Music illuminates

We are particularly privileged to live in the Chicago area and attend the Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts on a regular basis. On April 6, 2024, we were lucky enough to have tickets in our season package of conductor Klaus Makela directing three pieces. The first piece was the U.S. premiere of Batteria by Zinovjev. The second was the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1. The finale, and one I will never forget, was the Shostakovich Symphony No. 10.

The reason the night was so momentous is that Klaus Makela had just days before been named to the highly coveted position of CSO Music Director. At the age of 28 Makela presently serves as the conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic and as of 2027 he will serve both the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam and Chicago Symphony. The performance of the Shostakovich No. 10 was astounding, resulting in a loud roar at the conclusion and multiple curtain calls. Makela was humble, innovative, focused, and deeply prepared for the night and Chicago has many performances ahead that I know will be equally eventful.

The Shostakovich No. 10 is important because it was the first Shostakovich would compose after the death of Stalin, who had repeatedly criticized and punished him during his music career. The No. 10 is the unleashing of desperation into possibility and, although dark in many of its orchestral colors, rises to a frenzied conclusion of optimism.

The program notes for the night included a quote from memoirs that are attributed to Shostakovich - "Music illuminates a person through and through, and it is also his last hope and final refuge. And even half-mad Stalin, a beast and a butcher, instinctively sensed that about music. That's why he feared and hated it."

Rolheiser - The Holy Longing

If you follow my blog, you know that I read and devour experiences for new insights which results in my posts being all over the place. This summary of Ronald Rolheiser's The Holy Longing (2014) was read by a book group in my church and I became curious about it when several people commented on its relevance to today's world and the struggle for meaning that many people express. The book is coming from a religious perspective but I see many of the ideas that are advocated as more broadly applicable to general spirituality and yearning for purpose in living.

The primary thesis of The Holy Longing is that humans by nature are drawn to search for meaning - the existential question of what's this all about and what is my purpose here? Rolheiser offers the opinion, "Spirituality is not something on the fringes, an option for people of a particular bent... We do not wake up in this world calm and serene, having the luxury of choosing to act or not act. We wake up crying, on fire with desire, with madness. What we do with that madness is our spirituality" (p. 6). He goes on to suggest that what counts in this innate spirituality is what we do with it - the habits and discipline with which we choose to live that either brings us closer together with others and nature itself or drives us apart. In a surprising twist for a book coming from a religiously-based author, he identified Mother Theresa, Janis Joplin, and Princess Diane as examples of different ways to seek connections to the ultimate - women whose lives were shaped by deep energy and zest for life who, without pursuing their passions, would have fallen apart or died.

Turning to a more practical application, Rolheiser referenced naivete about spiritual energy, pathological busyness, distraction, restlessness, and a lack of balance as essential impediments to the search for meaning. These distractions of the modern day drive us from each other, from community, and away from the healing that faith communities can foster. What then is the antidote? Referencing C.S. Lewis from Surprised by Joy, he says that "delight has to catch us unaware, a place where we are not rationalizing that we are happy" (p. 26). Those surprising moments are quite simply when we say to ourselves, "God, it feels great to be alive" (p. 26).

I've had these "it's great to be alive" moments and I cherish them, and the interesting thing is that I experience them more in my senior days than earlier in life. Perhaps the result of constantly seeking as young or maturing adults, we just don't see that where we are justifies pausing for the moment of appreciation and celebration. Rolheiser suggested that growing in our "it's great to be alive" could be cultivated more by observing the New Testament teaching of Jesus. Specifically, four practices or attitudes are ways to seek spiritual connectedness as well as recognize it. They include; 1) private prayer and morality, 2) social justice, 3) mellowness of heart and spirit, and 4) community.

I've believed for some time that "conviction in action" was one of the central, if not a primary core, element to inspired leadership. The holy longing described by Rolheiser, and the four practices, may be another way of characterizing and pursuing the discovery and pursuit of purpose that I've previously advocated.

Irwin - The Alhambra

A great complement to Ornament of the World, Robert Irwin's The Alhambra (2004, 2005) delves into the history, mystery, and extraordinary artistry of one of the most significant buildings in the world. Built in the 14th century (1334-91) in the latter days of the Nasrid caliphs, the Alhambra has come to be recognized as the quintessential example of Moorish art and architecture, although the height of the Moors in Spain was during the much earlier period of the 8th to the 10th centuries. Irwin's book is actually a travel guide and is probably read by tourists preparing for a visit, but it has enough historical depth to make reading it worthwhile whether touring or simply wanting to know more about Moorish architecture.

