Form, Not Content
In the interminable evangelical debate over worship music, contemporary music often takes a beating for its insubstantial lyrics. Their faults are well-known: the words are highly repetitive. They are prosaic. They lack theological substance. When they do try to effect some substance, they traffic in abstract concepts, lacking any palpable metaphor by which we might sink our teeth into airy notions like salvation or lordship or transcendence. Too often they contain no content at all but incessant restatements either of the command that we now worship God, or the vehement indicative that we will (presumably very soon) worship him, and do it with an alacrity that we hope he will find very impressive. They are in this sense meta-worship songs, not worship music proper. They talk about worshipping without ever actually doing it.
This, of course, is shooting ducks in a pond. Beating on the lackluster lyrics of contemporary worship music is not sporting, not fun, and not worth much of our time.
And even if some bold poet came along and started writing poetically and theologically substantive lyrics to be sung as contemporary worship songs, I would still not necessarily be on board with the program. It would be an improvement, to be sure, and a crucial one: the content of the text is far and away the most semantically flexible and unambiguous component of a song, and for a creedal people, a song’s propositional message will naturally dominate, bringing text along with it. However, in all our obsession over content, form gets lost in the shuffle. I want to give it equal time.
A cultural form is a kind or type of cultural artifact, a general class of things produced by human beings as they go about the business of their religious, social, political, commercial, educational, aesthetic, family lives. Forms can be distinguished from one another by appealing to some kind of internal structure or set of characteristics of the form. A form describes a certain cultural practice, work product, or manner of cultural interaction. It need not describe a physical object like a painting or a piece of angle iron, but it may involve something more abstract, like a song or a handshake. A form is not a specific instance of cultural output (like a particular handshake between two actual people at a certain time), but a category into which many individual artifacts can be placed (like a social greeting ritual).
For example, nearly all people speak, but not all speech is of the same kind. Sermons are in some sense all alike, and lectures to disobedient children all sound something like one another, but sermons are not the same as dressings-down of busted kids (notwithstanding the amusement pastors may find at the comparison). Likewise, gossip whispered to friends tends to follow patterns that differ from those of political stump speeches. Each of these four instances of speech takes a particular form.
Or consider an artifact of high culture, like poetry. Poems come in many different forms, each characterized by attributes like meter and rhyme scheme. Some poetic forms, like the Petrarchan Sonnet, are highly structured and exacting in their requirements. Others, like free verse, are very open and seemingly opposed to structure—but still are characterized by the decisions they impose on the attributes of a poem. Even if a poet wishes to reject all known forms and invent an entirely new one, it will be conspicuous by its departure from known kinds of poetry. In the end, no matter how hard a poet tries to avoid it, each individual poem has no choice but to belong to some form.
Poetic or otherwise, forms exist, and their existence confers on human culture the charism of rationality. This gifting is caused by the fact that forms both carry and shape the semantic content (or “meaning”) of the artifacts belonging to them. More importantly, it often has the effect of rendering forms unable to be interchanged.
Since this is difficult material, let us consider some more examples. Of all possible musical forms (minuet, girl-pop song, cakewalk, rock ballad, etc.), dirges are never played at weddings. Of all possible forms of composition (sonnet, sermon, editorial, shaggy dog story, etc.), limerick is never used to deliver a eulogy. Do weddings eschew dirges merely because no one has died? Couldn’t some enterprising Goth couple write their own lyrics of love and optimism to be played to the music that has all the characteristics of “dirge,” thereby avoiding the impositions of the form? Do eulogies avoid limericks because the rhyme scheme is overly burdensome? 
If a clever family member used that meter and rhyme scheme to pay textually somber respects to the departed, remembering all that was noble and good about the one who has passed, wouldn’t the family have put off the cold shackles of form which I claim to be so indefeasible?
No, no, no. And no.
What these enterprising artists have done is to create irrational cultural artifacts; they have not transcended the dictates of the forms they have adopted. The rhythm, melody, and chord progression of the dirge (and any other attributes experts might care to point out—I am no musician) make it sound sad. The semantic content “sadness” is embedded in the music itself, and the text accompanied by the music will be interpreted by its hearers in a context of sorrow. Likewise, the musical lilt of the limerick lends itself to flippancy. Lightheartedness is communicated by the poem’s meter, totally apart from the words themselves—words which will inevitably be shaded by the form’s natural sense of trivial mirth.
