I just returned from an evening out with my wife hearing the Formosa String Quartet. This was as high brow an experience I've had since I was in grade school and took a trip with my classmates to a special presentation of "Amahl and the Night Visitors" followed by a fancy beef stroganoff dinner at the Onesta in downtown Canton, Ohio. Both events are unforgettable, but I'm not sure what I experienced either time.
I needed this night. The musicians were exquisite. The accolades bloated their bios in the program to a full page each and none of them could have been out of their twenties. It's just that my exposure to high culture has been rather limited. Having people like me in the audience was akin to slipping caviar into a Spam can. It is a far cry from what people like me are accustomed to witnessing.
The evening consisted of 3 works - the first contemporary and the other two from the late nineteenth century. I am sure that Shih-Hui Chen is a talented and lovely woman, but her composition, less than 2 years old, didn't seem to hold up to the works of Bedrich Smetana and Antonin Dvorak. Granted, I am no musical critic to ANY degree, but the older works were so much more pleasing to my ears. Then again, I am the same guy who just can't understand the fascination with canvases that appear as they have been decorated by the colorful excrement of seagulls when around the corner are paintings of recognizable images so vibrant and breathing that they cause me to stop and stare with delight.
My cultural stretching exercise has allowed me to appreciate that there are many ways to convey the soul in music - some which will be liked by one and sound repugnant to the next. But it also opened my eyes to something else - that the oldies are classic because they have tapped into something organic in us.
People who consider themselves culturally relevant can converse and recognize the classic artists (in musical art, visual art, architecture, literature, etc.). They may be acquainted with the newer artists and their freeform expressions, but the tried and tested masters are the meat and potatoes of cultural high browism. The old-timers are not only cool; they are the standard upon which all others are judged. At the end of the day the music we want to hear is from Beethoven. The paintings we want to see are from Rembrandt. The sculptures we want to touch are from Michelangelo.
This gives me hope in a world that seems to want to throw Jesus under the bus. The Jesus of history and Scripture (they are one and the same if we are talking about actual history and the canon of Scripture - don't let the double-talkers fool you) is, when all is said and done, the One people want to hear, see, touch and know. He will draw a crowd and move hearts as no other.
This gives me hope that we don't have to dazzle people with the newest thing, because the Ancient of Days is enough. I mean, if Bach has been packing them in for 300 years, the Creator and Sustainer of all things can awe the crowds pretty well. The simple, beautiful, heart-breaking melodies, harmonies and rhythms of His presence is the greatest, and only genuine, hope for the world.
I probably will attend a limited number of concerts like I did tonight. I have a shelf full of classical music CDs that I play once in while when I need some background music for reading and/or study, but my staples will probably continue to be the Beatles, Elton John, James Taylor, Sara Groves, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Keaggy, Rich Mullins and the like. To some of you, these are the oldies.
And in my soul-walk I will always find joy in learning from C.S. Lewis, Max Lucado, Gordon MacDonald, Eugene Peterson, John Stott and Lauren Winner. But the classic Book and the classic God is the foundation which never gets tired, stale or irrelevant. It keeps my toe tapping right into the forever of tomorrow.
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