Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome back to Artists of the Way.
Speaker: I'm John.
Speaker: I'm Nate.
Speaker: And we are the hosts of aforementioned podcast, Artists of the Way.
Speaker: Today we've got a really fascinating episode.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I am like... Flabbergasted.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We like just recorded it and my mind is like blown.
Speaker: This is someone we didn't know before.
Speaker: His name is... Just walked into your house.
Speaker: He walked in and was like, I'd like to be the most fascinating guest you've had.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: His name is...
Speaker: Yes, his name is Zach Tolan.
Speaker: He's a music teacher.
Speaker: He reached out to us because of some research he's been doing on Bach and Beethoven for sounds like five years, several years at least, and has some very fascinating discoveries about music.
Speaker: the methodology with which they composed.
Speaker: And lest you think that this is just for our music theory nerds that listen to this podcast, I really don't think so.
Speaker: This is making me rethink.
Speaker: Like it literally is making me rethink how I create my art.
Speaker: Like the level of intentionality that goes into this.
Speaker: I think it's a fascinating, fascinating look at how subtext and intentionality really matters in our arts and how our Christian faith works itself out in it.
Speaker: It's just absolutely crazy.
Speaker: So please stick around and listen.
Speaker: It's going to be really wonderful.
Speaker: Having a source, a reason for what you do is really interesting.
Speaker: And that doesn't mean that it's going to be all the same.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That anyone who starts at the source is going to make the same thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because these amazing artists created their amazing art based on sources, but no one else would have done it like them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so when we create art, we can base it on sources.
Speaker: An inspiration and it still be a unique thing that only we could do.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: This is a full episode and there's some things to kind of go along with it just so you have as resources.
Speaker: I think you can just listen to the episode and you'll get everything you need.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: Zach has recently done a TED talk on this topic.
Speaker: That's going to be in the description below if you want to check it out.
Speaker: We do give a brief explanation of what exactly is happening here, what he's discovering about the methodology, and basically a lot of symbolism that he's finding in this music.
Speaker: But check out that TED Talk as well.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: He has shared some resources with us.
Speaker: That's going to be linked below.
Speaker: We'll have a couple of those on social media as well.
Speaker: So you can check them out, maybe look at some things if you would like.
Speaker: you know, while you're listening to it or while you're watching the video.
Speaker: And then he'll have some more resources on his website as well.
Speaker: Is there anything that I'm missing?
Speaker: I think that's good.
Speaker: This is basically National Treasure, the Artist of the Way episode, but it's like the whole thing is happening right here.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Just it's wonderful.
Speaker: And Zach has some really great insights on this.
Speaker: Yes, we talk a little bit about Zach's story.
Speaker: He has a fascinating story of faith as well, and kind of going away from the Christian faith and coming back.
Speaker: Really great.
Speaker: We don't have to keep talking your ear off about it, because you can listen to it.
Speaker: So without further ado, here is Zach Tolman.
Speaker: Thank you for reaching out and coming onto the podcast.
Speaker: I'm really excited to talk about this topic.
Speaker: So we have a mutual friend, but...
Speaker: I don't know what you know, but I grew up playing violin.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, great.
Speaker: Music is sort of, I often say that I like think musically.
Speaker: I have the term that I have these abstract thoughts and then I have to like turn it into words.
Speaker: And recently I've sort of come to the conclusion that it feels like there's just this symphonic sound and then I'm
Speaker: So, so all that to say, I love music.
Speaker: I'm so excited to delve into this topic when, when it came my way, I was like, this is so fascinating.
Speaker: But first, would you just share a little bit about who you are for the audience or
Speaker: for Nate.
Speaker: Pretend I'm the audience.
Speaker: Hello, you guys are both the audience.
Speaker: We don't know each other very well.
Speaker: So yeah, just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the world of music and yeah, a little bit of your story.
Speaker: Yeah, so my story, I guess starts as about a second grader who my parents thought you should take piano lessons.
Speaker: Sure, it's a good idea.
Speaker: And I did for a few weeks and I hated it and I quit.
Speaker: Oh no.
Speaker: I was one of those kids that quit.
Speaker: And I remember the music was hard to read and it just felt uncomfortable.
Speaker: And I stepped away from music for years.
Speaker: And then I was watching a Yanni Live at the Acropolis video on my dad's big screen TV.
Speaker: And he had great speakers.
Speaker: And I was just a little kid getting up close to the TV and saw the dueling violinists.
Speaker: The lady in red was just playing her heart out.
Speaker: And then a few weeks later at school, they had tryouts.
Speaker: And you could pick up the different instruments.
Speaker: And I went right to that violin.
Speaker: And I kind of had an idea of what it looked like.
Speaker: And the guy said, you're kind of good at that.
Speaker: You want to try that?
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: And I had asthma.
Speaker: And so I tried some of the woodwind instruments.
Speaker: Not a good combo.
Speaker: Didn't feel good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then I thought, yep, I'm going to go violin.
Speaker: So that's where it started.
Speaker: And I got back into music that way.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: That's the beginning.
Speaker: That is awesome.
Speaker: Just down the road from here, actually, at the Valleywood Middle School.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Sweet.
Speaker: That's super cool.
Speaker: So what took you from doing it in school to wanting to pursue that as a career?
Speaker: Was that your first career move with music?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Originally, I wanted to go into ministry.
