melted down and has its rough edges sanded off, but the music still is not a neutral actor on the text being set; it does something to that text.

Understand this, dear pastor, about this thing you are deploying in worship. It isn't a submissive tool. It isn't harmless. This is, of course, a large part of its power and, frankly, a large part of its appeal. However, this is also part of the real risk of music in worship, even in congregational singing.

Of course, if you're using a hymnal, there's a pretty good chance that the committee charged with compiling that hymnal included more than a few musicians and theological types who are fairly sensitive to the ways that music and words go together, or don't. At least in theory, very few hymns with such clash of word and music affect are likely to get through into the final collection. As far as music from other sources, I can't speak to those in any large-scale way.

Here is something really important, though; you probably reecognize this when you hear it. 

You probably can't articulate it in lofty theological or theoretical language, but you can tell when the music and the text are "off," or they "don't fit," or they're "out of sync" with one another. These are not rules made up by a secretive cabal of music theorists; they come from experience. Those experiences may be felt or perceived differently in different musics of different cultures, so don't go thinking your perceptions of what affect a music may have necessarily apply to, say, Indonesian gamelan music or West African drumming or Native American vocalizations. But your instinct, if you're listening with even a modicum of care, has a real good chance of being correct.

And for the sake of worship and singing, the lifting up of our hearts to Christ our Great Conductor, listen to that instinct. It may save your worship service.

His thoughts on music in worship were probably more complicated than you think.