March 03, 2015
No Repetition Needed
During a recent church visit I was unfamiliar
with the praise song selections. Surprisingly all the songs lacked the usual repetition
we’ve come to expect with praise music. The pastor joked with the audience, “You
don’t have to sing a song 50 times if you mean it the first time!"
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Gail;
-----Many of the Psalms are written for music. Few are repetitious at all, Psalm 136 being a distinct exception. So I keep trying to figure what all the repetition in praise music is about. Psalm 136 uses it to drive home a point: His steadfast love endures forever. But then, it’s not just repeated over and over and over in unbroken series. It is a line repeated after every advancing idea of this Psalm’s theme. I suppose the praise music might be trying to do the same - drive home a point - but often the idea carried in the few words of the highly repeated line are so elementary as to evade any point at all. They seem to have more emotional impact than intellectual content. But their problem as being emotion arousers is that emotion dulls with repetition unless there has been formed a very personal, persevering, and passionate link between the repeated idea and the immediate circumstances. In volatile situations, anger causes a lot of repetition, for instance. Deep sorrow also causes repetition. But these are situations causing emotions turning to repetition for expression, not repetitive music causing deep emotions to make a situation. So the really great hits do not arouse passion based on repetition. Their emotional arousal follows an idea as it is carried through its logical courses to an ultimate conclusion, driven there with stirring music. The emotions of “It is Well with My Soul” or “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” seem to dance around constructing ideas. And well they should, for the greatest hymns are moving expressions inspired by tempestuous events in the lives of contemplative people.
-----At the end of any attempted analysis of why so much repetition rides the bare back of the monotinous, rather whiney, moany tunes of praise songs, my mind keeps returning to the impression of some thirty-something kid sitting on the edge of his bed plucking at a guitar while straining for whatever good sounding word he might next chant through that special, mystical quality of his nose. The word might serve him well, but it leaves the rest of us scratching our heads over all the fuss he makes of it. I don’t want to go here, but every attempt at figuring this stuff out just brings me right back to the real possibility of highly emotional, mentally languorous authors. I like my mind aroused for my emotions to follow. Praise music just doesn’t do that for me.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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