Speaker: I wanted to be a youth pastor.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I had a great high school youth pastor.
Speaker: He's still active, but now he does the grown-up church.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know.
Speaker: He graduated.
Speaker: I still kind of wish he was doing youth ministry.
Speaker: I don't know why he decided to grow up.
Speaker: But anyway, Peter Pan.
Speaker: So anyway, I wanted to do that.
Speaker: And so I wanted to do a secular undergraduate degree.
Speaker: Because I saw some people going off to Christian undergrad.
Speaker: And they would leave and come back a year later.
Speaker: And they seemed so different.
Speaker: And without naming any names, they seemed...
Speaker: Out of touch all of a sudden.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: And I thought, oh, no.
Speaker: These people, they're definitely not in the world.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they're definitely not of the world.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But, like, you got to be one of them.
Speaker: You got to be in the world.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I thought, oh, man.
Speaker: This is a – this seemed like a problem.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I thought, I'm not going to do that.
Speaker: So I went to Grand Valley, and I was going to pursue philosophy as my undergraduate degree.
Speaker: Oh, perfect.
Speaker: Which I did and finished.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: I loved studying things like ancient languages, but the curveball was I became an atheist during that track.
Speaker: No!
Speaker: And so most people at that point in the story would look at it and say, oh, see, you should have gone the other route.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I got Jonah in the wild, I think.
Speaker: That's how I usually say.
Speaker: Yeah, that's my favorite person.
Speaker: Like, that's the story I relate to most from the Bible.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I constantly feel like, I'm going to go do this.
Speaker: And it's kind of like, or you're going to get swallowed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: and held captive until we spit you out where we want you.
Speaker: So it always feels like that.
Speaker: I want to hear more about that.
Speaker: What was the transition from atheist to, well, first, what brought, was it the philosophy that you were studying that kind of led you astray or what?
Speaker: It would be a mix of that and, you know, in a sociology class or I was studying world religions.
Speaker: And I remember having these feelings like if I was raised in China, if I was born in China.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: you know my parents would be buddhist and right or whatever they'd be something different right and with all my friends and family and culture and society everything all every influence pushing it on me like that yeah i'd probably be that right and so i in the fairness of god like it's a thing that i want to call it childish
Speaker: But I don't want to sound offensive because... No, it's a thing everyone struggles with.
Speaker: As adults, I think, you know, as I just turned 40, I'm feeling more and more like I'm still just a kid.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I still feel quite childish most of the time.
Speaker: You know, and like regulating emotions and stuff.
Speaker: Our temper tantrums just look a little different.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, so yeah, the transition into atheism was partly influenced by that.
Speaker: And then the New Testament started to seem less and less plausible.
Speaker: I was studying ancient Greek.
Speaker: And in the same kind of way, I wanted to study Attic Greek, which is the dialect that came before Koinea, which is the one the New Testament is written in.
Speaker: And that's the one that the classical philosophers write in Aristotle and Plato.
Speaker: They're all writing in Attic.
Speaker: I think, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker: And anyway, studying a little bit of Greek started to create more problems than answers.
Speaker: So in the same way that when the Bible gets translated into English, translators have to make choices and decisions about which word are we going to put in and try to make the whole sentence flow.
Speaker: In English, that one word can sometimes mean two or three or five things.
Speaker: And depending on the context, maybe even more.
Speaker: And with nuance, you know, it really, when we write instead of speak, we lose a lot of what the meaning is.
Speaker: And when it's in a foreign culture, and 2,000 years ago, it is like darts in the dark sometimes.
Speaker: Very often.
Speaker: What on earth could that mean so much?
Speaker: And I thought it would get easier studying ancient Greek.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: But then you find that they have just as complex of language.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so one word for them can also mean five different things.
Speaker: And it compounded the problem.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And when you're young and don't have good support systems of people who are really, really diehard, sincere experts in that sort of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is easy to get yourself lost.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So that's what happened.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: That's one way.
Speaker: That's a very heavy way to describe it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know when I was in college, I really had to like pour into like, um, uh,
Speaker: Now I'm forgetting the word.
Speaker: The guys that defend the faith with- Apologists.
Speaker: Apologists, my goodness.
Speaker: Like Ravi Zacharias and watched a lot of his videos.
Speaker: I saw him in Chicago live on this.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I saw him in Lansing.
Speaker: Did you hear about his downfall?
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Gosh.
Speaker: Even those types, you know?
Speaker: People.
Speaker: Heartbreaking.
Speaker: That was heartbreaking.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: But I don't think I'm much better.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, he's, yeah, did a lot of good, though.
Speaker: Let's not get into my... Yeah, the Lord used it, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But, yeah, really, but, yeah, you have to... I'm not being a good witness.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: I know, right?
Speaker: Anyway, let's not get into my skeletons in the closet.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm going to ruin everything before we go.
Speaker: But no, it's at that impressionable age when you're like leaving your nest and I've all these ideas coming at you.
Speaker: It's really hard to not get pulled astray.
Speaker: When you do, you got to really find something to hang on to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What was it?
Speaker: We'll stay on the faith track and then I'll jump back to music quick.
Speaker: What was it that led you back to the faith?
Speaker: Yeah, I'd give you guys 100 guesses, and I wonder if you get it.
Speaker: Want to take any guesses?
Speaker: Can we play a guessing game?
