J. S. Bach wrote musical exercises for his students; they were [BIG PHRASE ALERT!] two-part contrapuntal pieces. He introduced a short music fragment in one voice, then repeated it in the second voice while the first was still playing a counterpoint. An over-simplified way of saying it might be this: the right hand is a couple of measures ahead of the left hand. :) I love them because they require precision and a mild bit of ambidexterity. In short: you have to count. One doesn’t just feel her way through a Bach Invention. It’s learned and the emotion is added later. At least that’s how it is with me.
And I like that.
That’s why life gets me out of sorts sometimes. It’s a bit like a Bach Invention out of sync. Lots of events overlap. The theme is punchy, joyful, rhythmic. As each event plays out, a new one enters in the same key¦ it’s a delight to watch events unfold. Safe, precise, predictable, then the cat leaps on the keyboard. You know what I mean. The key changes and the tune is interrupted with a rhythm that is all out of sorts. (Jon calls this “jazz”) There doesn’t seem to be any reason to it. The math is gone. The syncopation is almost annoying. The notes are offensive. And I get this tic in my right eyelid.
Apparently God has an eclectic musical sense, and a sense of humor. Rhythm and structure can be boring. Bach didn’t send his students out to perform inventions. They were for the classroom. Cantatas and concertos were for the audience.
God is into beauty and variety, crescendos and decrescendos, symmetry and syncopation. It could be a little unnerving for a soloist if the symphony decided to play a U2 song during her Rachmaninoff piece. But sometimes I think God conducts just like that. Brahms’ Lullaby is playing and God throws in a didgeridoo!** Sometimes I want to stop all the music and scream, “What was that!!!?”
But it’s not my music. It’s not my orchestra. I’m not the conductor. I can only play my part and wait on the cat to land. And when the cat lands, maybe I best groove with it than tell it to scram. Maybe I need to get out of the classroom and feel a few jazz rips. Move to the music rather than trying to define it with my own rhythm. Embrace the good and the bad and the in-between, the mild, the major, and magic of it all. Maybe I could learn to be more of a musician than a mathematician, go with the flow rather than dam up His river in me. Would it be so bad to let go of my own rhythm, let the cat dance on the keys, pick up my hands, watch the Conductor and risk a bit of soul for the sake of His invention and all that jazz?
**What’s a didgeridoo? Listen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QyL1O6141g&feature=related
Copyright 2009 Sharon Denise Dorminy
