What do you want to be when you grow up?

A seemingly innocent and well-intentioned question that every little boy and girl is asked. It sparks a multitude of thoughts and emotions. What excites me? In what areas am I gifted? Where is my niche? Where is that special place in this world where I will fit just right? These questions grow and change throughout our lives, particularly as we enter our college years. Now, our quest to find our identity, which began as that simple question from our childhood, becomes more pressing. What school will I go to? What will I major in? How many degrees should I get? These are often thrilling years as they are filled with the beginnings of the vision for our lives.

The aftermath of our college years, however, may not be so full of hope and vision. After dozens, or even hundreds, of job applications many realize that their bachelor’s degree simply wasn't enough. Or for those fortunate enough to find a job, after three years in a cubicle writing software or analyzing mortgage applications, somehow the shiny prospect of that dream job doesn't seem so shiny anymore. Especially for those who are working “temporarily” in an industry that they would rather not be working (e.g. the starving artist waiting tables) this is particularly true. Of course many people do find jobs that they enjoy. But even then, that age old question still comes back, “Where do I belong in this world?”

While the question “What do you want to be in when you grow up?” is indeed innocent, it is misleading because it ties our career to our identity. Just take a moment to analyze the question. First, it implies that identity is synonymous with vocation. You are your career. “What do you want to be?” “I want to be a scientist” not, “I want to be a human being, who is creative, kind and self-sacrificing and I want to work as a scientist.” And second, you will not find this identity until you “grow up.” Until then, you’ll have to wait to become someone until you finally get that phone call that says, “You’re hired!” you’ll be unable to assume a real identity.

This presents a number of problems. If my career gives me my identity, what happens if I am forced to work a job that doesn't fit with my own perceived identity? If I work as a secretary when I have a bachelor’s degree in biology, who am I? My gifts and education say one thing but my job says another. My sense of identity is mixed and unsettled. I certainly wouldn't tell people I am a biologist because that assumes I am working as a biologist. But I wouldn’t want to tell people I am a secretary either because none of my training and desires are for secretarial work. My identity is ambiguous. Also, if I have to wait until adulthood to assume this identity, who am I right now? Do I have to wait until I am a certain age to have an identity? Have I not grown up yet? (As an aside, one of my favorite little responses to this question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was given by a delightful little girl, Amber Brier who said, “I want to be an Amber!” Yes, Amber – don’t lose that.)

A bus driver in Lexington Kentucky once joked with me, a man probably in his 60's, “Well Jesse, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.” Here is a man, who most likely was asked that same question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This set him up to believe that he had never become anyone because he was just a bus driver. He may have felt, after beginning his work as a bus driver, that this was temporary. He is just working this job in the meantime until he finds a “real” job. 20 to 30 years later, he realizes that he is still a bus driver. And because of the expectation that his personhood is dependent on finding a “real” job, he feels he never has become a “real” person.

I can relate. All through my adult life I have worked as a server. It makes the best money for the hours and has always been my backup job to help me pay the bills. It’s not my real job of course. I would never tell people, “I am a server.” That makes me feel pretty lame. No. I tell people, “I am a conductor.” Oooo… ahhh… That always gets an impressive reaction. What is not so impressive is the follow up question, “So, where do you conduct?” to which I usually have to say, “Well, nowhere. I am looking for work as a conductor.” Then, I feel as though my true identity as a conductor is just a façade.

So from whence does our true identity come? Will we ever find that special place here in this world where we fit just perfectly? Certainly we all have natural gifts and we will generally be more satisfied as we are engaged in work that fits with those gifts. But the deep questions of identity and belonging go far deeper than work. These questions are a deep well which career can never fathom. A career is a temporary activity that we are engaged with in this world but can never satisfy the deepest longings to have an identity and a place to call home. C.S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

To the question we put in the beginning, “Where do we belong in this world?” The answer is, “We don’t.” We are not made for this world of disappointment and suffering. We are made for a perfect world with no discouragement, anger, frustration, cynicism, or hopelessness. We are made for the kingdom of light in which there will be nothing to harm or destroy us, but only boundless light and love in the presence of God and His Son.