Speaker: Oh, fine.
Speaker: I'm curious.
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: Because you talk to people on this kind of level a lot.
Speaker: I don't actually get to have these kind of heart-to-heart conversations too often.
Speaker: Okay, sure.
Speaker: So I'm curious.
Speaker: What do you think would do it?
Speaker: Because it's not what I would have expected.
Speaker: Okay, not what you would have expected.
Speaker: It's not the last thing I would have expected.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very strange.
Speaker: Okay, let me narrow it down.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Was it a, was it an argument or was it something relational?
Speaker: Um, by argument, do you mean like a new perspective on things?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or like a, like a proof of God or an intellectual thing?
Speaker: It was several intellectual things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Was it, I'll just throw it again.
Speaker: Was it reading the church fathers?
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: Oh wow.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: These are good guesses.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm Anglican.
Speaker: I love the church.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: You're up.
Speaker: Name church fathers.
Speaker: It's like 20 questions or whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I like this.
Speaker: Could have fit in a bread box.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You were something adjacent to
Speaker: So you were reading some kind of old folks?
Speaker: It wasn't reading.
Speaker: There was a relational component for sure.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: But it was the perspective.
Speaker: It was a big perspective shift.
Speaker: Maybe I should just tell you.
Speaker: Maybe you should.
Speaker: I wish I was better at guessing.
Speaker: I don't have a good... I might not be smart enough to guess it.
Speaker: No, no, it's definitely not that.
Speaker: The last thing I would have expected would be that it was the Catholic faith.
Speaker: I was raised Protestant.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And a lot of the problems I was having were what I would call kind of the typical Protestant problems people pick at.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And say, oh, well, you guys don't get along with that church.
Speaker: Or you internally are all arguing, and so you're going to split and create your own church.
Speaker: And 30,000 times later, just in the United States,
Speaker: right like it's like oh yeah and where's the holy spirit in that and where's the hand of god and all that right the catholic church fixed a lot of those problems for me yeah they got a lockdown kind of yeah and it's not like they haven't had their splits either right not like they don't have their problems uh but um and that's going to segue into our work today too because martin luser is super important in the box sure we'll we'll get into that okay yeah so which is like a kind of a
Speaker: circle for me because anyway but yeah the catholic church uh i i owe a great debt to and in particular some catholic families in the area were super influential and showed me that it's not so gloom and doom always yeah there's a way of doing it and it's not you know like questions around things like salvation
Speaker: were super touchy issues, you know, must believe X, Y, and Z, and then you are saved.
Speaker: And for me, those were like questions I thought, who are you to say?
Speaker: How do you know?
Speaker: I don't even know.
Speaker: You know, for me, it's been a big issue that the concept of faith
Speaker: is not necessarily knowing for certain everything that is true or not true about God or understanding every verse and, you know, understanding the correct translation, those kinds of things are my big problems.
Speaker: For me, it was this idea that faith is something a little different than that.
Speaker: It's like, I would say, well, how do you know you're saved to some of my Catholic friends?
Speaker: And they'd say, well, we don't
Speaker: No, I mean, that's for God to decide.
Speaker: And I thought, oh, really?
Speaker: And there was still this major faith component in it, trusting that no, no, no, God is good and he loves you.
Speaker: And do you believe that he sent his son?
Speaker: And do you believe that he's got a plan for the salvation of the world?
Speaker: If that's the case, then that's a big part of faith.
Speaker: And those kind of precursors that led to those bigger conclusions were the ones that I hadn't spent enough time thinking about.
Speaker: So the sort of perspective of the assurance is not on myself and on I've done the right things.
Speaker: I've got it all figured out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But on...
Speaker: It's God who is saving me and it's God in whom I'm placing my faith to save me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's not some other religion and it's not myself.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Certainly not myself.
Speaker: I mean, I can hardly get my taxes in on time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Let alone anything bigger than that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I do find that interesting because I think one of the big theological critiques of the Catholic Church is that it does not rely on faith as the salvation, as the salvific thing, but on the sacraments.
Speaker: All that doing.
Speaker: The right.
Speaker: And I think that that can be true still, but I think a lot of times that can be an outdated critique of the Catholic Church.
Speaker: So it's cool to see an anecdotal proof of there is that faith is alive and well in multiple traditions within God's family and God's people.
Speaker: That's really neat.
Speaker: Yeah, it's been it's been quite a ride.
Speaker: I'll say so.
Speaker: Ultimately, I didn't go through with becoming Catholic.
Speaker: I went to the classes and it was it played its part, though.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so now I go to a non-denominational kind of congregation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's what Nate does, too.
Speaker: I do, too.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I got as close to Catholic as you could without being Catholic.
Speaker: You just kind of walked up to the line and.
Speaker: This is nice for sure.
Speaker: I would qualify for a Catholic funeral.
Speaker: I know that.
Speaker: And if I got one, that'd be cool.
Speaker: That'd be fine.
Speaker: So I'm on the record now of saying that.
Speaker: But it doesn't have to be.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: There's just a lot of ways.
Speaker: What was it that then led you into music?
Speaker: Because you do music teaching now.
Speaker: Did it start off in pursuing education in particular?
Speaker: Or did music draw you in?
