Meaningful Music (Mozart, Metallica, and beyond)

I'm currently sitting in Panera, working on my outlines for Contract and Criminal law, and listening to the classical music that is playing softly in the background.

As a kid, I listened to a lot of classical music. Partly by my own choosing, mostly because its all my parents would play in the house/car. I developed a great appreciation for classical music.

High school and college were much different. Classical music quickly = not cool. Give me some good ol' rock and roll. Let me jive occasionally to some smooth jazz or the catchy rhythms of hip hop. Shoot, I even tried some of that indie rock razzmatazz (although I've never been a huge fan and I'll just as soon pop in some Skynyrd or CCR as I will a little Wilco or Sufjan).

Since starting law school, I've rediscovered classical music. That junk is good. I love Bach because of his precision and technicality (almost like listening to a good logical analysis put to music). Beethoven brings out that romantic side of me that many of you question if I really have. Tchaikovsky is as passionate about his music as I am about college football. And then there's Mozart. I don't know which I like more - the fact that his music is probably what the angels play in heaven, or that by the time he was my age he had written more brilliant music than I'll be able to listen to in my lifetime.

There's a great article in the recent edition of Christianity Today about Mozart. Lengthy, but good. In it, the author quotes Hans Kung, the pupil of Karl Barth, who talks about the "traces of transcendence" in Mozart's music, i.e. within good religious music itself there can be an "intrinsic liturgical significance," even without words, which can potentially make music a "source of revelation alongside the Word":

I think that music which speaks the truth is not just limited, say, to vocal music or explicitly religious music; it also includes purely instrumental music—and especially the intimacy of many second movements. An abstract masterpiece can speak the truth in the pure language of sound… . And though music cannot become a religion of art, the art of music is the most spiritual of all symbols for that "mystical sanctuary of our religion," the divine itself. In other words, for me Mozart's music has relevance for religion not only where religious and church themes or forms emerge, but precisely through the compositional technique of the non-vocal, purely instrumental music, through the way in which this music interprets the world, a way which transcends extra-musical conceptuality… . With keen ears [one] may perceive in the pure, utterly internalized sound, for example, of the adagio of the Clarinet Concerto, which embraces us without using any words, something wholly other… . So here are ciphers, traces of transcendence.

Whether it be classical, rock, or independent, that's the kind of music I want to listen to. Let me know if you've found it.