In a melody,
‘past and future are given with and in the present and are experienced with and in the present; hearing a melody is hearing, having heard, and being about to hear, all at once.’[1]
The perhaps surprising truth of this statement doesn’t require too much reflection upon it: just think about hearing ‘Happy Birthday’ sung, and the way you not only hear that second phrase in the present, but in the same moment you have a fresh memory of the first phrase which it ‘answers’, and you innately sense that a third phrase is about to sound - you know that though that second phrase finishes on the tonic, it is not the end. And of course, if you know the tune already (and who doesn't?), then you almost certainly anticipate that swooping octave leap that’s going to define the next phrase. You hear, you have heard and you are about to hear, all at once.
What’s more, think of the way in which you can sit through certain pieces of music and not know how long you’ve spent – it might have been ten minutes, it might have been an hour. Though the music itself will have lasted a set amount of ‘clock time’, the sense of time that it itself elicited may be wildly different, perhaps because of certain melodic or rhythmic features, or some other musical device. As author Jeremy Begbie puts it:
‘There is a distinction between the time which a piece takes and the time which a piece presents or evokes.’[2]
All of this exemplifies music’s unique relation to the concept of time, and it is this which is the subject of Begbie’s fascinating book Theology, Music and Time (hereafter TMT).
Outline
The book unfolds (as one might hope from a book dealing with time) in a nicely sequential manner. In part 1, Begbie introduces some of his underlying beliefs and concerns surrounding music and the study of music that form the basis for the book. In parts 2 (‘In God’s good time’) and 3 (‘Time to improvise’), he focuses more specifically on the phenomenon of time, and of music’s temporality, before addressing a number of areas connected with time where music and theology may fruitfully interact, with particular attention given to improvisation - indeed, improvisation gets a whole ‘part’ to itself, such are the depths to which Begbie believes it may be mined. A short conclusion summarises his methodology, various findings, and a fuller reiteration of his aims in light of potential detractors.
Summary
The following is a brief summary of Begbie’s discussion:
- Begbie’s opening chapter finds him outlining a chief underlying proposition (which, as one would expect, reflects a strong Christian doctrine of creation) which is that music is a distinctively human practice, thereby involving much interconnectedness with culture, the physical world itself, our bodies, and indeed our emotional life. However, it is peculiar among human activities in certain ways, not least in its aurality (rather than visuality) and therefore yields a different and distinctive experience of both space and, most pertinently, time. A small selection of Begbie’s reflections on music’s temporality I have already mentioned above, but he supplements this discussion by setting these observations in the context of various philosophical understandings of time.
- Begbie moves on to discuss a distinctively Christian account of time, with significant reference to Augustine, and particularly how this speaks to some of the issues with time that have existed (e.g. the historical link made between time and fallenness) and that still do (e.g. the industrial Western world’s sense of disorientation with time because of the huge acceleration in the ‘pace of life’).
- Having laid this groundwork, Begbie proceeds to lay out how certain facets of music can speak into this conversation, particularly focussing on ‘change and order’, ‘taking time’, ‘different time-structures’ and ‘limited duration’. His conclusion is that:
'Temporality is a gift, and … is neither neutral nor inherently threatening. Consequently our interaction with temporality need not be characterised by struggle, competition, intrusion or invasion; nor need it be marked by retreat, evasion or escape. Music in this context … can provide a concrete means of establishing and experiencing a more contented ‘living peaceably’ with time than our contemporary existence seems able to offer.[3]
Or, as former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams puts it:
What we learn, in music…, is what it is to work with the [temporal] grain of things, to work in the stream of God’s wisdom.[4] - Begbie then begins to probe deeper into various aspects of time that Christians encounter in the life of faith, exploring how some temporal feature of music may be of help in elucidating matters. Such aspects include: 'delay and patience', 'God’s eternity' in contrast to our creaturely temporality, 'repetition', 'freedom' and 'improvisation'. To have some idea of Begbie’s thought in these areas, I’ve included an appendix at the bottom of this review which expands briefly on each of these ideas such that you have a better idea of the kind of links he makes.
Appraisal
I remember a contemporary of mine once commenting that ‘the problem with Begbie is that he doesn’t really get beyond analogy.’ Having pondered this statement for some time now, I have come to realise that broadly I agree – he doesn’t – but where I disagree is that this is necessarily problematic. Indeed, perhaps this person’s statement reductionistically underplays the power of analogy. After all, the Lord Jesus Himself loved to use parables, which are essentially extended analogies, and He didn’t always feel the need to explain them.
Similarly, Begbie, in this book, makes use of the power of analogy, seeing music as containing powerful analogical tools in the task of theology. As he puts it:
Music offers enrichment through enactment. In short, music performs possibilities for theology.[5]
The question is: how enriching is it? Or, how ‘successful’ are these ‘possibilities’ which music performs here? Well, I think the answer is mixed. I found Begbie to be at his most convincing when he was doing actual musical analysis, e.g. in his chapter on ‘resolution and salvation’ which primarily concerned issues of delay and patience, promise and fulfilment. In this chapter I again and again found myself saying ‘yes!’ when, for example, some metrical or structural aspect of music yielded a clearer analogy for delayed fulfilment of prophecy than any ‘visual’ analogy could have done. This was ‘music for theology’ (to use a phrase of Begbie’s) at its best.