Speaker: A bit more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I knew like in high school when I decided I wanted to go into ministry and I wanted to go into youth ministry, it was the teaching component that I liked the most.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then I learned that ministry involves a lot of that other relational stuff that I'm not so good at.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And it's great for people who are and I'm glad they exist.
Speaker: That's not me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I thought I will get drained doing that kind of work.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: For me, just pure education is better.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I know that you interview a lot of artists and I'm not, you know, I'm going to be talking about Bach and Beethoven and their art.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: and the way that they are composers and that's what they do.
Speaker: I'm more like a spokesperson now for what they're doing.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: If I had an art, I would say my art would be teaching.
Speaker: And I'm the kind of artist that like if you were drawing a picture and you didn't like it and you crumpled it up and threw it away.
Speaker: For me, that would be like video after video and make a teaching video.
Speaker: Oh, garbage, delete, throw it away.
Speaker: I'm like that.
Speaker: So what was it about music then that drew you into wanting to teach that as opposed to another another subject?
Speaker: You know, I think for me, to be honest, the gritty truth of it is that for me, music was a therapeutic thing for a traumatic childhood.
Speaker: And so it was introduced at a very crucial point in time, about a year and a half after my parents got divorced.
Speaker: We moved across the country.
Speaker: We moved back.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: At the time that my life started to, like when we moved back to Michigan, this is where most of my family and friends were.
Speaker: And so music was introduced kind of right at that point in time.
Speaker: And it was the sort of thing where if I was upset and I could go practice, I could play angry songs.
Speaker: Mr. Rogers has this right quote about his parents letting him
Speaker: express his feelings that way because he wasn't allowed to with his voice right but he could with his hands and i could with my violin on those strings and they didn't ever stop me because i think they were probably thinking well at least he's not breaking his tv or punching a hole in the wall yeah you know he's yeah he's learning it is a great outlet oh yeah yeah i didn't uh what's the word sublimation i didn't understand the word sublimation until just a few years ago but for me it was the best like accidental sublimation of my childhood yeah
Speaker: Explain sublimation if somebody does a job.
Speaker: We're here to learn on podcasts.
Speaker: I'll take a stab at that.
Speaker: Listeners should Google it to make sure they get the right definition.
Speaker: But the big idea is a healthy outlet for something that could be negative.
Speaker: So if you're mad, you could do something destructive like punch a wall and then have to fix something later.
Speaker: Or you could go to the gym and punch a punching bag.
Speaker: And one of them is going to work you out and be healthy and leave you better off.
Speaker: And the other is going to leave you behind.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Art is often, I think.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Art, I do think is often that, that outlet.
Speaker: I think it's interesting that music hit you at that time and stuck with you.
Speaker: I'm thinking back to my own story and,
Speaker: I describe myself as a storyteller and I do a lot of theater and I do some writing, but that really sort of, similar to you, came to the rose to the top or something for me during my parents' divorce and coping with that.
Speaker: And that was where I sort of escaped to.
Speaker: You said violin too, right?
Speaker: Violin was part of that too.
Speaker: Also violin is, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so that's interesting then to think about a God's sovereignty and arranging those in such a time where like those become important things, but also just how you never know what might like just catch you at the right moment and then become such a important formative thing.
Speaker: So was it that experience then in being able to process that emotionally that made you want to pursue teaching that in particular?
Speaker: Well, let's see.
Speaker: I think I would have been happy teaching anything.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It was just something I was really good at.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Way to go then.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And in high school, I started an orchestra and it was really just good luck.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, Providence, however you want to call it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: At the time, it definitely struck me as a good luck.
Speaker: That's how I labeled it then.
Speaker: um and i won the talent show playing the devil went down to georgia and i was from kind of a small town a lot of farmers and it was the right song for the right audience yeah it would have been bad to play a boccarini minuet i would have lost the talent show with the same level of talent you know um
Speaker: And so right song, right audience.
Speaker: And then the photographer for the newspaper said she had a hard time finding a violin teacher for her kids.
Speaker: And she was positive that if I put my phone number in that article or let her put my phone number in the article, I would get, she said, 20 calls with people wanting lessons.
Speaker: And she was almost dead on.
Speaker: No way.
Speaker: Within a few weeks of the thing, it was on the front page of our local paper.
Speaker: And within a few weeks, I had about 15 students.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And you were in high school?
Speaker: And I was in high school.
Speaker: I was an 11th grader, could just barely drive.
Speaker: Some students drove to me because they had a hard time finding a teacher.
Speaker: And they thought, well, this kid can play, we'll let him teach.
Speaker: So I was just a few years older than a lot of my students.
Speaker: And in some cases, I was teaching adults.
Speaker: And so we didn't know what to call me.
Speaker: And so we started with Mr. Zach because it had a mix of informal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I was the age of some of their kids.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it was still enough for the younger ones to show some kind of respect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Not in a super formal way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's kind of been the name that stuck.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's how I'm kind of known by all my students for the last 20 years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: What does teaching look like for you now?
Speaker: How do you do that?
Speaker: What are kind of your...
Speaker: I don't know, main focuses and avenues and stuff with that.
Speaker: So for the last five years or so, it has secretly been research and development.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So curriculum design is what I found that I really love doing.
Speaker: And I love teaching the classes, but for me, it's fun just to sit down.
Speaker: And I think that helps too.
Speaker: At the classes, I just sit down and have fun with the students because the actual class time for me is a sort of a breeding ground of finding out is the lesson that I just, is the lesson I made working.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Do the students like it?
