Religious music does weird things to me


Jjeorge

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First, if this belongs more in some other sub forum, I apologize. (Psychology? Music?)

Moving on: I come from a family that is entirely religious, to varying degrees. Consequently, I used to be rather religious too.

I never really went to church, except when I was little. And looking back on it, the only reason I enjoyed it then was because I liked it when we sang stuff, and we got to play outside a lot.

But I'd always been religious to a degree. Just before my reading of Atlas, and thereby my "conversion" to Objectivism, I started getting more into it. I never really thought about religion much at all, but my life had been rather ho-hum up to that point, and I thought "Hey, maybe I'm missing a closer relationship to God." Sooo, I started listening to some religious music more, and had eventually planned on going to church... I never did the latter, but I got really into the music.

Then, the election of 2012 happened. People here like to boast that we're "the reddest state in the union," and indeed, not a single county here is that awful blue on election maps, but my high school seemed INFESTED with Obama supporters. The gloating was ridiculous... All this inspired me to read Atlas Shrugged, which turned me to Objectivism... And thus, Atheism.

I really liked it, because I've always had this problem with religious morals. The whole "give up everything for the poor" didn't resonate with me at all, and that's why I never liked church after it stopped being about singing and playing outside... So I thought "This is awesome." And still mostly do.

But I've noticed something: Whenever I listen to the religious music I used to love, I get this really weird feeling that I can't explain. Usually, it makes me cry. A really depressed cry, too. (This actually makes sense with some songs: I had been to a total of 27 funerals by the time I was 15. Thankfully, none since then, but songs like I Can Only Imagine make me think of the people I miss, so it makes sense that these upset me... Amazing Grace makes me happy, though.)

This is so weird, and I have no idea what's going on. I find it very interesting, though.

Has anyone else here had anything remotely like a similar experience?

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Has anyone else here had anything remotely like a similar experience?

Yes.

Organ music that reaches up has always had an emotional impact on me.

Danny Boy at Irish funerals takes me into tears every single time.

As to Amazing Grace, depending on my mood, smiles of joy, or, a deep sorrow over what it is about.

The Wilberforce story is absolutely uplifting.

Not sure that answers your questions, however they were excellent questions.

A..

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Feelings are live descendants from earlier feelings. They are joined to personal histories. Feelings of ascent and sorrow and despair and consolation and strength and purity and good will and love and hope via religious music and song have those elements from the life of natural, mortal human beings on earth, and back to this our real world those elements of the music can be returned in our understanding. I doubt, however, the feeling we experience in many of these musical pieces can ever be fully severed from their original religious setting for us or from their original religious text. An atheist formerly Catholic will hear the great masses of Gounod or Faure with all their religious meanings well known since youth. Similarly it goes for the atheist formerly Lutheran in listening to Bach’s St. Mathew Passion or “A Mighty Fortress.” I don’t think an atheist should try to resist returning to those old feelings, or anyway to shadows of those old feelings, in experiencing the music. Only know where one is and how the experience is now situated in one’s whole world.

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We could do a topic for "Songs that Make You Cry." Of course, as the comments here show "religious" music crosses many genres. When I was in the 5th grade or so, we had music class once a week. One lesson, our teacher played some Russian works, Rimsky Korsakoff's "Russian Easter" or maybe it was the "Gates of Kiev" from Pictures at an Exhibition by Moussorgsky. Anyway, one of the kids said something like "I am going to pay more attention in church! I didn't know that it was real music."



One Sunday, channel surfing, I hit the 700 Club and they were singing "I'll Fly Away" in front of the Space Shuttle. But that was more amusing, albeit inspirational on several levels as I continued flying lessons...



Perhaps for me the one that commands the most response is this:




... but as I said...



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Has anyone else here had anything remotely like a similar experience?

Yes.

Organ music that reaches up has always had an emotional impact on me.

Danny Boy at Irish funerals takes me into tears every single time.

As to Amazing Grace, depending on my mood, smiles of joy, or, a deep sorrow over what it is about.

The Wilberforce story is absolutely uplifting.

Not sure that answers your questions, however they were excellent questions.

A..

Amazing Grace is one of my favorites, too. It is all played on the black keys of a piano so that might be relevant.