Grafting joy onto sadness and solemnity onto banality might possibly have some use as an ironic device, but this would only succeed inasmuch as the form survives the union intact. (And seldom is irony our goal when celebrating a marriage or paying final respects to a loved one.) Any attempt to push aside the form’s semantic content in favor of the raw, unfiltered meaning of the text cannot succeed. Dirges are still sad, and limericks are still silly little poems.
It is at this point that my globally-minded interlocutor (who is otherwise feeling the heat) usually objects that these are only cultural associations which I am habituated to make; they are not universal attributes derived from some Platonic Dirge or Limerick floating abstractly in heaven. I only think dirges sound sad because I am used to that kind of music being played when someone has died, accompanied by words of mourning. I only think limericks address vulgar trivialities because the overwhelming majority of limericks are about the man from Madras, or one of his close cousins. The Noble Savage in Africa, untouched by Western Civilization, doesn’t know any of this, so he is free to pick and choose. And since he is unbound by our forms, surely we savvy postmoderns are also free to recast received forms to our heart’s content, happily playing with the shattered pieces of our civilization in order to make something more functional or more amusing than our Modernist parents’ constricting limits would have allowed.
I consider it to be an interesting question whether, say, a piece of music can have a universal effect on human beings, or whether we are born as cultural blank slates, ready to be programmed with knowledge of what to think and how to feel when we hear certain sounds. It might be that the Innocent Native thinks of an angry Sky God when he hears Night On Bald Mountain, rather than just wondering what these strange sounds are coming from the white man’s magic box. It should be clear that I suspect that the former is the case, but I don’t know for sure. And it doesn’t matter. Whether the semantic content of forms is universal or contextual or somewhere in between, the fact remains that we receive our forms within our cultural context. Even if you insist that their content is arbitrary and constructed, we are still faced with the problem of that content. It isn’t going away.
If you haven’t guessed already what this has to do with worship music, I’d better tell you before you quit reading.
All of this talk about form directly addresses the common refrain that God can be honored with an electric guitar and a fuzz box (or something else contemporary) just as well as with Bach and a pipe organ (or something else traditional). Now, I have said nothing to disprove this statement by itself, but I hope to have done serious damage to the statement that usually follows: that God can be honored with any kind of music at all, because musical style doesn’t matter. Of course musical style matters! This is not some indifferent choice made for bare, pragmatic reasons. The choice of musical form carries enormous semantic weight and profoundly shapes the meaning of worship music’s supporting texts. Any proposed form (Bluegrass, Grunge, camp meeting hymnody, etc.) must answer for the claims it makes on what kind of subject matter it addresses; how its singers should relate to that subject matter, to each other, and to the rest of the world; and what kind of occasion it is supposed to accompany.
If adult contemporary pop is to be our music form of choice when we sing to God, then we must be able to show that it excels on all these fronts. We cannot choose it because we like it, or because we believe it will increase attendance in our churches. Instead, we must show that it expects its subject matter is nothing less than the supreme object of value in the universe. It must be addressable to a Deity who is both intimately personal and terrifyingly other. It must be able to encompass the joyful celebration of God’s deliverance of his people as well as their careful reverence and awe before the one who is a consuming fire. It must move us from the vulgar routines our lives into a place where we do not dictate the terms of our own comfort, but instead are brought graciously to kneel before a Throne which will not much longer await the prostration of every human soul.
As much as any music can, it must be music whose character matches God’s character. Can contemporary music do this well? It takes a very well-educated person to answer this question, one who is trained in music, theology, literature, and broad intellectual history. Clearly, I am not he.
But I think you know what I suspect the answer to be.
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- Posted by Tim on Monday, August 22, 2005 at 8:21:06 am PDT
- Category: Theology
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4 Responses to “Form, Not Content”
Sure musical style matters. I assume when you ask “can contemporary music do this well?” you are referring to what you call “adult contemporary pop.” This seems to me to be a given, if you are referring to what gets churned out to the masses and charted on Billboard. What - if anything - does “adult contemporary pop” do well (other than make money for artists and record companies)? Musically, calling it insipid is being generous…But, speaking as a musician who happens to be quite passionate about guitars and fuzz boxes, it is unfair to take pop trash (and the associated production, marketing etc. work that goes into creating it) and tar everyone with the same brush. Thinking guitars, it’s a big jump from Enrique to Sting, or from Outkast to Eric Johnson. Clearly, music must take into account both subject (us and our ability to express our worship in music) and object (God)As an aside, I think the issue also needs to take into account issues such as quality of musicianship as well as form and content. Just some thoughts…
Comment Permalink | Posted on August 22nd, 2005 at 3:29 pm |Paul:
First some areas of agreement:
Now a bit of clarification:
Note that I am not really targeting one single genre of music (adult contemporary pop) as wrong, and leaving the door open for all others. I’m saying ACP is right out, along with likely many others, and attempting to provide a start at some canons by which genres might be contrasted. The question is whether form X is a good choice for use in worship music, not whether any particular kind of instrumentation gets the thumbs up or not.