Speaker: Do they seem bored?
Speaker: Are they resistant to even trying it?
Speaker: If they did the lesson, did it work?
Speaker: Did they do the whole lesson?
Speaker: And that for me is just data, raw data that I can use to say like, the last three students who learned that song all struggled at measure 10 at that particular technique.
Speaker: I'm going to remake that one.
Speaker: In the garbage it goes.
Speaker: I remake and I make sure to focus on that thing.
Speaker: And then I see if the next three or four students get it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And boom, it smooths out just a brick at a time.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: They're making year-long, multiple years-long courses that way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is happening primarily online.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Students have been down the East Coast.
Speaker: Some of them are in England.
Speaker: I've got some in California.
Speaker: And there have been some across the world.
Speaker: I'm fascinated to see how hardcore some of these parents are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, I was doing some free online piano camps a few summers ago.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And some of these parents had their kids up at 10.30 p.m.
Speaker: or 11 p.m.
Speaker: to do the class and then put their kid to bed.
Speaker: Dang.
Speaker: And these are young kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, well, they should watch the replay.
Speaker: I think is what they should do, but whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How do people find you?
Speaker: I mostly advertise on Facebook.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so I run little campaigns all the time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've got a new one that's like a three-day, three-song, I call it the Quick Start Kids Piano Pack.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: It's a little song pack.
Speaker: They can just try it, and if they like it, then they want to do more.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker: Sweet.
Speaker: It's a good time.
Speaker: I would quickly like to ask a couple questions I ask everybody when they're on, and then I want to delve into some of the research you've been doing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: One of the questions we always ask in looking at art and how it intersects with our faith and such, how do you feel that God's been using art in your life in this season, wherever you're at right now?
Speaker: Like right now, like recently?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hmm, that's interesting.
Speaker: You know, so I've got some hangups around music, like singing at church.
Speaker: It's funny, I'm a music teacher and I'll be one of the only people not singing for longer in the praise and worship time.
Speaker: I always feel like I'm probably getting noticed more because I'm not singing.
Speaker: I just like out the words.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I found myself with all this musical symbolism stuff translating what's with these modern songs into the kind of techniques that Bach and Beethoven used.
Speaker: So I remember my favorite one from last week was the what's it called?
Speaker: The
Speaker: Mountains bow down and the seas will roll.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Shout to the Lord.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Shout to the Lord.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was there, they had that one and I thought, oh mountains, that's in the prelude in, I got to kind of count them, prelude in A major because it's the form, day three of creation.
Speaker: And so it's the forming of the lands out of the waters.
Speaker: I thought, okay, so he does mountains in the same way that you would imagine.
Speaker: We think of the Grand Tetons, but Bach is German.
Speaker: So he'd be thinking of the German Alps.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, they're really jagged and they've got the tall points.
Speaker: And so you draw a set of notes that connect, you know, 16th notes would be beamed.
Speaker: And so it's kind of the underground or the hills.
Speaker: And then the dots, the note head, are going to be the way that the mountains move up and down.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It creates these kind of scalar patterns that are da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: You can draw little mountains.
Speaker: So how do you draw a mountain bowing down?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, it kind of changes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he uses, I was thinking, what you'd have to do is show a mountain like it's a person.
Speaker: So you anthropomorphize the mountain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because he does this thing where people fall down.
Speaker: There's one from Prelude in G that's the Proverbs 24, 16 man.
Speaker: And it says a righteous man will...
Speaker: How does it say?
Speaker: A righteous person will meet calamity and then rise seven times.
Speaker: And so the idea is mess up, but rise up again.
Speaker: Mess up and rise up again.
Speaker: Whereas the wicked will, I don't know, be tempted or something and then...
Speaker: just fall they're done because they succumb to the temptation right so what he does is he takes a person and he draws like a stick figure person this was in the ted talk and then the body down and then he falls falls falls and then the second time and it's grouped together so you can see he's falling the second time third time fourth time fifth time sixth seventh and then rise up rise up rise up and then done right yeah so it symbolizes that that period of the he tells the story he illustrates the story
Speaker: So with mountains bowing down, you can start to imagine that you'd have to draw the same mountain up high and then take the same shape and then move it down.
Speaker: And then take the same shape and then move it down.
Speaker: And then take the same shape and move it down.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: A mountain.
Speaker: bowing down yeah and then you could take some chord some wonderful just robust beautiful chord and that could represent god or the lord or whatever usually the perfect triad is c major and so you can imagine just a large arpeggiated c major chord
Speaker: And that's the mountain bowing down before the Lord.
Speaker: That is cool.
Speaker: Ah, it's so fun.
Speaker: And there's a million different mountains you could draw.
Speaker: You could choose your key signature.
Speaker: You could throw some rhythms into it.
Speaker: You can create your own mountain.
Speaker: And that's where a class of 100 students would make 100 different mountains.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And they could all symbolize.
Speaker: And that's the art of the different musicians.
Speaker: Let's see what does your mountain look like.
Speaker: How does it bow down?
Speaker: This technique, and you talked a lot about it in your recent TED talk, which was so interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, which we'll have just for our audience in the show notes below as well, so you can check that out, because that's a really good primer as well for some of this stuff.
Speaker: We'll give you a primer as well in this, but if you... We've kind of given you a primer a little bit, but this is my awkwardness.
