The Liturgical Turn: Music In A Time Of Mourning

Life always takes a series of unexpected turns.  And seeing how way leads on to way, I suspect that I’ll later return to my original intention of delving deeper into an interaction with William Desmond’s metaphysics and liturgy (which began with my previous post).  For now I’m going to change directions slightly and share with you something that I’ve been thinking about over the past few weeks. 

This past month has been a very interesting month for my church because we experienced together a time of great joy and a time of sadness.  In the middle of July we participated in a missions project with World Vision, which was the first time my church had done anything like this in its life together.  The day after we returned from the Appalachian mountains, while the excitement for seeing the Holy Spirit’s power move in the life of our church was still fresh, the husband of one of the team members suffered a fatal heart attack.  Excitement quickly turned to mourning. 

Even though I’ve been leading music in church for a while now, this was the first funeral I’d ever had to plan for and, quite frankly, I wasn’t really too sure what to do.  The funeral liturgy in the Book of Common is a beautiful liturgy whose theology of resurrection, hope, and future glory says all there is to say.  So along with asking “what songs do we sing while we’re all grieving”, I was also asking “why sing at all?” 

In searching for answers, I was reminded of the work of Eleanor Stubley.  Stubley is a phenomenologist, musicologist and professor of music at McGill University whose work focuses on the importance of the body in musical performance as well as the disjunction between the performers’ experience of music and the theorists’ description of it.  She believes that if we are going to formulate an adequate account of music’s meaning then we need to take the experience of the physical act of music-making seriously.  In a sense, making music constitutes a fundamentally different manner of being that she describes as the “transformative powers of musical performance.” The body’s role in musical performance is more than being the machine that executes the sound. The body is that which communicates to and senses the world around it allowing for the performance of music to take place.

Anyone who has ever played in a band or sang in a choir knows that all the participants are acutely aware of what everyone else is doing.  This is essential for matching pitch, harmonizing, following changes and dynamics.  It produces what Stubley calls a “symbiotic tuning” which affects the mind, body, voice, instruments and, in turn, the actions of the others around. This creates a continuing dialectic as performers play off of each other.  As the music progresses there is bond that is created.  The existence of that bond is most keenly felt (negatively) when one of the performers falters or the whole performance suddenly stops.  We all know how awkward the moment is when we’re singing along with the radio and the power goes out or we’re playing in a band and the bandleader cuts everyone off suddenly (I’m notorious at this in rehearsals).  It’s a shocking experience that feels like one’s state of mind has just been shattered.  This is why in performing music together there is a trust that forms and is needed to sustain the flow of sound. 

In thinking about Stubley’s work, I was reminded of the unique experience of music. It’s almost sacramental (and some argue that it is). Baptism places one in the body of Christ, the Eucharist continual feeds us with the sustaining grace of Christ’s body and blood.  Singing together, which Christians always do when gathered, also creates a sense of the church as a body.  It makes us present to each other in a profound way. I suppose this is the answer to my question “why sing while we’re mourning?”  Because the music can say more and do more than words alone.  When we sing we communicate and create a togetherness.  All suffering causes alienation.  Therefore what we need in a time of mourning is not just words of comfort (sometimes we don’t need them right away), but the physical presence of others.  Singing together overcomes alienation because it makes us uniquely present to one another in a way that little else can.      

*For a good explanation of Eleanor Stubley’s work see:  Philosophical Perspectives on Music by Wayne D. Bowman (Oxford Press, 1998)

Comments

[Amanda]

I enjoyed reading your post. Have you thought about music as providing not simply "togetherness" but also a unique way of expressing and tapping into deep emotions that can be so essential to grief? Also, for the church a funeral is still a worship service - a very different type of worship than normal Sunday morning services, but worship nonetheless. So, just as music is an integral part of "normal" Sunday worship, it is a crucial part even of our worship when we mourn. I realize your post wasn't meant to be all-encompassing, so I would love to hear your thoughts (and the thoughts of other readers) on these questions.

[Eric Speece]

Amanda,

Sorry for the delayed response. You raise an excellent point about a funeral service being itself (albeit different) a worship service. I think that point actually gets at your beginning question. Here's why: Stanley Hauerwas talks a lot about Christians helping others to learn to "Die Well", that is, overcoming fear in the face of death by the hope of the resurrection. Maybe then, a funeral as a time of worship helps us to "Mourn Well". The opening lines in the funeral rite of the BCP are Jesus' words "I am the resurrection and the life, whoever has faith in me shall have life even though he die." The rest of the prayers, in one way or another continue with that theme of hope in the resurrection. As I was planning music for that time I tried to choose music that would emphasize that fact.

Mourning well because we have hope in the resurrection doesn't mean that we shrug off grief and go about our lives all happy and bubbly, what it does mean is that our grief is properly concentrated so as not to turn into despair. Jesus' words that I just quoted came in the context of Lazarus' death - a time when our incarnate savior himself was grieving deeply. So if our funerals are times of worship then they allow us time to grieve properly in the presence of Christ who overcomes death and keeps us from despair.

But what about music specifically? Well we know that in a "normal" sunday morning gathering that the whole time is 'worship', but isn't there something specific about music that brings us to a place of emotional intimacy with God that other liturgical acts might not do as consistently or even in the same way? I think there is and because music has such a nature to be a catalyst for intimacy that one of music's crucial roles is to aid in the redemption of our emotions and of course, nothing is redeemed without coming into the presence of God.

Jeremy Begbie says this really well at the end of "Resounding Truth." He talks about emotions being a good, but even they need to be redeemed and they are in the incarnation. Some of the roles that music plays he says is "in educating, shaping and re-shaping us emotionally" in that it "voices what we do feel and perhaps what we could or should feel" (p.302). He argues, and I think he's right, that emotion can be appropriate or inappropriate, or in our case appropriate grief and inappropriate grief. Emotions themselves, such as grief, are good and created by God, but like the rest of creation stand in need of redemption and discipline.

So to sum up, I'd say that music plays a crucial role in allowing us to mourn well because it brings us into the presence of God (i.e. worship) where there is hope.

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