Wiser than despair

By Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene (get free updates of new posts here)

We had a harmony lesson with Victoria yesterday in which she told me she's reading Wiser Than Despair by Quentin Faulkner about the evolution of ideas between music and the Christian Church throughout history.

This brought me some amazing memories when Vidas and I were studying at UNL and took this class with Prof. Faulkner about music and the church.

He really is one of world's foremost experts in this field (along with being an excellent Bach scholar).

Here's an excellent idea from this book of why do we sing in church:

Because we cannot remain silent when we encounter the transcendental or the divine and words alone are not enough to express our sense of awe.

So the communities that struggle with singing in church may also struggle with this sense of awe and gratitude.

People who gather to church services because of pure tradition but they don't believe fully of what kind of miracles are taking place, don't want to engage and participate fully in the service and in the singing of hymns from their hearts.

On the first class Prof. Faulkner had us write an essay about how would music liturgy look like in our ideal church service.

It was interesting to explore our worldview of what kind of music should be included in the ideal church service situation, if we were completely limitless.

What would your ideal music in the church situation look like?