Speaker: Pause and watch that.
Speaker: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker: Now I'll catch up to the rest of the conversation.
Speaker: You're back.
Speaker: Okay, good.
Speaker: So that like how these composers like Bach and Beethoven made these like visual pictures within their music of the thing that they're talking about.
Speaker: It's just wild.
Speaker: Is there, does that technique have a name?
Speaker: So it has been described loosely historically as something like tone poems.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: We hear about that, and I've seen some of these around, and to me, the impression I get when I look at some of that is it's very abstract.
Speaker: Beethoven told us that string quartet number 14 is supposed to be based on the tomb scene from Romeo and Juliet.
Speaker: That's like a documented thing he said.
Speaker: And so people look at it, and I haven't analyzed it closely, so maybe in five years or whatever when I get to that, we'll take a look at it.
Speaker: Maybe we'll have another podcast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: But that sort of thing, usually the analysis it gets is, okay, those are maybe sounding like the stab wounds or, well, I don't think there's any stabbing.
Speaker: Poison, right?
Speaker: One of them stabs themselves and one of them poisons themselves.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a little bit of stabbing.
Speaker: I think Romeo.
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: I think Romeo stabs himself and Juliet poisons herself, I believe.
Speaker: So dumb.
Speaker: What a waste.
Speaker: Somebody leave a comment.
Speaker: Yes, correct.
Speaker: Tell us how they die.
Speaker: Someone listening I know knows.
Speaker: And so historically it's kind of an abstract concept where it's like, okay, so the tomb scene is sad.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Therefore it should sound not happy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And to be performed well, we have to use our imagination to think like, well, at what point are they here?
Speaker: Is she just discovering?
Speaker: Or is he just discovering her?
Speaker: And then is she discovering him?
Speaker: Because there's the falling asleep, waking up.
Speaker: But the way Bach would do it, or Beethoven would do it, would be to... It's harder in Shakespeare because...
Speaker: Beethoven and Bach both do a lot with finger numbers to point at Bible verses.
Speaker: So cool.
Speaker: And that fills in the text.
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: You can get a really clear idea.
Speaker: And there are usually a lot of verses to choose from that have different nuance that kind of point at something.
Speaker: And a lot of times they will kind of triangulate a position.
Speaker: That's been fascinating for me.
Speaker: So you'll see the same concept in three or four different verses.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I get the question, probably one of the most common questions I get about the Bible verse thing is like, how can you know?
Speaker: Because can't you use different finger numbers to play it?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, that's part of the problem.
Speaker: And aren't there, you know, because what I'll usually do is I'll see a finger combination.
Speaker: It's pretty easy if it's something like three, one, and then a, well, I was going to say six, but we have to add up on one end.
Speaker: It has to be separated into voices to do that trick.
Speaker: But you'll see a finger combination like 2-3-2-3 or 3-2-3-2.
Speaker: That's an easy one.
Speaker: And usually Beethoven will signal it by doing it multiple times.
Speaker: And those ones are much easier to find.
Speaker: Like there's a part in for at least that's after the do-do-do-do-do-do-do part.
Speaker: It's like da-da-da-da and then da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's the same finger combination three times in a row.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's 1, 5, 4, 3.
Speaker: It's the most logical way to play it.
Speaker: And so it's pointing, I think, at 1 Corinthians 15, 43, three times.
Speaker: And then you can look at other 15, 43s, because what I do is I'll plug it in to Google, and I'll say Bible 15, 43.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then if it kind of makes sense, like something from Psalms 15, I don't know if it has a 43, I don't know if it goes that far, but it might just make no sense at all.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Something from 1 Corinthians, it usually is whatever is the most popularly known one or the most popularly queried ones.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Those are the ones he knew too.
Speaker: Because although he was, it seems pretty deeply Catholic, he wasn't a Bible scholar.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so he picked and chose from the ones that were prominent, easier to know.
Speaker: So can you tell us what does fur at least mean biblically?
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: We should totally get into that.
Speaker: This is probably the coolest individual piece that I've deciphered fully.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: This one is like 98% done.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Moonlight Sonata is also super cool, but I think I'm only about 10% done with that.
Speaker: And the story that's emerging is super cool, but let's go on for release.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So this is stuff that you've...
Speaker: You're discovering you're not just reading about people who have discovered it.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: This is authentic.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: We're getting a scoop.
Speaker: We are.
Speaker: Just to catch up any audience members that are driving and can't click on the TED Talk link.
Speaker: So the sort of premise of this research is in a lot of the classical music from the great classical composers that we know, there are...
Speaker: The word hidden messages makes it seem like it's a conspiracy, but there's subtextual things going on.
Speaker: Wholesome messages.
Speaker: But that are happening in the music.
Speaker: So like you were just talking about with the fingers, where the finger pattern can be referencing...
Speaker: Scripture.
Speaker: So a lot of these are scriptural.
Speaker: You also mentioned some that maybe are happening just in their life, like you mentioned.
Speaker: I think we'll probably talk about some of that with Elise in for Elise.
Speaker: But just sort of uncovering a lot of interesting things.
Speaker: Yeah, like meditative sort of theological things happening in the undercurrents of just the melody, the way that they write the notes, the way they shape the melody, and the way that the technique to play it.