What's a nice Jewish boy like me doing, singing Amazing Grace?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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We could do a topic for "Songs that Make You Cry." Of course, as the comments here show "religious" music crosses many genres. When I was in the 5th grade or so, we had music class once a week. One lesson, our teacher played some Russian works, Rimsky Korsakoff's "Russian Easter" or maybe it was the "Gates of Kiev" from Pictures at an Exhibition by Moussorgsky. Anyway, one of the kids said something like "I am going to pay more attention in church! I didn't know that it was real music."

One Sunday, channel surfing, I hit the 700 Club and they were singing "I'll Fly Away" in front of the Space Shuttle. But that was more amusing, albeit inspirational on several levels as I continued flying lessons...

Perhaps for me the one that commands the most response is this:

... but as I said...

The Naval Hymn breaks me up, too. I first heard it as a dirge played at FDR's funeral. Later I heard it played as a dirge at JFK's funeral.

Ba/'al Chatzaf

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What's a nice Jewish boy like me doing, singing Amazing Grace?

Waiting for a Minyan? You just need nine (9) more...

A...

Post Script:

Were you in Washington DC for JFK's funeral?

If so, we were in the same crowd of mourners...

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Technically, music itself cannot rationally be categorized as "religious." The lyrics that accompany a piece of music could legitimately be called "religious," but not the music.

J

This is a good point. I have this love/hate relationship with "modern" music because of it. The kind that people my age like to blare at parties, I mean. (Though rap and the more annoying kinds of hip hop are still a no-go for me.) I love the way they sound, but sometimes the lyrics are repugnant.

I haven't actually looked into the lyrics, but some songs by Imagine Dragons strike me as anti-capitalist, which is unfortunate because, once I catch some of the lyrics, I find it impossible to block them out. And sometimes, you just can't rationalize things to something that fits with your worldview. (Something that seems to be necessary with a lot of things, these days.)

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If the lyrics bother you, go for some language you don't understand. Most of the very greatest sacred music is in Latin or German. That is no help with The Messiah, though.

I was at the burial in Arlington. Still have the photos.

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If the lyrics bother you, go for some language you don't understand. Most of the very greatest sacred music is in Latin or German. That is no help with The Messiah, though.

I was at the burial in Arlington. Still have the photos.

Interesting.

We went down for the whole three (3) days. Five friends and members of my football team all crowded into a Corvair which was driven by a Jewish accountant who was the dad of two of my team mates.

We could only get to a small bridge near the site. It was frigid and we were all bundled up.

Crystal clear day. The motorcade stopped right in front of us on the bridge and you could see Peter Lawford's stunned stone face through the darkened limo windows.

My friend reached into his ski jacket near his heart for his camera and two (2) secret service agents drew and told him to freeze.

Folks were a tad itchy that weekend. Unfortunately, I have lost a lot of my pictures.

A...

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But I've noticed something: Whenever I listen to the religious music I used to love, I get this really weird feeling that I can't explain. Usually, it makes me cry. A really depressed cry, too. (This actually makes sense with some songs: I had been to a total of 27 funerals by the time I was 15. Thankfully, none since then, but songs like I Can Only Imagine make me think of the people I miss, so it makes sense that these upset me... Amazing Grace makes me happy, though.)

This is so weird, and I have no idea what's going on. I find it very interesting, though.

Thanks for bringing up such an interesting topic. Music is an amazing language. It's the mathematics of the heart, and that's why it can reach so deeply within us. Strangely enough this song deeply moves me even though I have absolutely nothing to do with the country involved. (don't laugh now... )

Greg

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The Naval Hymn breaks me up, too. I first heard it as a dirge played at FDR's funeral. Later I heard it played as a dirge at JFK's funeral.

Ba/'al Chatzaf

Kennedy, of course, was a Navy officer. Roosevelt had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy for seven years, serving the Woodrow Wilson administrations.

We had a huge book of piano music at home, and many smaller ones, naturally. My brother and I would pick out melodies. We both liked "Abide with Me" and then saw A Night to Remember on television. In the modern remake, Titanic, it was intended as irony that the rich people were signing that in church services while Jack was being turned away for being from the wrong passage (class).

