“To a certain extent, we surrender to music when we
listen to it—we allow ourselves to trust the composers and musicians with a
part of our hearts and our spirits; we let the music take us somewhere outside
of ourselves. Many of us feel that great
music connects us to something larger than our own existence, to other people,
or to God. Even when music doesn’t
transport us to an emotional place that is transcendent, music can change our
mood.” (236-7)
-
Daniel J Levitin This is Your Brain on Music (2006)
I am at the end of this year’s
Winter Solstice Season. It is Epiphany; 6 January. Reveling in the quiet beauty of the Night
near the threshold of the Hinterlands, I am
once again listening to Stile
Antico’s A Wondrous Mystery (2015). This CD has been my evening meditation music almost
every night since St Nicholas Eve.
Listening to it, I’ve been led into reflecting on both the humanistic and
mystical themes underlying the lyrics as well as being emotionally and
aesthetically enveloped into the wonderful textures woven by this choir’s beautiful
voices. I ride the contemplative crescendos
and decrescendos_ feeling the presence of the intervals in my flesh.
Music is – and has always been
– a primary tributary to my spiritual life; endlessly providing pathways into
peace and reinvigoration as well as runes of inspiration for creative work and
empowerment. Music accompanies me
through the seasons and has often been the springboard for experiences of
self-transcendence; as some of my blogs at this site will attest. Some of my earliest memories revolve around
music. Music has been associated with each
of the different spiritualities and religious traditions in which I’ve been
immersed over the last five decades, and many of my fondest memories from my adventures
in religion are deeply linked to particular musicians, albums and songs. Music itself is a wondrous mystery!
The Winter Solstice Season has
always been for me a time of intense
musical experience. There is just so much music to choose from and
experience that one never runs out of new music to listen to during the Yule. Good
Winter Solstice music; deep, profound, uplifting music—proffers great joy and
leads me down paths into depths often as-yet unexplored as I journey through
the darkening days of December to Solstice Night and beyond. Every year I seek out new music to accompany
me through the Yule; from St Nicholas Eve unto Epiphany—and I usually find at
least one CD to add to the growing collection. This year there have been two: the
Stile Antico disc and a CD by Apollo’s Fire called Sacrum Mysterium: A Celtic
Christmas Vespers (2013). A Wondrous Mystery effectively centers me after a long day’s work and
refreshes me for the remaining evening hours.
I have listened to Sacrum
Mysterium in afternoons when I was off work, experiencing through the
progression of tunes a sense of ‘poetic liturgy;’ of being involved in an
unfolding story.
These two CDs have kept rising to the top of
the mix as I engaged with them, runing out the mysteries of their beauty, depth
and mythic power. This year I also danced
from night to night through the season, being reminded again and again – by the
rhythms of the music to which I was dancing – that carols were originally
‘round dances.’[i] Loreena McKennitt’s Midwinter Night’s Dream
(2008) contains a number of carols that evince this archaic origin, as
does Moya Brennan’s An Irish Christmas
(2013). Lorenna McKennitt’s “Good King
Wenceslas” and her rousing “God rest ye Merry, Gentlemen” were among the first
carols I ever heard set to a music that facilitated circle dancing! Each of these CDs lends itself to deep movement
and meditative flowing, whether one is actively dancing or sitting cross-legged
near the Yule Tree, Hearth or Meditation Table.
There is a restorative element
to dancing. Dancing in a circle is a
refreshing way of leaving the linear paths of practical daily life; verging
toward dreaming and hopes revived. There
is a rhythm that emerges from dancing the music which weaves you into the flow
of the harmony and rhythms to which you are dancing as well as a rhythm that
emerges between yourself and others with whom you might be moving in company
within the circle, whether actual persons or imagined friends. Egos melt, if the dancing is to continue, and
there is then an emergent interplay of motion, sound, sweat and rising joy when
the dancing gets good. For me, dancing
balances contemplation, one being active meditation while the other is the
manifestation of being stilled in the ground of one’s being-in-becoming.
I have come to think of music
as a ‘universal human language’ (it’s an old cliché, but I’ve found it true to experience) that is related to verbal language but perhaps stems from a
source much deeper in our evolutionary history than the words and grammar in
which we so readily express ourselves.[ii] When music is good, it can heal, inspire, and
educate us about the human condition. Winter Solstice music – whether
Christian, Pagan or Secular – has always been, for me, a beacon of that
wondrous mystery that is a dolmen of the mystic’s deep home, gathered into
being-in-becoming.
Once I moved from
dance into meditation each day, I often found myself listening to Annie
Lennox’s A Christmas Cornucopia (2010). The instrumental CD by Linn Barnes titled simply Yule (1995) also led me in a quieter
dancing as well as being good background for readings on the Winter Solstice season
and its music. When music accompanies
meditation, adventures sometimes take shape; imaginative escapades and poetic
scenarios form out of the interaction of the music and the meditative mind into
which you settle. When the music is good; that is, when it complements your meditative state and inner journey--you can
be even more stilled, quieted and
refreshed by the simple praxis of breathing, focusing and letting go than when
meditating in mere silence. Music can open vistas into which you may wander and be
refreshed, inspired and even healed. Physical
stress often washes away as you enter devoutly into meditation’s inward paths;
indeed—this is the practical first-fruit of rhythmic breathing. This leaves the meditator feeling unburdened
of the world and practical matters that were occupying one's mind.
As I emerge from the season, I
am listening to Loreena McKennitt’s To
Drive the Cold Winter Away (1985); a ’cold and chilling’ album (that’s not
a critique!) of tunes that make me feel that I am sitting by a warm fireside in
some old castle or ruined monastery.
There is a celebratory side to the music, while also facilitating silence
and solitude. It is beautiful in its
‘coolness’ and hypnotic in its rhythms and textures. There is a sense of ‘openness’ to the music –
as if it has ‘space’ within its realms – which makes me think of solemn wintry
scenes and the freshness of cold night air in the epiphanic reaches of the
imagination! I will put all of these
CD’s away tomorrow, and not hear them again for 11 months, yet listening to them has transformed
me in subtle ways; once again--as such music does every year.
Leaving the Winter Solstice
Season behind, I now turn to other musics that will companion me through
the round of the seasons until Yule comes ‘round again. The wondrous mystery that music is, the
healing that it can bring and the way it can facilitate a move into the liminal realms
of experience and existence, continues to fascinate me and keeps me awake – if not wakening – in the midst of living life day to day. Daniel Levitin says in The World in Six Songs (2008):
“Music – and particularly joyful music – affects our health in
fundamental ways. Listening to, and even
more so singing or playing, music can alter brain chemistry associated with
well-being, stress reduction, and immune system fortitude.” (98)
_And I would agree. There is music that girds up our strength and
music that humbles and renews our spirit.
There is music that restores the soul, and music that liberates us from
the humdrum, the drool and the persistently unpoetic sonority of ‘the
world.’ Music can empower a person to be
in-the-world but not of it. At the Hinterlands at the end of the Yule, I affirm
this potential!
[i]
For one reference to this connection between carols and round-dances, see
Ronald Clancy’s Sacred Christmas Music
(2008), pp. 36-37.
[ii]
I’ve been doing a lot of interesting reading this year on music, spirituality
and evolution. Among the best of my
reading was Daniel Levitin’s This is Your
Brain on Music (2008), Steven Mithen’s The
Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (2008),
and Gary Tomlinson’s A Million Years of
Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity (2015) as well as Daniel Levitin’s The World in Six Songs (2008).
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