Speaker: So that's just a really, really brief summary for those who can't click on the TED Talk to watch.
Speaker: So let's dive in to Fur Elise.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: What is happening here?
Speaker: What's... This is the one that Patrick from the TED, the speaking coach, he wanted me to do this one.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I wanted to as well, but it takes way more time than I could possibly do.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So let's do a long form podcast.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: This is so exciting.
Speaker: So, all right, let me start first before we dive right into it.
Speaker: I want to, I want to create a case for why I started wondering about this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes, please.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause
Speaker: I've taught this piece hundreds of times for decades now.
Speaker: And there were a lot of things that I always just scratched my head about.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: There are sections like, it's the, so it's a song that's, it's like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in the sense that it's got the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Speaker: the B theme and it goes back to the A theme.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Now non-musical listeners have no or at least does the same kind of thing.
Speaker: It's like do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do is the A theme.
Speaker: And then it develops into something completely different and a radical change is like dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-d
Speaker: if you're not really familiar with for at least they you might be wondering that's part of her at least it's like yep that's the b-scene then it goes back to do do do yeah throw it on spotify really quick i know right you can do that in the car they go listen right and keep in mind while you listen that what you're hearing is a version not informed by the story beethoven's trying to tell and therefore what you're hearing
Speaker: is pretty wrong.
Speaker: Emotion, wrong, tempo, volume.
Speaker: The story totally changes how most of it should be performed.
Speaker: I wish we had a piano here so you could play it for us.
Speaker: I've been trying to get my wife to let us get a piano for months.
Speaker: I could bring mine in.
Speaker: I've got a digital keyboard.
Speaker: We could wire it up.
Speaker: Or I've got a pretty good mic set up at my house.
Speaker: We could do it there.
Speaker: So yeah, the performance totally changes.
Speaker: from modern renditions.
Speaker: And that's another thing.
Speaker: So then it's got a C section.
Speaker: Not supposed to sound like a cesarean section, although, although kind of related to what goes on in that section because the C section in the Baroque doctrine of affect would be called
Speaker: an impending doom technique.
Speaker: And impending doom is this real fun, real easy to spot one because even if you don't know how to read music, if there's an impending doom, usually what you'll see is the same note over and over and over.
Speaker: So for at least it's do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm getting stressed.
Speaker: It's kind of like a thunderstorm rolling in from the distance where, you know, when you hear that first crack of thunder or maybe you see the lightning, but you don't hear it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's very far away.
Speaker: Then it gets a little closer and it gets louder and it gets louder.
Speaker: You can render a thunderstorm pretty well with music, especially you get some of those low notes just rumbling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so this section I call the C section, not meaning to refer to that, but maybe subconsciously because this is where Elise is giving birth.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In the C section?
Speaker: I know, right?
Speaker: In the C, yeah, in section C, maybe is what I should call it.
Speaker: So there's certain things.
Speaker: This section is usually performed very quickly.
Speaker: Dun, dun, dun, dun, like that.
Speaker: But in measure 75, he uses a quarter note and an eighth rest.
Speaker: So in a quick piece, that would be like, if we're counting in 3-8, which is the time signature of the piece, it would be like 1-2-3-1-2-3, which would be like 1-2-rest.
Speaker: And then in the next measure, it's an eighth note and 2-8-rest, which would be like 1-rest-rest.
Speaker: which on a fast piano piece, the audience is not even going to be able to detect the difference because... Right, because you're blazing through the chord notes fast that it's basically the same thing.
Speaker: One, two, rest, one, one, or then one, two, rest, one, rest, rest.
Speaker: You don't even hear it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I thought, it takes more work for Beethoven to do that, to be that deliberate about something that is usually so fast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And is there a reason of two eighths rest instead of a quarter rest?
Speaker: There is.
Speaker: Ah!
Speaker: There's a reason for three rests in total, to be specific.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So we use the phrase rest in peace.
Speaker: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker: It is one way, one of several ways that he's signaling that she died.
Speaker: Oh no.
Speaker: And so did her twin girls.
Speaker: Oh no!
Speaker: How can we possibly know that she's dying and that there were twins and that they were female?
Speaker: How can we know that?
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: I should give a trigger warning, though, because I've talked to enough people about this to know that this can be a sensitive subject.
Speaker: I would like to also throw out that we don't know that Beethoven is doing anything historical.
Speaker: It might be a story.
Speaker: And if it is, it's a very emotionally rich story because, especially in the 1810s, 1820s, when Beethoven was writing and revising this, there's two versions of the piece, the one famous one and there's another one,
Speaker: We don't know if it's real, but the likelihood of a first-time mother dying in childbirth was five to ten times higher if twins.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so if twins is about 1 in 75 chance that that's the case, if twins then... Is that how often twins are?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Something like 1 in 500 or 1 in 600.
Speaker: We'll look that up too.
Speaker: Google that.
Speaker: It's something around there though.
Speaker: So anyway, so how can you possibly know that from just notes, right?
Speaker: Well, there's all sorts of ways.
Speaker: Did you know that Artists of the Way is more than just a podcast?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: We do live theater.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We have a conference.
Speaker: Yearly.
Speaker: The Cultivate Conference.
Speaker: Just happened and it was really great.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It's a growing organization.
Speaker: We're so excited about what is happening for Artists of the Way.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And we need your support to be able to do it.