The Alhambra offers perspective on ambition, decline, and remorse about what could have been. In Irwin's final pages of text he bemoans, "The Alhambra serves as an icon of exile and loss" (locator 2022). The early presence of Moors in Spain brought religious tolerance, prosperity, and stimulated art and culture distinctive in Europe but in its final years all this would vanish, all but the Alhambra.

The Alhambra palace (actually 6 palaces) is sectioned into three areas; the Mexuar for public business, the Court of the Myrtles for private administrative use, and the Court of the Lions which included private apartments for the king (Emir) and his concubines. The uses of the palaces, barracks, mosque, and small town are sometimes disputed, and the reality is that it's impossible to determine the historic use of some areas in the palace. By contrast to many historic buildings that were erected to assert authority and power, the Alhambra was more scaled to the private use and comforts of Nasrids. But historic events did take place there, including a visit by Christopher Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella years after Christians defeated the Moors. Columbus, with his Jewish Arabic-speaking interpreter by his side, appealed for resources to sail to the east by going west on his 1492 expedition. Why an Arabic-speaking Jew? Because Columbus assumed that those he would encounter in the east would speak Arabic. The preservation, and subsequent renovation, of the Alhambra was as much a victory statement of Reconquista as it was a commitment to great architecture.

The phrase 'La Ghalib ila Allah' ('No victor but God') is found throughout the Alhambra, displayed in fabrics as well as incorporated into the permanent decoration of walls. The pleasures of life, a veritable heaven on earth, are reflected in arresting vistas, proportion of buildings and arches, landscape, and pools and fountains. The hammams (baths) in the Alhambra are both beautiful and functional, allowing for ablution in preparation for prayer as well as for cleanliness. The Hall of the Ambassadors is the most impressive room, clearly intended as a chamber for reception of visitors, and is sheltered by a ceiling of twelve-sided stars in seven levels, reflecting the seven heavens. The Court of the Lions is a sunken garden of low plants (or "Riyad") and is considered one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. This garden and others served as extensions of the buildings, with the buildings simply framing the beauty of the gardens, which might have served as meditative spaces for Muslims to study and pray (madrassa). All the Alhambra buildings reflect a harmony of space that suggests the infusion of mathematical principles in design, although no evidence confirms such a scientific approach.

Music was also an important element of the Alhambra, with music itself being highly mathematical and proportional. The 'ud, an instrument popular today throughout the middle east with Marcel Khalifa its undisputed contemporary master, is proportioned to match the relationship of the spheres. Ibn Khaldun declared that the meaning of music "is that existence is shared by all existent things" (locator 1219) and that vocal music reflected the apex of cultural development. The predictable mathematical relationship in music are reminiscent of the symmetrical tessellation found in abstract decorations in textiles, carpets, tiles, and other adornments, with arabesques depicting leaf and tendrils and atauriques depicting vegetation such as palmette, pinecone, and palm leaves.

The perspective of the Moors, and the Alhambra their personification, for some Spaniards is that the Moors undermined their unique cultural identity. For Arabs and Muslims, the Alhambra stands for all that has been lost in the centuries after the decline of the Moors in Spain, the Ottomans in the Middle East, and persecution in far eastern places such as India. I've come to understand this through Marcel Khalifa's sculpted portrayal in the music of "Concerto al Andalus" and in the mournful playing and singing that I previously thought was Spanish but now recognize as a blend of Spanish and Muslim/Arab cultures.

Menocal - Ornament of the World

In the closing chapter of Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (2002), author Maria Rosa Menocal commented, "Andalusian stories allow us to glimpse one long and extraordinary chapter of our history in which the three major monotheistic faiths struggled, successfully and unsuccessfully, with the question of tolerance of one another" (epilogue). Indeed, the middle of the 8th century until approximately 300 years later was a brilliant moment in time when Jews, Christians, and Muslims mingled faith with art of various sorts and created a degree of shared prosperity that was unusual for the time and even today.