“To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it,” says Jesus (Revelation 2:17). This “name” is what we are looking for – our identity. We have give ourselves many names, “Server” “Biologist” “Student” “Mother.” But Christ gives us a new name, one that comes from Him and Him alone. And this is not a name that can be told at parties or put on a resume, but a secret name – one that “no one knows except the one who receives it.” So let’s stop pining after that elusive “thing we want to be when we grow up” because it will never fill that desire for belonging. Let’s instead follow hard after that “new name known only to the one who receives it.” 

Digging in - Part IV: What's religion got to do with it?

In Part III, we discovered that the Werktreue mindset (“work-fidelity”) has many implications for performance, often leading to impersonal and even mechanical music-making. We also discovered that, although Werktreue is central to our approach towards classical music, it is only a surface layer. As Harnoncourt pointed out, “There is no crisis in music; rather, music is reflecting the crisis of an age.” In this post, we’ll refocus our attention on some of the underlying philosophical issues that shape our approach to classical music. But first, we must examine a few basic presumptions in secular philosophy that might serve as roadblocks to discovering the root cause of these musical problems.

Fractured Truth

 

If someone were to ask you, “What is two plus two?”  you would have no problem answering, “Four.” If the other person responded that your answer is merely a matter of opinion, this would sound ridiculous because we accept that mathematics exists within the “fact” realm – in other words, a realm in which the questions have definitive, right or wrong answers, speaking generally. Even if the question were a complex math problem like, “What is the square root of 123,785?” you may not know the answer but you would no doubt agree that there was an answer. Whether the answers are known or unknown, we all agree that mathematics exists within the “fact realm” and therefore a right answer is out there.

But if someone were to say, “Is there a God?” many would likely answer, “Well, that is a matter of opinion. For me there is no God, but for you there might be.” Now, both the math question and the God question actually do have a right or wrong answer. Either there is some kind of Supreme Being that created us all and runs this universe, or there is not. Unlike an “opinion” question such as “What is your favorite food?” categorically, the question of whether a God exists is a “fact” question – one with a right or wrong answer. In spite of this, a secular worldview posits that only empirical facts belong in realm of truth while other subjects like religion are a matter of opinion.

This is what Francis Schaeffer called a fractured view of the truth. He described how, at some point over the past few hundred years, a great split happened in modern thinking. Formerly, the subjects of religion and philosophy were considered to have a right and a wrong answer like math or science. In other words, the question, “Is there a God?” was in the same arena as “What is two plus two?” Of course, people disagreed over those answers, but they agreed that there were answers – not just opinions. But at some point, only subjects that could be proved empirically were considered right or wrong (science, mathematics, etc.) while subjects such as morality, religion, and philosophy were considered matters of opinion. To illustrate this split, Schaffer made the well-known analogy of a two-story house, one in which empirical data is in the basement (fact) while religion and morality are in the top story (opinion).

This is a crucial question for our examination of classical music. For if we believe subjects like religion, morality, or philosophy are merely a matter of opinion, we will not be able to identify the “the spiritual crisis of the age” to which Harnoncort refers. Religion and spirituality can only have relevance and potency when they can be identified as true or false. If we believe that these subjects are merely subjective, they can never have objective value. If you’ll allow me, I hold that religion does exist in the “fact” realm as much as math or science and as such, I believe that Christianity has substantial claims that provide plausible explanations to the musical problems in the classical music world today.

Art-Religion of the Romantics 

 

We first must consider the two major competing philosophies of the past 300 years both of which had a huge impact on music: Romanticism and Enlightenment Era philosophy. More specifically, we will consider both how the Romantic era idolized art which influenced the birth of Werktreue, and how Enlightenment era philosophy in the 20^th century (Naturalism and Empiricism specifically) led to a dehumanized view of man, and thus a dehumanized view of music and performance. Disclaimer: My treatment of these two huge and complex philosophical systems (Romanticism and Enlightenment Philosophy) is far from exhaustive or even very detailed. We will merely touch on a view general ideas that I believe had a direct impact on classical music.

One of the most basic assumptions in a Christian worldview is that there is true and false religion. Since Christianity holds that the subject of religion belongs in the realm of truth and not opinion, this conclusion is inevitable. Furthermore, any false religious position will be misguided and therefore harmful. For example, if a doctor had false views of biology, his or her prescriptions would misguided and potentially deadly to the patient. Our examination of the art-religion of the romantic era is such an example.

