Sounding the Depths

We have just completed the fourth of the six arts evenings of our Lent series “Visions in the Wilderness.” Sounding the Depths was the title we gave to the classical concert given by my wife’s new String Quartet, NSQ. They played selections from Haydn’s ‘Seven Last Words’ in the first half and The Ravel String Quartet after the interval. We chose to present the concert in the new Church Hall with the seating arranged in the round. This meant the musicians were very close to their surrounding audience, creating a curious mixture of informality, since they faced in towards each other as in a rehearsal, and a heightened intensity, as we were virtually breathing down their necks. Before the concert began, I explained to the audience that we had chosen to call our Lent Arts Events “Visions in the Wilderness” in order to put a positive spin on what is often regarded as a season of miserable self-denial. I stressed that the wilderness is, both literally and symbolically, a place where we can come to see ourselves and the world with fresh eyes. A wilderness, or desert, is a place stripped bare of all the superfluous, distracting features of everyday life. A place where we are forced to focus on what we may have been subconsciously avoiding for a long time. The great figures in the Bible, Moses, David, and of course Jesus, all experienced visions in the wilderness and came to know the desert as a place of discovery and transformation. There aren’t any deserts in West Sussex, though I have found the South Downs to be a pretty good substitute. However, coming to a concert such as ‘Sounding the Depths’ can have the same profound effect. For over an hour the audience sat without uttering a word. There was nothing to look at other than the strange sawing and swaying of the four musicians, dressed in black, under the glare of the spotlights. The rapt expression on the faces of the rest of the audience across the stage, focussed you back into the centre. Our world, so often cluttered with streams of jumbled words and flickering images had been mercifully reduced to pure sound. Many in the audience closed their eyes for long spells, basking in this welcome release from the daily contortions of the mind. This was especially felt during the wondrous Ravel Quartet, with its free flowing, dream-like phrases and form. It’s extraordinary how much sound just four musicians can make. As the Quartet unfolded, movement by movement, there was a sense of something sublime stirring within each player, as they became part of their instrument, quivering and resonating with a force which held them and us under a deep spell for nearly half an hour. What a profound and mysterious gift is music, when channelled through a brilliant composer like Ravel and such talented performers as these, who have worked away at their instruments for well over a century between them. By the end of the performance seventy people had sounded the depths of their collective unconscious, by tuning in to air waves crackling with the sighs and groans of an inspired composer. We had been drawn together by the skill and sensitivity of four great artists, and discovered a powerful unity expressed in our thunderous applause at the end of the evening. Imagine if those seventy people had tried to find such unity through an hours discussion on some emotive topic. What jarring of minds, what cacophony of voices raised one against another, what jangling music we would make! Indeed, this is the discord we so often create, as we gabble away in the work-place, or our homes, or in the media, and yes, even in church, day by day, week by week. It is for good reason that music, at its best, has been experienced by all the great civilizations as a supreme gift of the Gods. The Church has been enriched across the ages by composers of the calibre of Bach, Haydn and more recently John Taverner. They have revealed a God whose eloquence is beyond words, whose presence is felt most tangibly through abstract sound, through music. Such music unites rather than divides a humanity made in the image of the divine. This is its genius. What a high calling indeed, is that of the musician.