Committed to asserting control of the "House of Islam," the Abbasids murdered all but one of the Umayyad ruling family in Damascus in the year 750. The lone survivor, Abd al-Rahman, fled Syria, traveling through northern Africa, and landing in southern Spain. Exiled from his home and all that he knew, al-Rahman assembled loyalists to Islam and took Cordoba by force in 756. He then rapidly transformed Cordoba into a flourishing economy with diverse cultures and religions, embracing and benefiting all. By the 10th century, following a succession of the al-Rahman heirs, Cordoba was recognized as "the ornament of the world," from which the title of Menocal's book is taken.

The Umayyad view of Islam embraced the dhimmi, believers in one God and adherents of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim prophetic teaching. The view mandated the protection of Jews and Christians, even though conversion to Islam was also seen as possible and desirable. In fact, the term "Mozarab" was adopted as the term for converts who embraced Islam and Arab ways of living. The Mozarab dressed like Arabs and even adopted Arabic as their language, joining in the polity of "people of the book." The Umayyad were committed to transmitting essential knowledge from generation to generation and did so by translating essential historical texts and amassing impressive libraries. Jews were employed as viziers and intellectuals, creating greater prosperity than Jews in Europe had ever achieved, largely because they embraced their Umayyad sponsors and enthusiastically embraced cultural assimilation and Arabization.

Some of the internal chapters of Ornament of the World are primarily focused on literature and poetry. In these chapters, Menocal described the fluidity and fusion of languages across cultural groups with Jews and Christians speaking and writing in Arabic or dialects combining their cultural languages with Arabic and Spanish. One of the most profound examples of this fusion was for Jews whose native language expanded to transcend its previous use in religious observance, giving rise to a new period of literary and poetic expression in Hebrew.

Even after the height of Islamic influence in Spain, Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun's prolific writing in mid-14th century was heavily influenced by the legacy of al-Andalus. Fleeing politically stifling Fez (Morocco), Ibn Khaldun first settled in Granada and then Seville, immediately recognized as a renowned scholar in both. His Maqaddimah, or "Introduction to History," contributed to a new view of history that recorded the rise, decline, and fall of great societies, a pattern that was so evident in al-Andalus. As an example, he would have seen that even the architecture of the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, built on the foundation of the former Great Mosque of Seville, was adorned with Arabic language and profuse arabesques. Observing the influence of Islamic and Arab culture must have seemed ironic as well as tragic, something historians now view as cultural appropriation of a past great Islamic society overcome by Christian domination. This domination eventually led to the Edict of Expulsion in 1492, when Jews and Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity or leave the place where they had previously tolerated each others' religions as they contributed to a golden age of knowledge and art.

Menocal lauded Cervantes' story of Don Quixote, first published in 1605 but based on stories from the golden age of al-Andalus, as a masterpiece reflecting the tragedy of cultural decline. Book burning and vilification of others were symbolized in the windmills of Don Quixote's mind, depicting a time when reality could no longer be discerned from the conflagration of disinformation. The story of Man of la Mancha reflected the loss of an age of possibility with the Alhambra in Granada as its iconic representation, a palace so splendid, so unique in its "Stylistic openness, the capacity to look around, assimilate, and reshape promiscuously,... as a key part of the Umayyad aesthetic" (locator 3883).

Why did this golden age of tolerance and creativity end so quickly? One explanation that historians have opined is that the Black Death (bubonic plague) of the Middle Ages, killing 20% of the total population, drove cultural and religious groups away from each other. Driven by fear, and the crumbling infrastructure of social mores and shared humanity, groups that had found common cause disintegrated into warring factions. Scapegoating of the "other" was central to destroying the bond of humanity and tolerance itself was characterized as traitorous. What remained after the Black Death was a hollowed-out system void of religious tolerance and compassion. Whether the result of the Black Death or a slide toward Christian orthodoxy and accompanying persecution of other faiths, Spain in the post-Moor era failed to accept the more difficult  path of cultivating the uneasy embrace of contradiction and difference. In essence, the Spanish Inquisition became the instrument of purifying a culture from 500 years of nurturing tolerance and co-existence.

The question lingering in my mind is if Ibn Khaldun's depiction of decline and fall of great societies is underway in the present day? And the pivotal leadership question is if leaders will take the creative path of fostering tolerance across difference or will they choose the easier, and profoundly destructive, path of denying diverse human experience and culture in the pursuit of cultural purification and domination?