As I noted in last month’s newsletter, Tim and I recently visited Salzburg, Austria. While there, we toured the small, third-floor apartment in which the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been born. We also visited the Mozart Residence, the much larger apartment to which his family moved when Wolfgang was 18.
The Residence was more of a museum and research facility than was his birthplace. One room was set aside for what is known today as “installation art.” As I walked into the darkened room, I saw four smallish TV screens mounted on the wall in front of me. They were showing shifting shapes that, at least to my still squinting eyes, seemed to lack any discernable pattern. Then the music started. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that I had stepped onto a small, round plate on the floor that seemed to have triggered the recording.
I’m not a Mozart expert, but I quickly recognized the music as the last movement of his last symphony. That movement introduces five separate musical themes. Mozart then weaves all five together in one of the most brilliant passages of contrapuntal music ever written. Contrapuntal music, or more simply, counterpoint, is music in which two or more melodies are sounding simultaneously. If you’ll forgive me a couple didactic paragraphs, perhaps the best way of describing counterpoint is by comparing it with monophonic and homophonic music.
Monophonic music (from mono, one, and phonos, sound) is music in which everyone is playing or singing the same note at the same time. There is only melody, no harmony. Examples of monophonic music include you singing alone in the shower and monks singing Gregorian chant in a cathedral.
Homophonic music (homo = same) has a melody, usually in the highest voice or instrument, with chords below it providing harmony. The four-part hymns we sing in church are homophonic. The sopranos sing the melody while the alto, tenor, and bass parts supply the harmony. The praise songs we sing are designed to have everyone singing the melody while the piano plays the harmony.
Counterpoint is a form of polyphonic music (poly = many) in which each voice sings or plays its own melody. The composer’s carefully combination of these melodies results in the desired harmonies. It might seem that chaos would be the inevitable result of many melodies sounding simultaneously. But in the hands of a master craftsman such as Mozart, the end product is one of nearly incomparable beauty.
The idea of a Master Craftsman blending many voices into a beautiful whole brings to mind Paul’s description of the Church as the body of Christ, “12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. … God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body” (I Cor. 12:12, 18-20).
To be sure, music that consists of nothing more than melody can be beautiful, as can a choir or congregation singing a hymn in four parts. But there is a special kind of beauty that emerges when many different melodies are skillfully combined to form a single, seamless whole, a musical tapestry in which each voice makes not only a unique but an essential contribution.
Musical counterpoint depends on independent voices making their entrances, and exits, on time and in tune. Similarly, as Paul’s inspired imagery so wonderfully illustrates, the Church, its mission conceived and orchestrated by God, displays its full glory only when each of us play the part we’ve been gifted.
