“One of the keys to interpreting Bernstein’s career thus seems to involve the importance of music education—not just playing band in high school, or hearing a few minutes of Bach on the radio as you drive home from school, but actually studying the mechanics of music and appreciating its fruitful historical unveiling.”
Bernstein drew many people into his music and helped them appreciate higher arts in general.
Here’s a fun song about how there are too many Irishmen in the world. I first heard this on a cassette many years ago. For our younger readers, a cassette was like a hard drive made from black tape, which was held in a tape deck that would play non-digital audio that sounded way better than anything we have today. It was as if you were in the room with the musicians.
“Who’s writing the new Christmas carols? Andrew Peterson and Keith Getty talk about the new songs celebrating Christ’s birth.”
Peterson says, “I grew up on Pink Floyd records and these rock albums that told stories. I loved that idea that if you sat and listened to a 45-minute record it would take you somewhere. I still try to make my albums that way so that they’re not a bunch of singles stacked up. But with this, the attempt was to try and convey the epic nature of the story of Christ coming into the world with new songs. I love Christmas music, but I also know that we’ve heard the songs enough to where they’ve lost their wonder for us.”
A blessed Christmas to you all. Here’s Sissel with what I think is my favorite Christmas hymn. We sang it in church tonight, complete with the old lyrics: “Pleased as man with man to dwell,” “Born to raise the sons of earth,” and all that. I felt like I’d gotten a Christmas present. I punch those lyrics when I sing them.
Merry Christmas.
For your Christmas Eve, an Irish reel recorded in a pub. Ken Doyle is on flute and Mark Pitner plays bouzouki.
Musician Lacrae has taken some heat for switching from writing explicitly Christian songs to writing songs on themes with broader appeal. He has appeared with artists and on shows that have drawn criticism from those who think the right thing to do is stick with people who claim to follow Christ.
But Lacrae says another believer, Andy Crouch, changed his mind a few years ago. Jemar Tisby explains, “Crouch says in his book, Culture Making, ‘If culture is to change, it will be because of some new tangible (or audible or visible or olfactory) thing is presented to a wide enough public that it begins to reshape their world.’ He proposes that instead of condemning, critiquing, copying, or uncritically consuming culture, something new has to displace the old. It appears Lecrae has been making new music in an attempt to do just that.”
The tension point for this idea will be at the place where those who want to change people apply their cultural creations. I’m sure many will continue to create things that won’t get anywhere near the people they want to influence, and they will say they are making new culture, but it isn’t changing anyone. They’re making Halloween candy in hopes of changing Christmas.
Barrymore Laurence Scherer writes about the beautiful oratorio, St. Matthew Passon by J.S. Bach:
For more tender contemplations Bach employs the softer veiled tone of the oboe d’amore, pitched a third below the oboe. In the soprano aria “I will give Thee my heart,” a soothing pair of oboes d’amore help suggest Christ’s loving relationship with mankind.
But Bach scores one of his most telling effects by eliminating certain instrumentation: Whenever Jesus sings his portions of the narrative, his bass voice is enveloped in a gleaming tissue of sustained triads played by two violins and viola, known as a “halo of strings.”
(via Prufrock)
Musican Lecrae has some good thoughts on Christians as makers of culture in this interview with Eric Geiger from last year. He says he doesn’t want to be labeled Christian by his claims of faith, but by his practice of faith. The interview is 20 minutes long. For an hour long take on music and Lecrae in particular, see this post with Ed Stetzer.
The lead singer of Jars of Clay, one of my favorite bands, cannonballed the Twitter pool repeatedly this week with commits and questions on gay marriage. Dan Haseltine asked if ruling out gay marriage was really as bad as many say it is. I’m tempted to reenact the drama for you. I got caught up in it somewhat. I saw Dan’s tweet splash down: “I don’t particularly care about Scriptures stance on what is “wrong.” I care more about how it says we should treat people,” and my heart sank.
But yesterday, Dan explained the context of his tweets, what he was trying to say, and how he messed it all up. He says he came from a panel discussion on gay marriage in Australia last week where many things were said that provoked him. He hadn’t thought about it much before, so on Twitter, not the best platform for this, he wanted to ask questions outside of his own box, to assume he didn’t have all the answers and to wonder where his blind spots were, if any. And he said things that easily misrepresent his views.
It’s encouraging. I like this guy and his music. One of his recent songs says we “don’t know enough about love, so we make it up.” It seems to call our current sexual chaos into question. Some of us talk love but we don’t know anything about it. In one of his books, Jared C. Wilson notes that God is love, but love is not God. We can’t define love however we feel is right and then say that’s god. It doesn’t work that way.
I feel we’re in a similar situation with homosexuality and the civil marriage debate. Continue reading Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay Apologizes, Offers Context