And now it's time for a little culture...

I was listening to the news today going through the recaps of last night's Presidential Debate when I just stopped. I wasn't listening, hearing, expecting, pondering, or anything. I just stopped. I realized I had to clear my intellectual palette of politics for a while and just enjoy what God has blessed His people with. After God and my family and friends, music is a passion of mine. I have performed for as few as one or as many as several hundred. I have tried to compose and arrange pieces with only a personal satisfaction being my goal second to that of honoring God. I have fallen shot on both of those on many occasions. I play several instruments with varying degrees of success but love every moment I am blessed with playing music of one kind or another. There is an almost hypnotic yet mathematically ethereal supplication I have for music in my life and I sometimes have to repent and ask God to forgive me for treating music as and idol. It is God's gift after all.

The way the God has blessed this planet with music will never cease to amaze me. I wonder what Pythagoren must have felt when he heard the mathematic harmony in that single not from his tuning rod. Was it a moment when he could sense God's mastery in one simple note? What did the first pipe organ sound like to its first audience? Did Bach know how perfect his toccatas were to the ears? If Beethoven couldn't hear, did he feel God's touch in his beautiful compositions? What did Paganini's solos say to their first performers? Do Debussy’s Arabesque and Claire de Lune sound as beautiful to everyone else as they do to me? Did Orff know that Carmina Burana would stir the emotions today like it did when he composed it? Would the great composers hear what they composed, if they could listen to Perlman, Yoyo Ma, or Bell play? Why is music so fulfilling to those who cannot play it?

I have almost as many questions as there are beautiful pieces of music.

Although I consider Baroque to be my favorite era of music with composers like J.S. Bach and Vivaldi, there is no way I could ignore Mozart, Brahms, Liszt, Handel, or Beethoven.

This Beethoven piece is one of my absolute favorites. And if you didn’t know, Beethoven was deaf. For him to compose the way he did would be like me, a blind man, painting the intricacies of a master like Renoir, Van Gogh, or da Vinci.

If you have taken the time to read this, please take a little more time to listen and just let this music envelope all your senses for a little while.

God is truly the master of ALL His creation!

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto D Op.61