In this world of me-ism, a Choir concert is about "we" concluded Dr Rene Clausen, as he directed the Concordia College Choir at their 83rd annual Christmas Concert this Christmas of 2021. I enjoyed that concert so much that I sat through two complete concerts on Christmas Day.
But, that started me processing the meaning of music as related to life, while I slept through Christmas night. Is music a solo? Or, is life a choir? Many live their lives as soloists. Isn't it all just a matter of choice? Some are soloists. Some sing in some kind of harmony. Dr. Clausen seems to think that life can only be found in relationship, in a group, in community with another and that raises other questions.
If life cannot be lived as a solo, what does it mean to be part of a duet? Is a duet two soloists who wed and just happen to agree on some lyrics they like, so they compromise their solo ability and harmonize together. Can one sing harmoniously and be a soloist? This musical question suddenly becomes a psycho-social issue of dynamite proportions! Does singing a duet somehow change the dynamic of the relationship and transform it into a psychological and theological issue that is beyond what two soloists can be as two soloists? Does harmonizing with someone somehow transform you into something you cannot be and remain a soloist?
Get the idea? Is marriage a solo or a duet? Can you marry and remain a soloist? What will likely happen when a soloist and a duet join in matrimony? What musical lessons does matrimony teach us? Or, take the matter of citizenship: that is a vital part of our lives? How do music and citizenship inform each other? Will my understanding of music suddenly transform me into a new and different kind of citizen? Does my musical understanding somehow translate this into a better understanding of my citizenship? That may depend on whether I am a soloist or a duet, or for that matter a choir.
This choir business seems to be another whole different ballgame. It implies community and perhaps diversity, even in the midst of community. When I am in Community, I open myself to the possibility of being forty-eight, or fifty-one separate states, instead of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, however many, or whatever color, or whatever the ethnicity. It could mean remain thirteen independent colonies of Great Britain, rather than THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
It could suggest that there are certain people, like King George of England. He honestly believed he held the divine right of power and political ownership over those who had no political power--like the peasants of Luther's day. Luther defended the rights of the peasants to protest against the Papacy and the political power of the Pope but he stopped angrily when the peasants took his theology seriously. You just can't take religion too seriously.
They sang his hymns of German nationalism. They read his new German bible translation. But if that were not enough, they then took his 95-theses he published on the door of Wittenberg church, so the could have a scholarly debate that would not really interfere withs real life. Then, an entrepreneurial Printer took those points of scholarly debate and published them with new printing presses invented by Gutenberg. Those Peasants resisted the feudal system until the Peasants Wars broke out in more democratic social measures such as we have in America today with the free church movement and the Radical Reformation of the Anabaptists and the German Pietists.
Music is a BIG DEAL. Being a soloist offers me the choice of telling the government they have no right to reject me for claiming "they"--whoever they may be--are just trying to steal my individualism, my personal identity, my MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and lose me in a Facebook forest of conspiracy theories being pushed by a bunch of soloist politicos.
Maybe Dr. Clausen should forget all his music theory and mind his own business. He could start a civil war with his strange notions and trying to tag us with this silly notion of the importance of music and any relationship between music and real life. After all, music theory just can't really make all that much difference to real life. Or to be a little more direct, all this scandalous chit chat that connects community and individual liberties is just so much gobbledygook - a code word for social insanity and leftfield liberalism.
