May 10, 2009 Des Moines
Dedication of Steinway Grand
Verbal/Musical Dialogue
Dr. Tim Diebel, Preacher and Dr.
Tim Schmidt, Pianist
Memory, Music, & Joyful Noise
It was
neither the first nor the last time that music would be the transport of the
divine. Maybe for you it was around a
campfire in the still of summer night, or perhaps you were washed by the
gathered voices of a choir; maybe it was in the hypnotic whine of an oboe solo
or the breathy majesty of the organ; maybe it was in the car on a long road
trip, harmonizing with the family, or accelerated and exhilarated by an orchestral
crescendo; but whatever form the experience might have taken, or in whatever
setting, most of us, I'm guessing, have at one time or another stepped into the
carriage of music and been chauffeured by it to the very heart of heaven.
~ Piano Selection ~
Someone once said that “Music is
what feelings sound like,” but many of us would go a step further to
speculate that music is what God sounds like. In all the varied ways we make it, then,
music may well be one of the most precious ways the Image of God is evidenced
among us.
"Do
you know,” Leonardo DaVinci once queried, “that our soul is composed of
harmony?"
Sing aloud to God our strength, the Psalmist urges in the 81st
Psalm;
shout for joy to the
God of Jacob.
Raise a song, sound the tambourine,
the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet...
Or, as we this day might be more want to say,
Strike those keys – dance your
fingers across those blacks and whites
In praise to the Lord our God.
~ Piano Selection ~
“The contest,” writes James Barron in his delightful
biography of a Steinway grand, “was between a giant sandwich of wood – 18
strips of maple, each about half as long as a city bus – and half a dozen
workers with muscles, a pneumatic wrench and a time-conscious foreman. The
workers were supposed to bend and shove those 18 strips into a familiar-looking
shape, and beat the clock. ‘We're allotted 20 minutes,’ the foreman muttered.
After 14 minutes of pushing and
pulling and flexing and grunting that another boss standing nearby called ‘the
Fred Flintstone part of the operation,’ the wood was forced into a curve. And,
in the too-warm basement of a gritty factory that opened when Ulysses S. Grant
was president,” this piano was born.
“Like other newborns, it came with
hopes for greatness and fears that it might not measure up despite a
distinguished family name, Steinway.
So how good will [this one] be? No one can say. Not yet.
It will take about eight months to
finish [the] grand. Along the way, the rim will be aged in a room as dim as a
wine cellar. It will be sprayed with lacquer, rubbed and sprayed again.
Its 340-pound iron plate will be
lowered in and lifted out 10 or 12 times. It will spend time in rooms where
workers wear oxygen masks to avoid getting headaches (or getting high) from
smelly glues. It will be broken in by a machine that plays scales without
complaint, unlike a student.
Someone walking through the factory,
following the progress, could forget a basic fact about what goes on there:
Every Steinway is made the same way from the same materials by the same
workers. Yet every Steinway ends up being different from every other – not in
appearance, perhaps, but in ways that are not easily put into words:
colorations of sound, nuances of strength or delicacy, what some pianists call
personality.
Why? No one at Steinway can really
say.
Perhaps it is the wood. No matter
how carefully Steinway selects or prepares each batch, some trees get more
sunlight than others in the forest, and some get more water. Certain piano
technicians say uncontrollable factors make the difference.” [1]
Perhaps pianos in this respect are a
lot like people: we, too, are all made
the same, but some – more than few, thanks be to God, but far fewer than we
could use – turn out to be breathtaking, concert-worthy instruments like Mary
Wiese, Ray Speas, Ivyl Simms. And just
as Jesus transformed water into wine, their music blesses and transforms our
own watery singing into joyful, lively and rich celebration.
O sing to the Lord a new song, the Psalmist encourages in the 98th
for the Lord has done marvelous
things.
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all
the earth;
break forth into joyous song and
sing praises.
Sing praises to the Lord with the
lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of
melody.
With trumpets and the sound of the
horn
make a joyful noise before the King,
the Lord.
Let the sea roar, and all that fills
it; the world and those who live in it.
Let the floods clap their hands; let
the hills sing together for joy
at the presence of the Lord...
...a presence we have come to discern in the moving music of
the stirring and exemplary lives of so many, but especially we recall this day
the lives of instruments such as Ray and Ivyl and Mary.
~ Piano Selection ~
“So what,” a
skeptic might say. “A new piano. Big deal.”
And, of course, the skeptic would have a point. Few rooms – sanctuaries included – simply
need more furniture. And here, in this
space moreso than in most, the tools at hand are intended to serve a purpose
infinitely larger than mere enjoyment and entertainment. George Frederic Handel, whose Messiah has lifted souls for
generations, once prayed, “My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained
them; I wish also to make them better.”
And
that, finally, is the point: to be
changed; to become not simply different, but larger and deeper. And there is ample reason to believe it can
happen. Bono, the humanitarian lead
singer of the rock group U2, once observed that "Music can change the world because
it can change people."
But it doesn’t happen
magically, of course, or automatically.
We somehow have to listen. Henry
David Thoreau once said that “humans profess to be lovers of
music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives
that they have heard it.”
And so today we
celebrate the gift of a new instrument that has the power to lead us, whose
music will have the capacity to change us; whose notes and rhythms and strings
and pads have the voice to articulate, as Thomas Carlyle once put it, “the
speech of angels.”
But it can only bring
the music. We will have to furnish the
spirit, the soul, the lives, the ears.
Praise the Lord! The Psalmist urges us in the 150th;
Praise God in the sanctuary; praise
God in the mighty firmament!
Praise God for mighty deeds and
surpassing greatness!
Praise God with trumpet sound; with
lute and harp
And
tambourine and dance; praise God with strings and pipe
With loud and clashing cymbals –
With piano, with voice, and with the
music of our lives.
Let everything that breathes praise
the Lord! Praise the Lord!
~ Piano Selection ~
Dedicatory Prayer
God of artistry and discipline, of dissonance and
resolution, of deep, rich sonorities and soaring harmonies, we dedicate this
piano with the prayer that our lives might reflect something of those same
qualities. Through its percussive
rhythms, lead us, we pray; through its powerful sounds, move us. Through the talents of those whose
compositions will be brought to life here, and the practiced skill of those
fingers that will play them here, inspire us.
We give you thanks for the generosity of these few that
makes this piano possible in this space for the enrichment of so many, and we
give you thanks for the lives memorialized by it – Ray Speas, Mary Wiese, and
Ivyl Simms – whose voices will be heard and whose lives will be remembered in
each of its notes and sounds.
Even as is true of our very lives, this, we know, is but an
instrument. Anything beautiful, anything
constructive, anything transforming or inspiring or emotionally discerning or
spiritually nourishing or prophetically awakening will ultimately be the result
of your fingers upon it.
And so we dedicate this piano to your use, O God, even as we
rededicate the instrument of ourselves.
May the music that rises from the partnership be a blessing.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.
[1] James Barron, Piano: The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt & Co., 2006)