 “Art is our religion, our center of gravity, our truth,” says Franz Marc, a German painter who lived toward the end of the 19^th century. Among the many facets of the Romantic tradition, the one aspect that concerns us is the creation of their own religion – one where art became the supreme source of life and truth. William Wordsworth in his epic poem The Prelude refers to himself as being “clothed in a priestly robe…for holy services.” William Yeats said that art was “a new religion, almost an infallible Church of poetic tradition.”

The residual effects of this “art-religion” are still seen today, though not as explicitly as in the 19^th century. World-renown soprano Renee Flemming stated in an interview that her mission is to bring “the gospel of opera to the unsaved” (Chicago Tribine, Jan 06, 2013). Bruce Haynes, in his book quoted earlier, writes “This book is dedicated to Erato, muse of lyric and love poetry, Euterpe, muse of music.” When Simon Rattle came to conduct the Oberlin Orchestra, he remarked with encouragement how people ran for consolation to art galleries shortly after the tragedies of 9/11, encouraging us to “keep the faith.” Van Cliburn’s once commented that a pianist must be “married to the piano.”
 
 Of course, these statements are not literal. Renee Flemming does not believe that she is literally gaining converts to an explicit “opera-religion”, nor does Van Cliburn mean that a pianist should literally marry their pianos. But what these remarks do reflect is a view of music that implies a loyalty to music that goes beyond a normal dedication to a profession. If we look at the deep concern, almost obsession, with “serving music” or “serving the composer”, it becomes apparent that these concerns can often go far beyond a normal dedication to craft.

This religious dedication to music causes a number of problems. First, it produces a sense that our primary goal as performers is to serve an impersonal force or influence (like music) or a composer (who is most likely dead). The most basic problem is that truly “serving” a dead person or an intangible idea is not truly possible. There is no way that “music” can be hurt or pleased and neither can dead composers. Taruskin points out in Text and Act that:

A performer cannot please or move the ancient dead and owes them no such effort. There is no way that we can harm Bach or Mozart any more, not any way that we can earn their gratitude. Still less can a performer please or move an inanimate object or an abstract idea. We owe them even less obligation. Our obligation is to the living. Turning ideas into objects and objects in place of people, is the essential modernist fallacy. (Underline mine)

When we try to serve something intangible like music, we can easily mistreat human beings in the process. Think back on the examples of Toscanini and Reiner and how they treated their orchestras in order to honor “the music.” Or recall the quote by Taruskin, how composers began to treat performers with suspicion and almost contempt because of how they often got in the way of their musical ideals. This is why the great commandment in Christian scripture is to love God will all our heart, mind, and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves. Christianity teaches that servanthood is always to have a personal object. Only then will we treat people with the dignity and love in the process of excelling in music.   

Furthermore, idolizing music can often put a strain on our approach to performance. Baily puts it this way:

In the Straight [modern classical] world the performer approaches music on tiptoe. Music is precious and performance constitutes a threat to its existence. So, of course, he has to be careful. Also, the music doesn’t belong to him. He’s allowed to handle it but only under the strictest supervision. Somebody, somewhere, has gone through a lot of trouble to create this thing, this composition, and the performer’s primary responsibility is to preserve it from damage.

Ironically, when performers exalt music as a holy object, a fear of damaging it will often be at the center of their performing. The logical consequences of this approach are either safe, risk-free performances or an obsessive, anxious attitude toward performance. Think back to the Toscanini quote and his anxiety over musical decisions. As with all false religion, it can never produce freedom.

Interestingly, this disposition towards worshiping music suggests that humans are naturally inclined to worship something. Christianity teaches that we are designed to worship. It is built into the very fabric of our being. It’s just like the Bob Dylan line, “ya gotta serve somebody.” Moreover, we long to worship something that is perfect, flawless. Christianity teaches that when the true God is not the object of worship, we will in turn just worship something else, something less than perfect. This typically leads to disappointment and disillusionments. Thus, when we try to worship music, it doesn’t ultimately yield life-giving results but often lead to emptiness and dissapointment.

We’ve seen some of the lingering effects the Romantic era “art-religion” on the modern-day classical musician – viewing music “sacred object” and a religious allegiance to music or to dead composers. I find it incredible how something as seemingly remote as Romantic era philosophy can directly impact such everyday circumstances like a music history class or an orchestra rehearsal. But what about the 20^th century? How did that impact the classical world? Tune in next time…