AN EVENING AT THE CONCERT

My family and I are sometimes able to enjoy the cultural activities at Texas Woman’s University, where I am employed as a professor of philosophy. We think it is good for our children’s education to hear Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, Martha Schlamme, that glorious soprano folk singer, and Philip Entremont, the world-renowned pianist. Our children are fortunate to grow up in an academic community where there is more concern for “the things that matter most.” Besides the cultural benefits, we all enjoy these occasional evenings attending an opera, a play, or a concert.

It disappoints me that many of our young people, the college girls as well as my own children, appreciate light art (to use a kind term) more than serious art. When we have someone like the Four Freshmen or The Beatles at T. W. U. there is not a vacant seat in our large auditorium, while the attendance for an organ concert or a ballet is sometimes embarrassing. But that is part of education—exposing them to excellence—and that is why I favor compulsory attendance when the masters come to our campus. Just as a child has to be trained, with a bit of firm persuasion, to eat many foods that are good for him (I try to teach mine to eat any food placed before them and never to say or think “I don’t like that”), so a college student does not yet know what is good for him educationally. If we can require a university woman to take a foreign language or philosophy because they are necessary to her education, we can also require her to “take” Philippe Entremont when he comes to our campus. Oftentimes people do not know what they like until they have experienced it. Our aesthetic sense will respond to the finer arts if we will only expose it to a little cultivation.

The other evening my family had an evening with the Kansas City Philharmonic on our campus, with one of my brothers from Dallas and his family sitting with us. As I sat listening to these masters of harmony, more than eighty of them, my mind turned to some of the subjects that concern us in this journal. I thought I would share some of them with you.

The people that make up this famous symphony orchestra are the epitome of diversity. Some are very young, others quite old; a few are but “beginners” in comparison to the veteran masters. Some are single and some are married, with a number of them married to each other, which is encouraged by the troupe. Some are male and some female, some short and some tall; some quite handsome and some not. While there was a lot of hair, some had little or none. No doubt but what the emotional patterns of each one are unique, and that they differ as much in their thinking about most everything, including music, as they differ in their looks. Their instruments were also very different from each other.

As I thought of the diversity of these musicians I was all the more impressed with the glorious unity of their presentation. As they played Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor, which has been described as having unchallenged preeminence as the crown of symphonic art in France, I realized the meaning of unity in diversity. Harmony, in fact, can come in no other way but by the union of diverse elements. I enjoyed closing my eyes and listening to the symphony as it filled the auditorium like the voice of a million birds all in perfect unison. Then to open my eyes and behold eighty different people intensely engrossed over a score of varied instruments—it was an edifying experience. The rhythmic sounds came floating by, some tenderly as if on tiptoe, some mysteriously as if crescendos from a mystic sea.

As I pondered on each of the diverse elements the wholeness that I was enjoying was partly lost. Some of the musicians appeared to have such an insignificant role. One of them spent most of his time holding aloft a triangular chime which he would strike only occasionally, and then ever so delicately. Even when his rare moments came I found it difficult to discern his contribution. “All the way from Kansas City, and all that money, just for that …” I was tempted to think. I counted something like 45 or 50 violinists and violaists, each one intensely involved, making his own contribution to the symphony. “Are so many stringed instruments necessary? …” I went on thinking. “Would it make any difference if one or two of them came up missing, and if not, why have them to start with?” And I wondered if one of them happened to touch the wrong string just once if the director would notice, and if so, what he would think about it.

Despite the magnificence of the unity of the symphony, I realized that the unity was not an end in itself. The fourscore musicians achieved oneness with artistic precision, but this was not the end they had in view. They did not come down from Kansas City simply to demonstrate that they could play together! Unity was but the means to something greater. We might say their end was communication, which would have been impossible without unity.

Unity is never its own end. A man and his wife are united by the bond of marriage, but the unity makes possible something higher. Jesus prayed that His disciples would be one “so that the world may realize that you sent me and have loved them as you loved me.” Unity was the means, the witness to the world, the end. Our struggle for unity should never be viewed as an end in itself, but as a means of demonstrating to the world the power of a Spirit-filled people, and for the salvation of lost souls.

