Music and the Soul

“Bonum Est Diffusivum Sui” *

“In the life of the mind, as in all things, there is an order, having a beginning, a middle, and an end. Poetry begins in delight and ends in wonder; philosophy begins in wonder and ends in wisdom” (John Senior).

The Crisis of the Modern Soul

• Our senses are dull. Our souls are atrophied…

• The great crisis in the modern soul is its disconnection from reality: i.e. God, nature, and beauty. The flashing images and buzzing noise have crippled our ability to “see the stars.” Our television shows and secular indoctrination have filtered our perception of the world around us. Our reliance on man-made technologies have given us a false sense of control and cut off our openness to the world beyond man. To heal, we must relearn how to gaze on reality.

The Intellect Needs a Healthy Imagination

• Socrates: “What if one…has no contact with the Muses in any way?…The soul becomes feeble, deaf, and blind, because it is not aroused or fed, nor are its perceptions purified and quickened” (Bethel 162).

• Newman: “The heart is commonly reached, not through reason, but through the imagination” (Bethel, Senior’s bio 162).

• J. Senior: “Without the rectitude of sense, emotion and will which poetry aligns, the higher mental faculties collapse” (Restoration of Innocence 29).

Music: The Beginning of Education

• The first step to “seeing reality” requires living experience with nature.

• The second step requires an immersion in good music.

    * ”Goodness naturally communicates itself”

A Music in Its Heart

• “Music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with the concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, the motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music” (Shakespeare).

• “All creation sings…the heavens declare the glory of God…stars in their courses make a music of the spheres which sounds in harmony with angels singing Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus about the throne of God…the souls of men have such a music in them too, but in this ‘muddy vesture of decay,’ that is this worldly exterior life we lead, drawn to the struggles for survival and success, we neither listen nor can hear” (Senior, RCC 2O).

What is Music?

• The etymological root of ‘music’ is ‘mute’ and ‘mystery.’ Music is a palpable expression of the pregnant silence behind all creation.

• “Music is the voice of silence” (Senior, RCC 15).

• [Music] is the song of things whose voices articulate the silent work of angels.” (Senior, ROI 24).

• “There is, as it were, a silence behind the world…Music, or poetry, thus leads us to wonder about the depths of reality. It teaches us to be silent so that we may listen to reality’s deeper voice and receive its message…Music can form in us the healthy gaze on this world…one that recognizes the value of the world but always in relation to what transends it” (Bethel, Senior’s bio, 166).

What is Good Music?

• “Good art emphasizes beautiful features with the purpose of teaching us to perceive and savor more intensely the riches of reality. It cultivates the proper love of beauty as manifesting real values” (Bethel 165).

• In other words, good art is a glimpse into God.

The Task of Music

• “The task of music therefore is to cultivate delight and eros so they blossom into wonder at mysteries and an appropriate love of beauty. Music should channel these passions toward the true and the good — ‘to harmony with beautiful reason,’ as Plato says — so they become what Senior calls ‘a virtuous energy’ (Bethel 168).

What Must We Do?

• It begins at Church, and must end in the Home.

• “What I suggest, not as the answer to all our problems, but as the condition of the answer, is something at once simple and difficult: to put ‘the touches of sweet harmony’ into the home so that boys and girls will grow up better than we did, with songs in their hearts; so that, singing the old songs all their lives, they may one day hear Him sing the Song of Songs: ‘Arise, make haste, my love, my beautiful one, and come…

  
  

• “First, negatively, smash the television set. The Catholic Church is not opposed to violence; only to unjust violence; so smash the television set. And positively, put the time and money you now spend on such entertainment into a piano so that music is restored to your home, common, ordinary Christian music, much of which is very simple to play…And then families will be together at home of an evening and love will grow again without thinking about it, because they are moving in harmony together…Love only grows; it cannot be manufactured or forced; and it grows on the sweet sounds of music” (Senior, RCC 22).