Now for the disagreement part:
Personally, I’m not partial to fuzz boxes as instruments to support congregational singing. Making a good argument against them would require a better musicologist than I—like I said, I certainly don’t have the chops to finish any point of this argument when it is reduced to specifics—but I suspect that argument is out there and can be made successfully. This, of course, is not to say that fuzz boxes create a wicked sound, or even they can’t be used to communicate important divine themes. It is only to say that they are probably a bad match for the narrow requirements I have proposed for ecclesiastical music.
As much as they, and you, truly do rock.
Comment Permalink | Posted on August 22nd, 2005 at 4:51 pm |Thanks for the clarification. I have a few more thoughts to add…
You said:
“we must show that it expects its subject matter is nothing less than the supreme object of value in the universe. It must be addressable to a Deity who is both intimately personal and terrifyingly other. It must be able to encompass the joyful celebration of God’s deliverance of his people as well as their careful reverence and awe before the one who is a consuming fire. It must move us from the vulgar routines our lives into a place where we do not dictate the terms of our own comfort, but instead are brought graciously to kneel before a Throne which will not much longer await the prostration of every human soul.”
Your criteria for all worship music are as follows (my paraphrase):
1. expects its subject matter to be the supreme object of value in the universe
2. addressable to a Deity who is both
- intimately personal
- terrifyingly other
3. encompass both:
- joyful celebration of God’s deliverance of his people
- our careful reverence and awe before the one who is a consuming fire
5. Refocus our attention from the common/everyday routines of our lives into a profound awareness of God and his Kingdom
These seem spot-on to me. And I think most forms of music, executed well, could bear the weight of your requirements. Yet no form will adequately “do it all.”
Perhaps it would be helpful to discuss a couple of psalms that could perhaps weigh in here as patterns/models of worship to follow…
Psalm 33 (NIV, from http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?book_id=23&chapter=33&verse=1&end_verse=3&version=31&context=context) states:
1 Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the LORD with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.
Psalm 150 (NIV, from http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?search=Psalm%20150;&version=31;) says:
1 Praise the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
2 Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
4 praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,
5 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD.
Now, hermeneutically, do we attempt (assuming we even could) to go back to 8th century BC forms of Jewish worship (and only use instruments listed in Scripture!) as the only appropriately reverent expression of worship, or do we acknowledge that worship is always enculturated, contextual, and limited by human efforts? It seems to me that the first option is not really an option for most churches today. I have listened to best-attempts at recreating first-century Jewish music, and it certainly is an acquired taste!
Therefore, we must seek to bridge the gap between the ancient text and the modern world. And ask ourselves how well we can measure up to the thoughts expressed in these psalms (not to neglect the rest of the canon, but we have to start somewhere). What should biblically-informed worship music look like in 21st century USA? What guiding principles hold, and how do we apply these to our contemporary settings? (realizing that no two settings are the same).
Using these psalms as a starting point for discussing what appropriate worship music might look like, some applications that could be derived from these psalms concerning the nature of biblical worship music may consist of one or more of the following:
1. Worship music is an activity of God’s people, to be joyfully engaged in.
2. Use whatever instruments (trumpet, harp, lyre, strings, flute etc) may be available to musicians to express their worship to God for who he is and what he has done for his people. This is perhaps a debatable point, but the psalmist seems to me to simply be listing his contemporary instruments commonly used for (all types of) music, rather than *prescribing* a list of acceptable instruments). The list seems descriptive, *not* prescriptive.
3. Originality is a good thing, and should be encouraged (”sing to him a new song”).
4. Worship is for the whole community of God’s people, all who are able (”you righteous…”, “let *everything* that has breath”).
5. Skill in musicianship is a good thing (”play skillfully”), so excellence should be pursued.
6. Worship music is concerned with intentionally reflecting on the person of God (his power, greatness, convenant faithfulness, kingdom/sovereignty, purposes) and salvific acts in history in behalf of his people.
