“Clap your hands, ALL peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!”
The psalmist proclaimed, long ago, that all peoples praise God with sounds and songs and rhythm. All people seem to come wired for sound and we believing folks know that all our sounds and songs and rhythms are music to God’s ears.
Tangos and tympani, blue grass and Bach, psalms and sonatas, chorales and choruses, folk and fugue, bells and baritones—all to the glory of God, as Bach himself would have said. All our sounds and songs and rhythms give praise to our God.
We humans, all of us, seem to be born with what Dr. Oliver Sacks calls “musicophilia”, the love of music. He writes, in his book by that name, that “music has great power for all of us, regardless of whether or not we think of ourselves as particularly ‘musical.’ This propensity to music shows itself in infancy, is manifest and central in every culture, and probably goes back to the very beginnings of our species.” Music occupies more areas of our brain than does language and lies deep in human nature.
Dr. Sacks is a very interesting man, a professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia, University. Some of you may remember an earlier book of his entitled: “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” Dr. Sacks helps us learn about what is normal in humans and about the healing power of the brain by looking at examples of extreme brain disorders.
In “Musicophilia,” he describes, for example:
- an Alzheimer's sufferer with amnesia so severe that it erases memories every minute, but who is able to sing songs from her past.
- otherwise "frozen" Parkinson's patients who move fluidly when certain music is played
- a man with severe aphasia who learns to speak again through singing
- a professional musician whose Tourette's syndrome vanishes when he plays the piano
- a doctor who is struck by lightning and ever after is obsessed with a desire to write and play classical music
This is not really so foreign to our own experience. We all know that for children, and even for grown-up children, too, a lullaby can sooth and comfort when words alone have been exhausted. All of us who offer pastoral care, and maybe some of you from situations in your own families, learn that often the best way to connect with and comfort a beloved grandmother or grandfather, who seems beyond speech or even recognition, is to sing the hymns of the church and find that one moving their lips or even singing along.
Music lies deep, deep within us. It has the power to soothe and heal. It has the power to restore memory. It has the power to connect us to God and to one another even through times when are hearts are broken, or when God seems far away, or when our ability to speak has gone.
Music moves us to the heights and depths of emotion. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can.
It can give expression to our joy when words alone aren’t enough. It can bring us to tears and then dry them. It can bring a smile to our lips. It can set us to dancing. It can set us to dreaming. Music can give expression to our prayer and help us find our way home.
Music is God’s gift to his children. Do you love music? Do you have musicophilia? YES! We all do! Thanks be to God!
How fortunate we are, we Methodists, to be a singing people. And how blessed we are, at the First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica, to be part of a congregation for whom music has been at the heart of our worship and praise and fellowship and service across all the years of our life together.
On this our annual Choir Recognition Sunday we take a few moments to do what most of us do in our hearts and prayers every Sunday and that is give thanks for the incredible talent and commitment of all the musicians of our music program. What makes this day special is that we do it publicly and we thank them all and we thank God for them and for the way their music ministers to us all each week. We give thanks for how God’s gift of music flows through them to lift us up and give expression to our faith. How it heals us and sooths us and delights us and how it lifts our prayers to the throne of God.
Let us now thank all those who, week in and week out, share their musicophilia, their love of music, with us all, assisting us in the worship God, forming us into becoming more fully human and more whole, and binding us together in the beautiful harmonies of God’s love.
SUNDAY SINGERS -- ad hoc group that gathers the first Sunday of the month to help lead our singing at the 9:00 service
The CHERUB CHOIR -- Jan Ellis, Director
The CHILDREN’S CHOIR -- Janet Searfoss, Director
Fang-Ning Lim, accompanist for both the Children’s and Youth Choirs
YOUTH CHOIR and YOUTH HANDBELLS -- Patty Eskridge, Director
AMADEUS HANDBELL CHOIR -- Mary Crawford, Director
---Section Leader/Soloists
Barbara Smith, Soprano
Erin Wood, Alto (on leave, singing with the Opera Pacific)
Leslie Inman, subbing for Erin Wood
Drew Holt, Tenor
William Trabold, Bass
And all the members of the CHANCEL CHOIR
Wedding and Memorial Service organist -- Roger Daggy
ASSOCIATE ORGANIST -- Mary Gerlitz
ORGANIST -- Christoph Bull
DIRECTOR OF MUSIC -- JIM SMITH
© Patricia Farris, 2008. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
"Do You Have Musicophilia?"