Genre for a Lifetime: Christian Epistrophe in Music

From Young Composers

Brooks Popwell

Perhaps the greatest strength of music lies in its function as a spiritual outlet. Although many composers have thoroughly explored related thoughts and emotions from human experience (the common spiritual focus of Mahler's symphonies comes to mind), rarely have they found reason to unite in one work the extremes of what we know and feel based on a single internal crisis. Nonetheless, the spiritual life sometimes includes profound events that produce thorough change—turning-points that call for special portrayal in music. Biblical conversion provides a rich opportunity to convey a spiritual crisis through music.

According to the Bible, conversion effects a complete transformation of the believer's life. Scripture issues a grim forecast of failure for any search to find life and satisfaction without God. The unbeliever's quest will result in a life that tastes like "gravel" and an "end...of death" (Proverbs 14:12; 20:17). Intersecting this path of frustration and doom, God issues a tender invitation to "come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters" (Isaiah 55:1), tenderly "draw[ing]" men to Himself (John 6:44). An inner conflict ensues, though, because Christ also demands a radically changed allegiance from self to Christ: "Unless ye repent, ye shall all...perish." Then, when a man chooses repentance, a wonderful new life begins. Jesus described the new life as "wholesome" and "easy to be borne" (Matthew 11:30, Amplified Bible), a testimony Paul corroborates. The formerly self-sufficient rabbi relishes weakness and difficulties as thrilling opportunities, in order "that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Each stage of this bibilical journey will find a place in Epistrophe (Gk, "conversion"), a piece for solo cello with piano that I am currently composing. When the piece is complete, its three movements will depict the soul's journey upward journey from the despair of unbelief to the joy and peace found in faith. The completed first movement, with its cyclic structure and relatively static mood, will probably prove to have been easiest to compose. An elegy-of-sorts that I intend to convey the hopelessness of godless living, the movement opens with funereal piano solo introducing the two themes, fragments from the hymns "Fairest Lord Jesus" and "Hallelujah, What a Savior." Except for the piano solo, these fragments appear in inversion, a technique which may prove useful to portray the "reversal" later in the piece. Two central "seeking" sections develop the two themes with short melodies that quickly build and crash down unsatisfied. Framing these sections, a wandering version of the first theme depicts an underlying, encroaching despair, and the movement concludes with the funeral dirge of the piano ending in listless frustration.

The remaining two movements I have yet to compose present particular problems related to conveying the piece's story. Presumably, the third movement will present life after conversion, but in what light? A fast and exciting concluding movement would provide a satisfying finish if the work were not programmatic, but such an ending would be shallow or naive at best and deceptive at worst for conveying life with Christ. Separate sections for "struggle" and "success" come to mind, but Christian experience is not merely a tire-swing of separate up's and down's; rather, Christ demands constant vigilance in the war while giving constant hope of victory. Balancing and blending the two throughout will likely prove as simultaneously simple and difficult in music as in life.

The middle movement must somehow move the listener from sinner to saint, doubt to faith, rebellion to submission, with the high-point (I believe, of the entire piece) being the repenting-believing choice of the soul. I cannot decide how to best portray this progression. One possibility designates the cello as man and the piano as the Word, interacting on different melodic themes that represent truth about sin, judgment, and Christ. As with the third movement, however, a more seamless flow between moods or thoughts leading to the crisis may prove less disjointed and more comprehensible than melodies with arbitrary, Wagnerian functions. Predominantly harmonic and rhythmic interest could effectively point up the spiritual progression.

Though my efforts at composing have only begun, I believe my inexperience does not doom the work to failure. I certainly have no claim to a unique purpose, for Christians have always used music to adorn the gospel story. Nonetheless, though merely one of many foolish young lovers, I will surely find a stranger's ear still delighted by my peculiar perspective on the cherished and inexhaustible theme of God's romance. Admittedly, my observation that few skilled Christian musicians have sought to relate the salvation story so explicitly yet so concisely may reveal over-ambitiousness on my part. Still, my piece will at least serve as a kind of journaling to preserve an infantile understanding of my own experiences, the broad truths they illustrate, and the great art which can convey them.

While I hope to improve on Epistrophe with future journal-entries on salvation, I anticipate that the present piece will still provide unique benefit for believers. Were I Bach or Beethoven, my greatest efforts would still fall short of a final word on this greatest subject, and God would hold much truth that only others could convey. The richest understanding of the Word, as C.S. Lewis concluded, comes only through "the one really adequate instrument for learning about God: "not a solo voice of genius, but "the whole Christian community."