“Music…
will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Thankyou for the Music
Pick up your instrument: food for the soul and brain
If you are someone who hasn’t recently picked up your guita
r, saxophone, flute, recorder or piano (well you can’t really pick that one “up”) then might I point out something . . . you should!
Recently, while trying to enthuse my girls to pursue more consistent practice on their instruments, I was encouraged to read new research which supports what I always thought was true. While music is good for you, making music is even better!
According to a recent study* these are some of the benefits of playing a musical instrument regularly:
1. People over the age of 65 experienced positive changes in brain function after 4 or 5 months of playing an instrument an hour a week.
2. Playing the piano (particularly) teaches children to be more self-disciplined, attentive and better at planning.
3. Playing an instrument makes you more perceptive in interpreting the emotions of others. Musicians are able to pick out exactly what others are feeling just by the tone of their voices.
4. IQ can increase by seven points in both children and adults.
5. It becomes easier to learn foreign languages, as your memory and language skills improve.
“Hopefully the current trend in the use of musicians as a model for brain plasticity will continue . . . and extend to the field of neuropsychological rehabilitation“*.
Wow. If you played an instrument as a child then know that part of the reason you have intelligence, memory, language and empathy is down to that instrument, even if you hated it. Your parents certainly did something right!
And if you want to develop your brain in any of these areas, then it certainly is time to dust of your violin, blow the cobwebs from your trumpet, and get playing! Music is such an amazing and at times under-rated gift from our gracious God. He made us with desire to praise Him in song, to “Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with tambourine and dancing, praise him with the strings and flute, praise him with the clash of cymbals” (Psalm 150).
God wired our brains with the ability to learn to play, to sing, to write and read music, to create instruments, to create emotion through music, to lift the souls of ourselves and others, and grow our brain function by employing those “seven notes of grace”. Don’t miss out on the joy of this gracious gift!
(*The research is published online, Faculty of 1000 Biology Reports, by Lutz Jancke, a psychologist at the University of Zurich.)
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Film review: “As it is in Heaven”
If you have ever sung in a church choir or run a church choir, and if you have no aversion to foreign films, th
en like me you might really enjoy the film “As it is in Heaven” (2004). Set in Sweden the film tells the story of a brilliant violinist, conductor and composer, Daniel Daréus, who is forced to “retire” from his musical career due to ill health. He returns to Norrland, his childhood home town, but no one remembers him and just as well! He was ostracised and bullied there as a child. Though initially alone and viewed with strange curiosity by the townsfolk, he is soon asked to take on the leadership of the local church choir. Predictably he takes their small group from mediocrity to brilliance, yet the journey is enthralling and in no wasy predictable! There is such a mixture of personalities and personal issues which bubble along, creating both tension and many hilarious moments. His vocal training methods produce great results and there are eventually more people in the choir than there are in church congregation, much to Pastor Stig’s disgust! Daniel’s morality is soon brought into question: “There’s sin in the congregation hall” one wary and reluctant chorister reports! The film is full of funny moments for viewers who are privvy to the dynamics of church congregations.
But even more than the humour I love the way the film reveals the impact and significance of music in our lives. It has such power to unite people and create harmony, both vocally and in our relationships. In the final, surprising scene Daniel is immersed in the beautiful unwritten harmony coming of around 1000 voices. Perhaps this is as it should be, as it IS in heaven!
“Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13)
What amazing grace God has given us in those 7 little notes (A to G) which can be employed in infinite combinations for such diversity of results!
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The Music behind all music
This post comes courtesy of the DESIRING GOD blog. Here is how it opens:
“The creation surrounding us is the product of the triune God. That is incredible enough. But take one more profound step and we discover, as Pastor John explains in The Pleasures of God, that “creation is an expression of the overflow of that life and joy that the Father and the Son have in each other” (72).
To put this another way, we see a kaleidoscope of galaxies, animals, and music genres because the Father and Son enjoy a kaleidoscope of delight in each other, and it is a spilling-over delight. As the triune delight spills over in creation, it expands and radiates outward for us to share in. Out of this throbbing delight we have creation, a creation that speaks . . .
Read on here: The Music behind all music
piano keys
The seven notes
sevennotesofgrace 