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Are there jazz, rock and gospel music in heaven?
Part 1 Dear Friends, dear guests,
Thank you that so many have come to this lecture entitled: "Are there jazz, rock and gospel
music in heaven?" Personally I am an organist and a conductor -- I am in my fourth year
of my studies in conducting at the university of music. Church music is very near and dear
to me. I have thought about this topic for many years and done a lot of research. I would
like to share a portion of my findings with you and my viewpoint. I would like to start
with some Bible verses found in Revelation chapter 15. In these verses we see how people
will praise God after the second coming. I am reading from the New King James Version.
"And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who have the victory
over the beast, over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name, standing
on the sea of glass, having harps of God. They sing the song of Moses, the servant of
God, and the song of the Lamb, saying: "Great and marvelous are Your works,
Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways,
O King of the saints! Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify
Your name? For You alone are holy.
For all nations shall come and worship before You,
For Your judgments have been manifested." Revelation 15:2-4
Here we see that God is great, holy and just and the people are reverent. The people say:
"Who shall not fear you, O Lord?" Is there even anyone who cannot fear you? The people
are very reverent here. Now I would like to read another Bible text from Galatians. It
is talking about the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh here.
Galatians 5:22 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."
Galatians 5:19-21 "Now the works of the flesh are evident, which
are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies,
outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries,
and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that
those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."
We have read some words here, which on one hand are actions and reactions -- like joy
or wrath. But on the other hand are experienced as feelings. For example: love, joy, wrath,
envy, etc. Thus we can see here that there are positive and negative feelings. The arts
are a language of feeling. In music, painting, acting, etc. the artists are expressing feelings.
As an example let's take the Mona Lisa from Leonardo da Vinci. Here is the picture. Everyday
thousands of tourists look at this painting. The painting is worth about 4 billion Euros.
But a person may ask: "Why? What is so special about this painting?" Why do we even need
paintings? Why? Because art can express something that cannot be formed in words. Something
that can't be expressed with a simple photograph. That is why it is so valuable. The experts
say that Mona Lisa appears alluring and cold at the same time. Beautiful and rejecting.
When you look at this painting, regardless from which angle, she is looking at you. Also
in acting you can express much more than simple words. You can express the same sentence in
different ways -- with different intonation, loudness, accentuation. And this naturally
changes the feeling. For example: "To be or not to be. That is the question." (spoken
with power and force) Or I can express it differently: "To be or not to be. That is
the question." (spoken with slang and slur and posed as a question) Or again another
variation. "To be or not to be. That is the question." (starts with a sigh and speaks
very gravely -- almost depressed) You understand now that through the different accentuations
feelings are being expressed. It is the same with music. I want to play
two short examples to show that music can express feelings. It is the same song interpreted
in two different ways. (music plays) We heard in the first example that it was performed
gently, lightly and sweetly. In the second example we see a rougher variation -- with
trailing tones, which are a bit vulgar in some places. (Shows example of trailing tones:
AOU HOULY NAIGHT) This goes a bit in a vulgar direction. Now you can see how with the same
song with two different forms of musical expression can bring different messages. Now I would
like to read a quote from one of the greatest music scholars of the baroque period -- Johann
Mattheson. He says that music is a language even when there are no words. Simple instrumental
music has a language, which the listeners should understand. In the baroque period music
was handled in this way -- for every feeling there was a musical figure to express this
feeling. "Since instrumental music is nothing other
than a tone language or a sound speech, its real purpose must always comply with certain
emotions..." "It must be said that alone, even without
words in plain instrumental music and with every melody, it must be aimed toward a conception
of the reigning mood tendency so that the instrument's tone can make an audible and
understandable lecture." So he says that music is a speech even if
there are no words. The Baroque musicians understood music as a language and handled
it in such a manner. Today people think differently. People try to weaken the objective meaning
of music or musical figures. For example a person says: "Rock music means aggression
for me. For you it means love. And for a third person it is completely neutral." But the
reason people think this way about music has to do
with the atheistic world view. If there is no God, then there is no standard bad and good. Everything is relative. I wouldn't even
have to ask if there are bad or good feelings in music, but rather that which I like is
good. But on the other hand, it is very interesting that today there are scientists, who can measure
this -- which feeling a person is experiencing. Thus I want to introduce Dr. Manfred Clynes.
He was a professor at Harvard University and MIT in Princeton and Melbourne. He is a neuro-psychologist,
music-psychologist, bio-cyberneticist, engineer and inventor with 40 patents. In addition
he studied music, amongst others with Pablo Casals. Today he is 86 years old. Dr. Manfred
Clynes analyzed the human reactions and movements to the most important feelings like love,
hate or anger. "M. Clynes shows that the basic emotions like
joy, anger and love are the same for all people -- because they have a common biological base."
"The communication of emotions is based on a deep-seated pattern... They are programmed
in the genetic code. This biological mutuality is the necessary base for all communication.
The author documents how he always found in all age groups, in all levels of education
and in all races the same basic emotional structure..."
He naturally wrote this down in mathematical differential equations. I can't comprehend
this at all. But he also drew the feelings in curves. And here we can see that he found
that love is a round curve. Or hate is something more like a sharp blow in the curve along
with breathing out hard. Reverence is very similar to love, but is more careful at the
beginning. He doesn't only have these curves -- it is explained in detail in his book -- "The
Touch of the Emotions". Dr. Manfred Clynes carried out thousands of
tests on different test persons in different countries, like Japan, USA, Bali, or Mexico
and he found the same results in every culture. For example: love has the same mathematical
curve in Japan as in America. That is logical. If God created our feelings then love has
to be the same in Mexico and America or Japan. There can be no difference otherwise God couldn't
ask us to love. Dr. Manfred Clynes also made many statements
about music. He said that the sentic forms, as he calls them, meaning the forms of emotional
states of people, can also be found in music. Or the curves. Music is composed of these
forms and figures. And he analyzed music on the emotional level. For example, love is
usually something round in music.