The Liturgical Conference: "This is your brain on music

Friday, October 16, 2015

Musical Choices for Worship

Having described some findings about the brain’s receipt of music in his essay in Liturgy 30, no. 4, Tony Alonso continues his remarks on the relationship between music and worship.

In a book of reflections on the relationship between music and theology, Don Saliers writes about music as a living practice that is deeply bodily and intimately bound to our emotional lives. Reflecting on the theological significance of the ways in which music has potential to both shape and express our image of God, Saliers notes that controversies about music in Christian history emerge “precisely because music—played, sung, and heard—remains both emotionally powerful and yet mysteriously ephemeral, always passing away in linear time, yet always fusing past, future and present.” . . . It holds great potential for deepening contemporary conversations over musical styles in worship and, in particular, for helping to explain why such conversations can be so deeply felt and emotionally charged.

. . . Acknowledging the very human way in which musical tastes develop and the vulnerable emotional associations music has the ability to encode. . . challenges an uncritical assumption that the Spirit sings only through a particular genre or musical expression and instead opens us to the unexpected and perhaps even uncomfortable ways in which people hear God’s voice in a wide variety of modes.

Not content merely to call for new music, Alonso offers several conclusions about worship music. Here we have room to relate only a few.

[A]ttentiveness to the development of musical taste from the first music to which we are exposed as infants to its strong solidification in our teenage years should make us suspicious of whether marketing musical repertoire toward a specific demographic is salutary or even possible. . . . The cellist in the high school orchestra who enjoys listening to popular music with her friends and the mariachi music of her Mexican heritage surely has the potential to connect to the sacred through more than one musical genre.

. . . Levitin’s examination of the development of musical taste should cause us to reject the use of the terms traditional and contemporary to describe styles of music in worship. . . This unhelpful binary is not only musically inaccurate; it also ignores multivalent musical schemas, which do not fit neatly into such categories.

. . . [M]uch of contemporary praise and worship music used in Christian worship sounds less like the Top 40 and more like a popular musical schema from ten or twenty years in the past. Regardless of intention and without casting any judgment on the aesthetic quality of such music, it is possible that the adults who often hold the power in worship settings may be unknowingly masking a desire for music that reflects the comfortable musical schemas of their own teenage years. If musical evangelization in worship is a priority (an open question in itself), this work invites a deeper conversation about how such music might sound quite different than what is currently in the Christian mainstream. . .

The lack of rap, reggae, country, and hip-hop music played and sung in most communities who use music to evangelize testifies to the often unspoken limits. . . often as narrowly drawn as those who advocate for the exclusive use of Gregorian chant or the hymns of Charles Wesley.

Urging greater thought be given to the choices for music used in worship, Alonso shows that musical tastes cannot be easily categorized by age group or ethnicity. The music most appropriate not only for the worship of the faithful – but for people new to worship, as well – is the music most faithful to the church’s witness. See his full essay to deepen your understanding of his important perspective.

Tony Alonso is a composer of liturgical music and a PhD student in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tony Alonso, “A Not-So-Universal Language: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us about Music Styles in Worship,” Liturgy 30, no. 4 (2015), 53-60.

Friday, October 2, 2015

Music: A Not-So-Universal Language

Tony Alonso writes in the October-December issue of Liturgy about music’s power in the brain and what it means for liturgical choices. How is the emotion evoked by music related to worship? He uses the work of Daniel Levitin in this book This is Your Brain on Music to discuss what pastors, musicians, and liturgists can learn from recent neuroscience.

Although people have believed that children do not retain memories before the age of five, studies now reveal that children recognize music heard even before they were born. The time of adolescence is the next remarkable point when music tastes are shaped.

There are several reasons why this age is so crucial in shaping musical taste. First, several studies reveal that the age of ten or eleven is a turning point for most children in which they begin to demonstrate a deeper interest in music, even if they had not previously. Second, because of the intense development that takes place in our teenage years as we experiment with new ideas and challenge decisions handed down to us from our parents, this time of our life tends to be intensely emotionally charged; we tend to remember things that have an emotional connection because “our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to ‘tag’ the memories as something important.” . . . Third, in our teenage years, we begin to form social groups intentionally with people we want to be like or with whom we share common interests. Externalizing social bonds, our musical preferences become an important way in which we signal our individual and group identities. Fourth, while our brains develop and form new connections at a very rapid rate throughout adolescence, this slows down dramatically following our teenage years.

Perhaps the most important way this development continues throughout our lives is through the development of what Levitin calls “musical schemas,” which frame our understanding by informing our cognitive models and expectations. Nonmusical schemas are central to the way in which the brain processes standard situations, extracting things common to a variety of situations and providing a framework within which to place them. Our schemas shape our expectations of what we would expect to find in a particular situation as well as what elements are flexible. . . Not only do our schemas account for why certain sounds outside our culture may challenge our understanding or appreciation of particular types of music, they also demonstrate why, as we grow, we acquire a wider array of schemas for particular genres, styles, and eras. . . . Put very simply, as we mature, we tend to prefer music that is neither too simple nor too complex in relation to the musical schemas we have previously developed: “at a neural level, we need to be able to find a few landmarks in order to invoke a cognitive schema.” . . . When music is perceived as too predictable and without variation from other music we have heard, we find it simplistic and unchallenging. However, if we are unable to invoke a cognitive schema in order to sort out what is happening in a piece of music, we are similarly likely to find the music unsatisfying.

. . . Like any sensory experience, safety and familiarity are key components to the way in which music carries positive emotional resonances. Because our experience of music often alters our mood and because we often identify music as a way in which we connect with something larger than ourselves, including the sacred, we are often reluctant to completely let our guard down to new music.

We hear music, in other words, according to what we have learned to hear throughout our lives. What, then, are the consequences for musical worship choices?

Alonso’s suggestions will be summarized in the October 16 offering of this blog. Earlier, you may read his entire essay in Liturgy online or through your library’s subscription.