“How does the orchestra realize such a beautiful unity?” I asked myself. My wife mentioned the obvious self-discipline of the group and the lifetime of hard work, and while this is relevant, it is not the essence of the unity. In my philosophy classes at the college we conclude that the essence of a thing is what that thing must have to be what it is. A knife that no longer cuts or a watch that no longer runs has lost its essence. You might have eighty musicians with barrels of self-discipline and hard work and still not have unity. All the knowledge of music that a brain can hold will not itself produce unity. Even a lifetime of experience in concert music is not the answer, for such veterans may play in unison on one occasion and with discord the next. As germane as all these elements, are there is something else that is the essence. Or there is someone else, we should say.

It is of course the director of the orchestra that is the cohesive influence that makes the symphonic presentations possible. Without him there would be no symphony, irrespective of the knowledge, discipline, and experience of the group. As I held my youngest child in my lap I whispered to him to watch the eyes of the players, how closely they watched the director. While the written music before them was faithfully referred to, it was the director that unified them. My little boy and I became especially fascinated with the man with the drums, who hardly took his eyes from the majestic movements of his master’s wand. He watched intently, and then at the precise moment, he hammered upon his drums with his twin batons, sometimes with the rapidity and fury of an attacking tiger and sometimes with the gentleness of a mother’s kiss.

Whatever their relationship might be off stage, I thought, in this moment the director and his followers are one. His cohesive influence is stronger than any petty differences that may exist, and his authority transcends all divergent theories. While the written music is of course necessary, it is the person of the director that gives life to the symphony, and it is he that makes it possible for each musician to contribute his own unique part to the whole, however small. The director’s place is central. His towering figure, with baton in position, symbolized the fact that he is the symphony, for without him there would be only a group of talented people. He makes the many one and inspires the parts into wholeness.

All of this wonderfully illustrated to me the centrality of the Christ to our lives. He is both the ground of our being and the basis of our oneness. He is Christianity, and it is only as we reflect His glory in our lives that our part has any meaning. Our eyes and our affections must always be upon Him. However precious and vital the written Word is to us it is the Living Word that is the cohesive power. As we are drawn closed to Him we are drawn closer to each other. Because of His love for us and our love for Him we are in love with each other. In Him racial and class distinctions disappear, and because of Him doctrinal differences are no longer preeminent.

Phillips’ rendition of Eph. 1:9-10 is in order here:

“God has allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it is this: he purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth shall find perfection and fulfillment in him.”

God’s plan is to unite all things in heaven and on earth in Christ. This is the end God had in view from the beginning, and it should be the goal of all our labors. The unity of all God’s children on earth, for which we are striving, is therefore a means for attaining God’s eternal purpose, the unity of all heaven and earth in Christ. When we are one, as God and Christ are one, we manifest the glory of God with such brilliance that even the angels in heaven take notice. This brings us to our final point.

The concert that we heard also reminded me of the church’s role in glorifying God before all heaven and earth. The audience was a participant in that each of us was a witness to an unfolding drama. I thought of the pageant that God is producing for the angels in heaven as a demonstration of his wisdom. To quote Phillips again: “The purpose is that all the angelic powers should now see the complex wisdom of God’s plan being worked out through the church, in conformity to that timeless purpose which he centered in Jesus, our Lord.” Eph.3:10

God is conducting a symphony, this passage is saying. The angels are His audience. The church is the orchestra, with every saint performing according to his talent. The rendition is the glory, majesty, and wisdom of God. Praise His name!

As the heavenly hosts bear witness to this panorama of God’s manifold witness, they praise God. By means of the church’s symphonic production all of heaven and earth become one in Christ. What a glorious view Paul is giving us of God’s eternal purpose!

As we sat waiting for the concert to begin there were discordant sounds aplenty. While each musician was thumping or blowing on his instrument, each one indifferent to the others as he endeavored to get his strings or brass in tune, I was thankful that the whole evening would not be this way. “What torture it would be,” I said to myself, “if I had to sit through all this fuss for very long.’” But in a moment the director appeared, in his majestic black and tails, and the musicians all stood in honor of his presence. He first shook hands with his first violinist who sat at his right hand, and then he bowed to his audience. He mounted the platform and raised his arms. All eyes were fixed upon the wand in his right hand. His arms moved and the drama began. What majesty!

What does the angelic host behold as they watch those of us that make up the kingdom of God on earth? They can bear to see us in discord if, when the Christ steps into our lives, a change takes place. They can understand our weaknesses and foibles, and even the occasional foul notes that we are certain to make, if our eyes are upon our Director and if all are participating in the holy concert through the grace that only He can bestow. We cannot all be first violinists, but we can all share the common life, performing whatever humble tasks He assigns us.

The angels will be watching. And they will applaud.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of a continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. —John Donne