I love God’s gift of music! I am not gifted with a musical ability but like all humans I not only enjoy music it has shaped my life in ways I cannot understand or articulate.
“There are few things that stimulate the brain the way music does,” says one Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist. “If you want to keep your brain engaged throughout the aging process, listening to or playing music is a great tool. It provides a total brain workout.” “Music is structural, mathematical and architectural. It is based on relationships between one note and the next. You may not be aware of it, but your brain has to do a lot of computing to make sense of it,” notes one otolaryngologist. Music can boost creativity and help you recall memories.” From Keep Your Brain Young with Music (link)
Music was present even before Human music came about as Angels sang as God created the cosmos. God created Angels and they have their gift of music as do we. The complexity of what makes music, music is not understood. Just like a simple question of what is fire, what then is music? I do not mean how is it made but what is it?
Just as God is the Grand Weaver and the Potter another role, he fulfills is the Conductor, the composer. God is the Perfect Being, the Unmoved Mover.
“When you watch an orchestra, two things will most likely come to your attention: The magnificent harmony and the conductor’s gestures. A conductor shapes a musical interpretation, forms ideas about a compelling way to perform a piece and leads a group of musicians in such a way that those ideas are realized (Chicago Symphony Orchestra). The answer to the question of how that musical interpretation is shaped will give clues to the creation of the magnificent harmony. To put it simply, a conductor will take responsibility for the following: accuracy, ensemble, tempo and dynamics, phrasing, balance, and style.” From the conference paper: What does a conductor of an orchestra actually do? By Hafzoglu, Mustafa | Öztürk, Mustafa Cumhur (link)
A full Orchestra today consists of 100 musicians playing up to 25 different instruments. The conductor and often the composers put together the orchestra of skilled musicians. We know from the Bible and from life that God’s meticulous providence is inexhaustible. Much of what we are told by God is beyond our cognitive ability to understand. Yet through the Person of the Holy Spirit and Christ Jesus we are aided in our understanding.
Many conductors and composers although they professed to be Christian, they were also human beings with faults, weaknesses and a sin nature just as we are. Handel was considered one of the greatest composers of all time once in 1759 after an enthusiastic ovation he cried out:
“Not from me… but from Heaven… comes all.” And as he was nearly blind and ailing, he expressed his desire that he would die on Good Friday “in the hope of rejoining the good God, my sweet Lord and Savior, on the day of His resurrection”. He died not long after on Easter Saturday.
In our contemporary world the late George Solti was considered a great conductor as was Leonard Bernstein and Herbert Von Karajan. Here is a joke that made the rounds not long after Soltis death.
“Solti, Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan are seated at a cafe in Vienna, arguing about who is the world's greatest conductor.
"You should have heard my performance of Beethoven's 'Missa Solemnis' last month in Chicago," Solti says. "The critics raved and said such a brilliant performance could only have been inspired by God."
"That's nothing," says Bernstein. "When I conducted the 'Missa Solemnis' last week in Amsterdam, God himself rang me up in my hotel room after the performance to thank me."
"Really," says Karajan, looking up from his coffee with a raised eyebrow. "I don't remember having done that."
Solti outlived both Karjan and Bernstein and died in 1997.
The Spiritual Lives of Great Composers by Patrick Kavanaugh (link)
The Bible tells us, we work out our salvation because God is at work within us (Philippians 2:12–13). God himself “works in us that which is pleasing in his sight” (Hebrews 13:21). His providence does not apply only to our good actions what we intend for evil, God intends for good (Genesis 50:20).
So, God is so involved in everything even as he sustains, maintains creation that his skills as a conductor as evidenced in Genesis is beyond compare. God and humanity cannot exclude one another when the timeless Creator and the temporal(limited) creature meet. God has made us co-regents’ creators and doers in our own reality. As homemakers, Fathers, mothers, mechanics, janitors, artists, musicians, conductors and the list go on you are endowed with that mysterious quality of creativity that finds its foundation in the Great Conductor!
Our lives and the forward march of time is the collaboration between Creator and his created and redeemed creatures, that is the reason that history exists. At this very moment you and I are participants in History. You see everything is providential, including reading of this article. Every providence is therefore a special providence which means that Father God has graciously issued you an invitation to know him and to be known by him. All of God’s Symphony has building up to this moment and what lies beyond!