Begbie’s material on improvisation was also enriching (see this article for more on improvisation), although at times seemed to be stretched a little far, and I was not wholly convinced by his treatment of election in Romans 9-11. Moreover, certain issues covered were less relevant than others to the everyday life of faith (e.g. repetitiveness of communion, God’s eternity – this latter in particular seeming to be more ‘theology of music’ than ‘music for theology’) and were interesting more for the musical analysis than anything else.
Nevertheless, TMT provided a very rich reading experience (albeit one that demanded diligence and patience) that, like Begbie’s first tome, Voicing Creation’s Praise, engaged with a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, theology, musical analysis, composition and aesthetics.
Recommendation
As an academic book, TMT is dense, and can sometimes require ‘ploughing through’. However, as in his previous book, Begbie generally provides some very useful ‘summary’ sections at the end of most chapters that are helpful if you’re getting stuck, and there are also moments of respite where he provides musical excerpts as examples.
However, at the nub of it: if you are a Christian music student (or theology student, for that matter) interested in what it looks like to subject your musical academic study to the Lordship of Christ, then TMT is a good example of what that looks like at the highest level. It demonstrates how one might take a topic pertinent to music (in this case, time), and, understanding music as both a human activity and as a created gift from God, either examine it through a Christian lens (‘theology of music’) or use it as a lens through which to examine some facet of Christianity (‘music for theology’). To that end, it is highly recommended.
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Appendix
Below is a brief summary of how Begbie treats each of the various time-related themes which he explores in the second and third parts of TMT:
- Delay and patience
- There are promises and prophecies in Scripture which are fulfilled, yet the ways in which they are (and indeed the times at which they are) may be multi-layered rather than plainly straightforward. We live in the age of the Now-and-Not-Yet when Christ’s Kingdom has come, yet not fully. We await His Second Coming and the End of the Age when all will be put right, and in the meantime we must learn how to live and wait for these certainties whose fulfilment is assured but unknown in terms of its timing. And in the everyday, patience is a fruit of the Spirit to be learned.
- Begbie takes various facets of music, not least tension and resolution, but also what he calls ‘metrical waves’ and shows how these may be useful analogies for our own waiting.
- God’s eternity in relation to created time
- Though more of a discussion in academic theology than everyday church life, the way in which God’s own relation to time compares and relates to our own creaturely relation to time has practical significance in terms of what the Christian hope is – if our hope is to be with the Eternal One in an Eternal New Creation, we must come to some sort of reckoning with time, and with God’s time, and its implications.
- Begbie traces the origins of and critiques the minimalistic music of John Tavener, suggesting that there is too little of the pain of the Cross (and therefore of redemption) in its self-consciously Russian Orthodox aesthetic. He compares it with others, notably James MacMillan, proposing that the latter has a more Trinitarian and Christ-centred doctrine of God that, unlike Tavener, doesn’t seek to subsume the person and work of the Son into some ‘higher’ monadic eternal being.
- Repetition
- Asking how so much music can succeed in continuing to be interesting even when marked by so much repetition, Begbie eventually answers, following much interesting analysis, by saying that ‘each repeated component of music will have a different dynamic quality because each occurs in relation to a different configuration of metrical tensions and resolutions.’[6]
- He proceeds to use this as a useful analogy for how Communion (or, as he refers to it, ‘the Eucharist’) ought to be conducted in the life of a church such that its repetitiveness need not cause the worshippers to devalue or misunderstand it.
- Freedom and improvisation
- Surveying first the similarities and differences between Pierre Boulez and John Cage, ‘Boulez the arch-priest of strict musical organisation, Cage of chance, where everything and anything seems to be able to count as music’,[7] Begbie explores the way in which true freedom isn’t about the absence of constraints (closer to Cage, whereas Boulez sought constraints in totality), but rather the engagement with and negotiation of constraints. Improvisation is then taken as ‘a powerful enactment of the truth that our freedom is enabled to flourish only by engaging with and negotiating constraints’[8] and various categories of constraint are outlined and explored.
- Begbie proceeds to show how the dynamics of constraint inherent in jazz improvisation may be analogous to how we might most fruitfully engage with Church Tradition, as well as how our creativity relates to God’s.
- In the final full chapter, Begbie extends the discussion of improvisation to include the phenomenon of ‘gift-exchange’ whereby an improvisor improvises upon something ‘gifted’ to them by one with whom they’re playing. Begbie explores how this may be an analogy of the life of faith, lived in gratitude to the God who has given to us so abundantly in the life and death of His Son, and then finishes with two interesting discussions of how improvisation may be useful in understanding the sometimes-tricky issues of election in Romans 9-11 and of church unity in Romans 14-15.
[1] Zuckerkandl (1956), 175; quoted by Begbie, Jeremy, Theology, Music and Time, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 62
[2] Begbie (2000), 34
[3] Begbie (2000), 97
[4] Williams (1994), 250; quoted by Begbie (2000), 97
[5] Begbie (2000), 272
[6] Begbie (2000), 161
[7] Begbie (2000), 186
[8] Begbie (2000), 199
