The Path Through the Music

There’s a reason why we call it mood music. Our lives are filled with moods and there’s a kind and quality of music that suits each of them. That’s why music accompanies every scene in a modern movie and why, when the music changes, we know how to feel.

Think about it for a moment. When you watch old black and white motion pictures, often the scenes will not have music, and it comes at us out of a warped time machine. One that fails to realize how life is enhanced by the addition of music. Fortunately that’s not the case anymore. If you listen to music on your iPod while be-bopping down the street it’s exactly like being in your own movie, isn’t it?  I contend that the path that leads directly to God is lined on both sides with music; powerful, gentle, exciting and beautiful. Sometimes even judgmental (talk about mood).

Music is the sixth sense. I can open my mouth and with only one nano second of thought bring forth something quite unlike my other senses. I know the mechanics of it – air passing over vocal cords, vibrations – all that. But it’s what I have in my head that’s informing those vibrations. I have to think that composers of old like Handel and Bach as well as more recent geniuses like Rutter and Sleeth, have been tapped from on high to bring a touch of Heaven to earth. What was given to them is on a far greater scale than what this humble singer produces, but isn’t it wonderful that music is the universal language that falls like righteous rain on all of us?

These are some of the pieces that line my path.

Hallelujah Chorus – Handel

Joy in the Morning – Sleeth

St. John’s Passion – Bach

What Sweeter Music – Rutter

When another sort of mood is on me I like this:

Oh Mary Don’t You Weep – Bruce Springsteen's version – what a firebrand! Please go find it on You Tube.

Or when the tender little ones come to mind this:

Consider the Lillies of the Field – Mormon Tabernacle Choir version – third verse, you’ll weep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp89IUmlz9g

What lines your path?

Image: Danilo Rizzuti     http://www.freedigitalphotos.com/