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Thanks for bringing up such an interesting topic. Music is an amazing language. It's the mathematics of the heart, and that's why it can reach so deeply within us. Strangely enough this song deeply moves me even though I have absolutely nothing to do with the country involved. (don't laugh now... )

Greg

National anthems are meant to inspire, of course. My favorite version of that is Isinbaeva rocks the Russia National Anthem. (Individual achievement, and sponsored by Toyota, by the way.) Ayn Rand always had a soft spot for The Internationale. Here are the modern English lyrics from Billy Bragg. Political songs, religious, military, they all are intended to evoke a whole raft of unselfish emotional outpouring, none moreso than this presentation of The Garry Owen. The Minstrel Boy, Men of Harlach, the Girl I Left Behind Me, Celine Dion's O! Canada...

(By the way, notice in the USSR Anthem battle scenes, the guys running forward without weapons. They had bullets and were to pick up the rifles of the men fallen in front. It was planned that way. ... and they want you sing about it (if you lived).

But we don't have much about egoism, capitalism, pride in achievement. We have some weak exemplars: "Let Me Be" by the Turtles. It's OK for teenage anger, but not much for tears. But there are so many things to cry about.

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But I've noticed something: Whenever I listen to the religious music I used to love, I get this really weird feeling that I can't explain. Usually, it makes me cry. A really depressed cry, too. (This actually makes sense with some songs: I had been to a total of 27 funerals by the time I was 15. Thankfully, none since then, but songs like I Can Only Imagine make me think of the people I miss, so it makes sense that these upset me... Amazing Grace makes me happy, though.)

This is so weird, and I have no idea what's going on. I find it very interesting, though.

Thanks for bringing up such an interesting topic. Music is an amazing language. It's the mathematics of the heart, and that's why it can reach so deeply within us. Strangely enough this song deeply moves me even though I have absolutely nothing to do with the country involved. (don't laugh now... )

Greg

I figured it would be more interesting than talk of how lonely/bored/etc. I've been feeling since moving here.

"Mathematics of the heart." I love that!

And I agree... Despise the USSR, for obvious reasons, but the anthem is great. I'll be listening to it a few times for the next few days, I think. :)

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Thanks for bringing up such an interesting topic. Music is an amazing language. It's the mathematics of the heart, and that's why it can reach so deeply within us. Strangely enough this song deeply moves me even though I have absolutely nothing to do with the country involved. (don't laugh now... )

Greg

National anthems are meant to inspire, of course. My favorite version of that is Isinbaeva rocks the Russia National Anthem.

That's an especially nice upbeat rendition, and a competent piece of film editing. I like how they double timed parts of the anthem.

But we don't have much about egoism, capitalism, pride in achievement. We have some weak exemplars: "Let Me Be" by the Turtles.

Hahaha! ... the Turtles. :laugh:

That just about sums up America's current foreign policy.

Greg

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But I've noticed something: Whenever I listen to the religious music I used to love, I get this really weird feeling that I can't explain. Usually, it makes me cry. A really depressed cry, too. (This actually makes sense with some songs: I had been to a total of 27 funerals by the time I was 15. Thankfully, none since then, but songs like I Can Only Imagine make me think of the people I miss, so it makes sense that these upset me... Amazing Grace makes me happy, though.)

This is so weird, and I have no idea what's going on. I find it very interesting, though.

Thanks for bringing up such an interesting topic. Music is an amazing language. It's the mathematics of the heart, and that's why it can reach so deeply within us. Strangely enough this song deeply moves me even though I have absolutely nothing to do with the country involved. (don't laugh now... )

Greg

I figured it would be more interesting than talk of how lonely/bored/etc. I've been feeling since moving here.

"Mathematics of the heart." I love that!

And I agree... Despise the USSR, for obvious reasons, but the anthem is great. I'll be listening to it a few times for the next few days, I think. :smile:

As near as I can reckon... it is a certain combination of how the major and minor chords in that anthem are arranged that I find to be so emotionally powerful. If numerical equivalents could be assigned to them, I wouldn't be surprised if they made an elegant harmonious equation.

Greg

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Jonathan's claim that music is not inherently "religious" reflects a common ignorance based, ultimately, on the analytic-synthetic dichotomy and therefore the mind-body dichotomy. His assertion is equivalent to that language "cannot rationally be categorized as 'religious'." Music, is, after all, another kind of language. It is true that with lyric music - most of what we know today from popular radio and rock concerts, i.e., "songs" - music and poetry are intertwined. In many cultures (perhaps most; maybe "all") music and dance are so integrated. To say that music does not evoke thematic motion would be equally baseless.

