What is it about some music that makes you feel God? How does a Chassidic niggun make you surrender to the sanctity of the moment, while another great melody will simply make you "enjoy" the moment? I'm not sure there are answers to these things, or that we even need answers. But in this article in First Things, David Goldman touches on the idea that what makes possible the sacred in music involves a transformation in our perception of time. In other words, the music you hear is so amazing and holy that you forget where you are-- and in that absence of place and memory, there is no time and there is only God.
The question, of course, is what makes it possible for music to convey a sense of the sacred in the way that Benedict avers. And the answer should be sought first in our perception of time. Because we are mortal, and because all religion responds to mortality, our intimations of the sacred arise from our experience of the tension between the mortal existence of humankind and the eternal life of God. In revealed religion, God’s time stands in contrast to the earthly time of days and years and the corporeal time of pulse and respiration. A creator God who stands outside nature also stands outside time itself. Eternity is incommensurate with natural time. God made the world ex nihilo before time existed and he will bring it to an end.
Eternity breaks into the temporal world through revelation. For Jews, the sanctification of the Sabbath introduces an element of eternity into natural time.
Music unfolds in time. The rhythms of the music of all cultures arise from the natural rhythms of respiration and pulse. Unique to the tonal music of the West, however, is its capacity to create a perception of time on two distinct levels, that is, the natural time of systole and diastole, and the plastic time of tonal events. The coincidence or conflict of durational and tonal rhythm, that is, between metronome time and the pace of tonal motion, gives composers the tools to depict higher orders of time. That is what makes possible the sacred in music, for our perception of the sacred involves a transformation in our perception of time.
1 comment:
A question for Goldman:
He states that what makes possible the sacred in music involves a transformation in our perception of time.
Marijuana also involves a change in our perception of time, yet such illicit drug use is shunned by Jewish law. Why should something that brings us closer to God be prohibited?
Goldman then uses the following evidence to justify his claim that music changes our perception of time:
"The rhythms of the music of all cultures arise from the natural rhythms of respiration and pulse."
A audacious claim. Considering the inconsistency of the human pulse and respiration rate, this is unlikely. A more likely explanation for the origin of rhythm is our brains' intuitive ability to detect, understand, and replicate rhythmic beats.
Finally, Goldman finishes his piece stating that
"our perception of the sacred involves a transformation in our perception of time."
However, Goldman never qualified the fact that music actually "transforms" our perception of time. He only states that the "tonal music of the west" creates a perception of time on two distinct levels, natural rhythms and tonal events.
I would hesitate to call these two different levels, since tonal events only serve to organize these "natural rhythms. They certainly aren't two different entities, and tonal rhythms therefore are not enabling of "higher orders of time"
Therefore, it is ridiculous for Goldman to make the logical leap from music having two-levels (which I have suggested is false) to tonal rhythm depicting "higher orders of time" and then make the logical leap to "our perception of time is transformed" because it's transcending natural orders of tempo.
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