Just as an aside on instrumentation:
Having worshipped with a tribal group in Papua New Guinea who were using Kundu drums alone (hollowed out tree logs with monitor-lizard skin stretched over the stop, banged in synchronized rhythm by the men, with call-response songs between men and women), I have seen perhaps what could be thought of as one extreme of contextualized worship music. And it was good. Minimalist, but good (they were doing *their best*)
My thought is that excellence in music is a Christian virtue, and should be hotly pursued by any Christian musician as part of their life-calling (as a means to an end, never an idolatrous end in itself). God clearly deserves our best, and we should always seek to give nothing less.
That is my main issue with much of what is touted as worship music in the church. Yes, form *does* matter, as you say. But it is *not* form that is the main problem. The ultimate issue with most Christian worship music is that it is *crap*. By that I mean it is theologically ill-informed (the lyrics are vacuous and insipid), musically derivative (as well as unoriginal and repetative), inappropriate (out of context with the rest of what is occuring in the worship service), and - worst of all - idolatrous (the focus is on all the wrong things - the musos, my emotions, what is happening in *me*, what God has done for *me*, the worship leader, the pretty pictures on the slides etc etc). I could go one, but I think I am starting to get too worked up.
Finally, with regards to the use of overdriven guitar and what even secular maestros are capable of, listen to “For the love of God” by Steve Vai. “Always with you, always with me” or “Cryin” by Joe Satriani. Or the last three songs on the “Three Sides to Every Story” album by Extreme.
If we want to speak of Christian guitarists, how about “Shouts of Joy” by Phil Keaggy on the “Crimson and Blue” album? Or just about anything by Tommy Emmanuel (one of Australia’s greatest exports)? Or especially the incredible body of high-quality work by Michael Card (the Ancient Faith series, or any of his NT-concept albums come to mind)? [Dann Huff, one of Card’s most regular session muso, has been one of the standout, although little known, American rock guitarists]. Just my opinion, but Card has done more than any other Christian musician to express Scripture in song as worship to God.
Comment Permalink | Posted on August 23rd, 2005 at 1:37 pm |Paul:
We are in substantial, but not complete, agreement.
First let me point out that this form thing is not the only gong I have to bang. In a post of a few weeks ago, I outlined a few common worship music arguments I wanted to address. If I finish this series of posts, it will constitute my cumulative case argument against contemporary Christian worship and in favor of…something else. This particular post is only addressing form, which I consider to be a key issue in the debate (maybe more key than you do), but not the only issue.
I’m not sure I agree that “most forms of music” can get the job done. I don’t know whether the fraction of winning forms breaks 50% or not, but I think I can say many forms don’t make the cut. Polka, speed metal, and adult contemporary pop are out. Hip-hop would be problematic (as much as I personally like it). Jazz might work. Various forms of classical music seemed to do a good job for a while. The point is, I tend to think we are looking for something fairly specialized and fairly different from what we use elsewhere in our lives. The extent to which people’s lives are entertainment- and media-saturated in our context underscores the importance of this “different-ness.” This is all I can say about this for now.
Let me agree that the goal is not to make our worship music sound like exactly like David’s Psalms as played and sung by him. (That would be the hyper-RPW camp, there. Those two guys are the last two faithful heirs of the Reformation!) Indeed, I acknowledge the critical importance that worship music be both new and contextual. I have no desire for the American church to camp forever on old hymns, nor to impose the English-language hymnody (or American rock ‘n’ roll, for that matter) on believers like the ones you describe in PNG. I have little doubt that their folk cultural forms are pressed into effective service in the worship of God. Inasmuch as such forms were available as a shared vocabulary for Americans (they are mostly not), I would be ready to consider them.
A key consideration might be whether the Psalms you mentioned are telling us to use “whatever instruments may be available” or are instead giving us an incidental list of some instruments which happened to work well in one context. If the latter suggestion is credible, then my program of criticizing form (and its constituent, instrumentation) can survive. In this case, God is not telling us positively to maximize the diversity of worship instrumentation, but is instead telling us that we have the freedom to consider many options in our pursuit of the most suitable manner of making music to him. I believe this to be the case.
I would also affirm your point on excellence. Many of my concerns could be reformulated in terms of that category, but I have not chosen to take that approach. Nevertheless, playing, writing, and singing skillfully are all very important.
Another helpful post might be one that outlines the differences between worship music used when the saints are gathered and music which might be received doxologically when being played on one’s CD player in one’s late-model Tacoma. In my truck, fuzz boxes are welcome and are received as God’s gift to the godly and the ungodly alike. Given the significantly narrower purposes of our sanctuaries, they are not as good a fit on Sunday morning.
Comment Permalink | Posted on August 27th, 2005 at 1:44 pm |