Music communicates the spiritual realm
Much is communicated of the spiritual world through sound, for good or ill.
Every Christian should listen to Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, or think about listening to it, as much as they think about reading the Bible. And do it.
Beethoven's 3rd Symphony is a complete spiritual pageant, or journey, beyond the veil, where light is at war with darkness, and wins. It's a triumphant epic in sound with struggle along the way. It not only communicates this to your soul, it teaches your soul. Not with words, but with sound.
Not all works by the great composers like Beethoven fall into this category. For Mozart, for example, it's his last six symphonies, which are Olympian: 35th, 36th, 38th, 39th, 40th, 41st.
With Bach, his Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin are a good example. Many examples with Bach. The Prelude and Fugue in C# minor played by Richter, for instance.
Bruckner's symphonies 4, 7, 8, 9.
Renaissance era polyphony - masses and motets - is in this category as well. Palestrina, Victoria, Byrd, Josquin, Dufay...
I'm giving examples that are pure.
1 Comments:
I've been just listening to the greatest, most powerful performance of Beethoven's 9th; Furtwangler's Berlin Philharmonic war time performance. It's always struck me as sounding like a Titan's fist slamming down on the ocean. One comment under the YouTube video comically says of the recording:
"For some reason this scares the shit out of me."
https://youtu.be/06vGPnfWHxM
There are engineers in the comments pointing out the advanced recording technology the Germans had then which explains why these Furtwangler wartime recordings are so dynamic and different. Partly explains why. I've never found his Vienna Philharmonic wartime recording to be as powerful as the Berlin. Before the internet I collected all the Furtwangler recordings I could find. I wonder if the current YouTube audience knows how valuable it is to have them all for free? Furtwangler's Bruckner recordings are also awesome even with the older technology (or maybe because of it, like black and white film vs. digital video)...
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