Making music, listening to music, dancing to music, music brings people together like nothing else.  In worship, music connects us in community and connects our spirits to the divine. For this year’s Music Sunday we celebrate the connective quality of music.

Music and worship go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.

Music is a part of worship for many traditions.  Music, for some, all by itself can be a direct path to transcendent experience.  Music is the divine, reaching to the divine.

Gregorian chant.  The psalms of the Cantor.  The bell, the chime.  The Praise Band.  The Latin Mass.  The Protestant Hymn.

Music makes the people come together

Music mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel

Hey Mr. DJ, put a record on

I wanna dance with my baby.

Thursday night this last week, Jim and I walked up Bunker Hill from our apartment in downtown LA to Disney Hall.  We were there for a performance of Mahler’s Symphony number 8.

Talk about music bringing people together!

Mahler’s Eighth is nicknamed the Symphony of a Thousand, which is a bit of an exaggeration, but Mark Swed in the LA Times later reported that there were 346 performers on stage.

First there’s a huge orchestra including an organ and a whole bunch of specialty instruments.  Then there are two full choruses.  Plus there’s a children’s chorus.  Plus there are eight solo singers.  Plus, there’s an offstage brass ensemble.

Oh, and there’s a conductor.

Oh, and none of that would mean anything except that there’s also an audience.

Not to mention the composer, Gustav Mahler.  Not to mention the folks who led rehearsals but didn’t appear on stage, and the folks who took the tickets and showed us our seats and sold drinks at the bar and printed up the programs.  And the parents who drove their kids to the children’s choir rehearsals.  Not to mention the parents of the LA Phil musicians, who long ago drove their children to violin lessons, and trumpet lessons, and paid for the lessons, and bought the violins and trumpets, and paid for music school.

Music brings people together.

Literally, music brings people together in that making most kinds of music requires more than one person.  Maybe not 346, as required by Mahler’s Eighth, but more than one.  One to play the drum, one to strum the mandolin, one to sing, one to squeeze the accordion or blow the clarinet, one to clap hands or click the castanets, maybe one more to dance, or two to dance, and then at least one person, or maybe a circle of people, or maybe a concert-hall filled with people, standing around or sitting, and leaning in, to listen.

Music brings people together.  Making music.  Listening to music brings people together, too.

The first section of Mahler’s Eighth is in Latin.  I only understood a little.  “Veni Creator Spiritu” is the text.  “Come creator spirit.”  The second section is a setting of the last scene of Goethe’s Faust.  It’s 19th century romantic poetry.  It’s in German.  I didn’t understand a word.

But I understood the music.  I understood the passion.  I understood the joy.  I understood the longing.  I understood the beauty.

I’ve heard opera in Italian, and French, and sometimes English, and German, Russian, Hungarian, Spanish and Sanskrit.  And I’ve heard Phillip Glass operas where the text is nothing but solfege syllables and counting.  And I’ve understood it all.  I’ve understood the love and the heartbreak.  I’ve understood the betrayal, the pain, the glory, the courage, the sacrifice.  Without understanding the words I’ve understood the mystery, the wonder, the music.

And I’ve understood the love and pain and mystery and wonder of music even when there are no words, in any language, because music is itself a language.  A language we all speak.  A language we all know.  Everybody’s second language.  Or maybe everybody’s first.  The language of the human spirit singing itself in every land, by every tongue.

Music makes connections in ways that words, or words alone, cannot.  It’s why we have a Music Sunday in worship every year, and music in worship every Sunday.  It’s why we sing together, in church, at ballparks, at birthday parties, at solemn ceremonies and silly celebrations, to raise our courage when we’re fearful, to proclaim our joy when we are victorious.

We make music, because music makes connections.  And we, who love connections must love music.  And we, who know the saving power of connections, know also, then, the saving power of music.

[singing]

From all that dwell below the skies

let songs of hope and faith arise;

let peace, good will on earth be sung

through every land, by every tongue.

De todos bajo el gran sol

Surja esperanza, fe, amor

Verdad, y belleza cantando,

De cada tierra, cada voz.