Last week I devoted my DMs to two persons who died recently: Buddhist teacher Robert Thurman and musician Brendan Doyle. Regarding Thurman, the other two sections of our dialogue at the Sacred Stream Buddhist Center in Berkeley can be found here.
In speaking of Gustav Mahler, Doyle felt that the reason some people have trouble listening to him is because he touches some pain in them that is just too powerful.
I always say that listening to music can be an exercise in compassion. You are listening to another person’s pain as well as joy. That’s an active experience. It’s something alive. It’s timeless.
One winter he taught a course entitled “Three Mystics: Mozart, Schumann and Chopin” and students responded by demanding another and still another course from him. Some of them had been into classical music for years but profited from his all-new approach. I asked him why his teaching gets people so excited about listening to classical music.
He responded: It’s very hard to separate the composer from the music. So I recommend that the people learn something about the composer.
Fox: About their life?
Doyle: About their life and struggles. Read their letters. Read a biography. That’s one way of getting into the music. Music is a language. Musicians are talking to us…And also to feel the music. So many of us think that when you listen to music you’re supposed to sit still and close your eyes. I for one find myself conducting—
Fox: Being physically involved?
Doyle: Being physically involved….One thing I enjoy, and students really do enjoy is listening to different interpretations of the same work.
An example is the Introduction to Beethoven’s seventh symphony. You get entirely different images from one conductor to another. One conductor may make it sound like earth, one might make it sound like air, one might make it sound like fire and one might make it sound like water….All conductors reveal something new. They are co-creators.
He explained that Mozart’s fortieth symphony was written when he was very depressed because nobody wanted to hear his music. And the main theme is identical to the motif Cherubino’s aria in the Marriage of Figaro in which he sings of his capacity for love, “And if no one wants to hear it, I’ll sing it to the stars in the sky.” People say when they hear the Fortieth Symphony it’s a completely different experience once they make that connection.
When we make that connection with his life, we can identify with him…. Use your imagination…the Via Creativa. That’s extrovert meditation….Make connections. Become a co-creator. Find out about the composer. Take some initiative.
Fox: Be active.
Doyle: Yes, be active in your listening.
Doyle criticized current Liturgical music for lacking imagination and mystery. Liturgical music needs some of the mystery that we experience in Gregorian chant…So much new music…is missing mystery. The music is so obvious. There are no secrets to be revealed.
And it’s missing the prophetic side as well. There is so much positive thinking in a lot of liturgical music. No darkness. I don’t even know why there are crucifixes if we’re trying to avoid this aspect….
Fox: Liturgy as entertainment instead of Liturgy as Mystical?
Doyle: Right. If people’s lives are unmystical, then I guess they deserve unmystical liturgy. Yet the creation-centered opinion would be that everyone is potentially a mystic. So I guess the answer to how you can improve liturgy is to improve the spirituality of the people. They have to be awakened to the idea that they are all mystics or can all be mystics. And that they are all artists….
Fox: What did you experience as a musician and student in the ICCS program?
Doyle: How the artist is also saying the same thing as the mystics that we call mystics. Eckhart, Mahler, Julian, Hildegard and Wagner are all talking about the same thing which is the need for compassion—and not just towards people but towards all of nature, all of creation, the universe.
And that we are not basically evil which is, of course, a presumption of the fall/redemption tradition,…Julian and the end of Wagner’s Ring and Mahler’s Ninth. Hope.*
* Bear & Company: The Little Magazine, pp. 1-4, 21.
See also Brendan Doyle, Meditations with Julian of Norwich.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Pages from the manuscript of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, 1894. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
What do you learn about music and musicians and your own spiritual journey in listening to Brendan Doyle? And about your spiritual journey from listening to Robert Thurman?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life.
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.
Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, pp. 363-365.
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic…and Beyond.
Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.
Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint For Our Times.
Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time.
