The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
The older I get, the more powerfully am I struck by how my memory, which was never outstanding, is failing me. I can’t decide whether it is simply an issue of aging or the onset of some form of demented memory-shredder, especially the dreaded “A.”
One thing I don’t forget, however, is the lyrics to various choral musical compositions. For me, words set to music etch themselves into my always-faulty memory bank better than any other words, whether in poetry or prose.
From the time I was in grade school, and was coerced by my parents into singing in church choirs, I later realized that I was glad for the coercion. I sang in several choirs all the way through seminary, and reveled in every minute of it. But I also remember the lyrics of songs on the radio in the Forties and Fifties. I have no idea why this is true, but once I learned the words of songs, a surprising volume of those lyrics stuck with me.
In The Mikado, by Gilbert and Sullivan, there is as song called “The Wandering Minstrel.” He tells the audience that he knows snatches of lyrics from countless songs. I am familiar with the texts of hundreds of hymns, having sung hymns every Sunday for the past three-quarters of a century. But I know snips and snatches and the partial or complete verbal repertoire of many hundreds of other compositions as well. Go figure.
What I am attempting to suggest here is that for many people, music is the best messenger with which we are familiar for inculcating an immense variety of profound truths into minds which somehow absorb those messages into permanent cerebral storage. No other medium does it as well for people like me as do words attached to music.
The biblical temple is reconstructed in splendor every time we hear “How lovely is Thy dwelling place” from the Brahms Requiem. Every Easter when we sing “Christ the Lord is risen today,” Christ is raised once again; he is risen indeed. To hear in memory Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond sing You don’t send me flowers --- You don’t sing me love songs is one of the most beautiful and sad ballads ever attached to notes on staffs. As for Barbra standing on the deck of the tugboat in the New York Harbor belting out Don’t rain on my parade just before the intermission in Funny Girl: well, nothing is more upbeat and joyous than that.
“In Flanders fields the poppies grow” is a powerful poem whose haunting lines sprang forth from the bloody fields of Belgium during World War I. They are inscribed on our hearts forever. But Lily Marlene captures the pathos of the War to End All Wars with even more force. Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer evoked the cosmic angst of World War II in millions of anxious fliers and citizens throughout the English-speaking world, and a unique emotion is recalled just from thinking about the song’s title.
Words are indispensable vehicles for human communication. Words enshrined in music can be the conveyances which send the human spirit soaring into regions otherwise unexplored and unfathomable. As William Congreve wrote, “Music hath charms to sooth the savage breast/ To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” Praise be to God, the ultimate inspirer of all the music of all the spheres! - December 29, 2020
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.