My mother was the truest musician in our family.  She is the only one who entered the conservatory intending to do a degree in music as a pianist.  Practicalities brought her to become a pharmacist, but throughout life, music was integral to her life, and to all of our lives.  We all played piano, sang in school choirs, competed in the Kiwanis Music Festival, trying to win for our Asian tiger mother.  She handed the same tradition to my children, and sometimes we placed, and sometimes we didn’t. 

Music was always striving for perfection in notes, rhythm, and expression, to please mom.  Sometime later, I discovered that I actually really enjoyed music, lived to play it, to get it just right.  I dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. 

Surprisingly this did not please my piano teacher Sister Mary Edward Hodge, a Mercy sister from the isolated community of Lamaline on our rugged south coast.  She said to me “Michael, you’re not good enough to be a concert pianist.  You’ll end up teaching in a school, like me, or you’ll be at home, having kids come to your house for lessons, who really don’t want to be there.  You become a doctor, and you can always play the piano, but you can’t do it the other way around.”  Most music teachers would be pleased as punch for a student to go to music school; my teacher was very wise, very generous, but more accurately, very unselfish in her advice.

And so the anesthesiologist still loves to play the piano, and has learned some important life lessons from it.  It takes a lot of practice to get something just right, and I tell medical students that just like they learned music pieces, or did drills at sports, it takes a lot of practice to get the physical examination of a patient right.  I learned after completing the Spiritual Exercises that the same thing applies to the soul.  The soul needs the exercise, and the nourishment that comes from daily prayer, daily conversation with God.  My soul and faith is strengthened by its daily exercise.

I also share with my students that for me, music is a path away from the stress of the day, for if you’re focused on getting the notes just right, you can’t be thinking of anything else. Everyone needs to find something like that.

Music is a ministry.  I learned this lesson from Vicnenza Etchegary, the band teacher at St. Bonaventure’s College.  She is able to extract from her students the same passion she has for getting the music just right. Because she inspires them to do so and expects them to do so, they get it right.  She expects nothing less than best efforts from her young musicians; the Magis resides here. Music for the greater glory of God.

But then music is so much more.  In listening to and watching St. Bonaventure’s bands and choirs, I discovered that music was a wonderful act of generosity to others.  The musicians shared themselves with their audiences, and the warmth and sincerity with which they performed augmented, and sometimes outshined the perfection of the music that was played or sung.  The musicians do not play to win for themselves, but play to share, to give of themselves with the audience.  Now, when I am in performance, I have realized and enjoyed the same sense of sharing and dialogue with my listeners, for music is communication.  Like those bands and choirs, I share myself with my audience, and if I do this right, I can sense their feelings back.

“Now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how shall I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?  If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will any one know what is played?…What am I to do? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also.” (1 Corinthians 14:6-7, 15)

The reference that Paul makes to speaking in tongues also references music.  Paul appreciated that transparency in the message is so important; the notes played have to be clear.  The music during our liturgies is meant to be sung with spirit, but also with the mind’s consideration of what impact it has on the whole liturgy, and its importance in a liturgy is powerful when one considers the significance of music for people.

Music is important in people’s lives.  Some of us will have it playing in the background at work.  It is always a part of a movie or a TV show.  We expect music at celebrations, parties, weddings and funerals.  It motivates, or it sympathizes.  We pay to see music performed.  It is an integral part of the culture of everywhere.

“I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being.” (Psalm 104:33)

Music therefore is also prayer.   Music, as during liturgy, can be a conversation with God, a conversation of the mind and of the spirit.  Through song, we find another way to appreciate the grace, the mercy, as well as the solace and comfort that God brings to our lives, through a medium that finds the heart in a way so uniquely different from spoken or unspoken words.  It is also an expression of our love returning to God, of our praise for One so uniquely powerful, yet so connected with ones so much more lowly, of our thanks for a friendship like no other.

My mother was my first piano teacher.  Her gift of music is something I wanted to pass on.

“Deep river, my home is over Jordan,

Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.

Oh, don’t you want to go to that gospel feast,

That promised land where all is peace?

Oh don’t you want to go to that Promised Land,

That land where all is peace?” (African American spiritual)