Technically, music itself cannot rationally be categorized as "religious." The lyrics that accompany a piece of music could legitimately be called "religious," but not the music.

J

Music is highly contextual. Like language, it comes from the society in which it develops. Like language, also, it serves the individual as a cognitive tool. Tibetan religious music might not speak to you the same way as does a Christmas carole. You do not understand the language of the music is all. That said, certain fundamentals do apply. When the Japanese army rolls out to face Godzilla, you do not mistake their intentions because the music carried some other (religious) message.

Modern Hindu religious music here is perhaps the "Christian rock" of their context. About 20 years ago, I saw a presentation in a Methodist church about their youth group's missionary work in Russia. The kids were playing guitars and singing happily about being saved. Against that were Orthodox monks in black, chanting... Clearly, it is a matter of "the varieties of religious experience."

In Goethe's Faust, the doctor laments that when the plague struck, "I mixed up every potion I could think of. Half my patients died. The ones who lived called me their Savior." (In German all nouns are capitalized. In English, it reads more evocatively.)

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Michael, you remarked in #15 that “political songs, religious, military, they all are intended to evoke a whole raft of unselfish emotional outpouring . . . .” Do you agree that to accomplish that the words must be in an understood language? If one hears the Internationale sung in French and one does not know that language and has no translation or even history of the song, its emotion could come through, but no specific application to self-sacrifice or social objective. Similarly, I imagine, one hearing The Battle Hymn of the Republic who did not understand the lyrics, would be floating pretty free of its historic and ongoing social agenda. I don’t know if you are familiar with the Fifth Symphony of Shostakovich, but commentators in the West chose to put a social message into it rather opposite the message the Soviet government wanted to put into it. Both sides understood, of course, that for absolute music such as this symphony political stories attuned to the music were associations added to the music and not uniquely determined by the music. The reason I’ve always liked this composer since I discovered him (when I was 18) was that he could express struggle so superbly. One need not read social struggle into the music. I most naturally let his expression speak of creative struggle, which was and is me. But really there is no need to receive this music as expressing any such specific category of struggle in its expressions of struggle.

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"God Only Knows," by The Beach Boys was the original theme to the HBO show, "Big Love," but that does not sound religious to me. At the start of the last season "Big Love" switched to an even better theme song "Home.? And to my ears, "Home" by the English group Engineers is beautiful and sounds religious. I think to qualify, music must move your mind into a peaceful, ethereal sense of being. Though you may need to *grow up* in your culture to appreciate religious music like that of "Home" or the Indian mystics. Indian music is too repetitious. It is enchanting but would make me want to turn it off after a few minutes of listening.

Type in:

Big Love New Opening Theme YouTube

The choreographed movements of the main stars floating in space is also excellent.

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Music motivates.

My belief is that music is a "universal language."

It involves stimulating your hard wired genetic imprinting.

For example, close your eyes and just listen to this.

Can you not be stimulated by the drive and pounding.

http://youtu.be/CripLDmoSCg

Strategically, this psychotic drive was a strength and a weakness when properly exploited.

A teacher at the military war college stated clearly that our capitalist supply chain was one of the three primary reasons we defeated the Nazi nut jobs.

A...

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Doesn't do any thing for me. I'm half German by blood and it didn't tickle my genes. Your universal isn't mine. I was mentally cold-blooded in combat no matter the adrenaline flow. Marching off to war with a band playing in your head is marching off to the recruitment station. Reality soon sets in when the bus pulls into the Fort and some real bastard gets on and starts yelling at you. I don't believe that video. Tell me it was a German production for I don't believe that either. Hollywood. Let's go out and PLAY SOME FOOTBALL!

Once the Germans had been halted in their advance, the bulge should have been snipped off compelling the surrender of the German forces. Instead they were just pushed back and more allied soldiers died as a consequence of that than died in that battle earlier. You can't show three reasons for American success in war and pull out one and say "see how important that is"? That's ignoring that a three-legged stool made into a two-legged stool isn't a stool any longer.

--Brant

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