Speaker: We want to cultivate great, challenging, joyful, redemptive art.
Speaker: And we want to equip...
Speaker: the artists here in Michigan who are doing those things and all of you listening to the podcast.
Speaker: All of that takes money, unfortunately.
Speaker: That's the world we live in.
Speaker: But if you earned, Earth was like, you got to have some money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But if you want to support Artists of the Way in everything that we do, go to our website and donate.
Speaker: www.artistoftheway.com slash support us.
Speaker: It's support-us because the way the website... Just go to the homepage.
Speaker: Be a normal person.
Speaker: Go to...
Speaker: And click on the support us button.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Our end of year goal is $6,000.
Speaker: We are about a third of the way there.
Speaker: So your one-time gift can go to helping us reach that goal, give us a nice jumpstart, or you can become one of our monthly donors.
Speaker: We have a goal of having a total of a third of our yearly budget being covered by monthly donors.
Speaker: So your gift of any amount per month, it does a huge amount to help us be able to put on this podcast and do it at a level of quality, be able to increase the quality.
Speaker: Yes, buy a third mic for when we have a guest.
Speaker: Indeed.
Speaker: You'd like that.
Speaker: Yes, you could donate.
Speaker: And Mark, this is specifically for a third mic.
Speaker: That would touch our hearts.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We hope you guys are enjoying this episode.
Speaker: Thank you for your support, for listening.
Speaker: And we hope you guys enjoy the rest of the episode.
Speaker: But I still need to build a case for why we would think any funny business is happening in this at all.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If funny business isn't too impolite to call it.
Speaker: Why would he be doing, why would he take all that effort to do this?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, a lot of reasons.
Speaker: One of which is like, what inspires a composer to write a certain kind of set of notes anyway?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So if he can get some notes to have some kind of meaning, which would be the curriculum he was raised on, which is that Bach curriculum, which is instrumental.
Speaker: It's vital for me to be able to decipher this stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because what Bach does is goes systematically through Genesis.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And so you can link the mountains.
Speaker: I would have never known that he was drawing mountains if I didn't suspect that he was doing the seven days of creation, six days of creation and day of rest.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: If he wasn't doing that, then I'd have no reason to suspect that those are mountains.
Speaker: But when he draws in a way that you can either link it to one of the five methods of higher order thinking, it's got to be a picture.
Speaker: Let's see if I can get them all a picture, a gesture, physical gesture, like sign language.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Informal or formal, like little kids do the finger thing to represent a person walking.
Speaker: But French sign language, Beethoven would have been studying because he was going deaf.
Speaker: So sign language would have been very important for him.
Speaker: So pictures, gestures, numbers, letters.
Speaker: Letters would include words, combining letters to do that.
Speaker: And then sounds, because the musical instruments all make sound.
Speaker: And we can relate to things like crying, like, and put notes that feel like that.
Speaker: John's done that, yeah.
Speaker: And some instruments do it way better.
Speaker: Like you can do a better cry on a violin because you're not limited between the notes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You can slide around.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: My favorite thing to do.
Speaker: I'm crying.
Speaker: I slide around on the violin while I cry.
Speaker: Which then becomes a reason that a composer might choose a certain instrument or set of instruments to represent a certain story.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Or include for a moment even a certain instrument to do an effect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we see that kind of stuff in modern orchestration all the time.
Speaker: Like the sleigh bell song.
Speaker: Yeah, right?
Speaker: Yeah, you've got the whip.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: They'll use instruments just for a note or two, just to do a thing.
Speaker: And then, boom, it's done.
Speaker: It served its purpose.
Speaker: so there's other things though beethoven tells us that we're supposed to switch hands uh on two notes that's uh in measure 12 13 um he says that and he has to go out of his way to tell us this he has to say okay we're going to switch the bass cleft to a treble cleft and we're going to do that because the bass cleft is how the reader is going to know to use the left hand and then on the treble cleft we're going to
Speaker: Play the same two notes we just played.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: And then in the next two notes, we're going to go up higher.
Speaker: We don't need to switch hands to go that.
Speaker: We can switch our thumb onto where our pinky was while we switch up, and it will sound exactly the same.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No detectable difference.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So while the effort for the hand switching, right, and I did this right at the end of the TED Talk because I wanted to show some of the gestures that forces the musician to put the hands down.
Speaker: You can imagine both hands being open like high fives, one thumb and pinky on the right hand and then the left hand pinky on top of thumb and thumb on top of pinky in a gesture that makes it look like they're holding hands.
Speaker: because we just had Beethoven's name spelled out in letters, and now we have the first and last letter of Elise's name spelled out in letters.
Speaker: So we just left off with B, E, E, and now it's E, E, and then E, E, and then the right hand moves up E, E again,
Speaker: And if I was a soprano, like Elise might have been.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because that is a soprano exercise.
Speaker: Like going from that range of notes in the octave jumps is as important to singers as scales are to pianists.
Speaker: And so those octave leaps suggest that she's maybe a soprano.
Speaker: And there was an Elise who was a soprano, who was in Beethoven's circle, who was young, who disappears from all public records in 1820s.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: Elise Behrensfeld is her name.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I didn't find that.
Speaker: There's some other person out in Europe who did that research.
Speaker: But I would confirm with what I see here, I probably should look that person up and talk to them.
Speaker: Because we have some things to talk about.
Speaker: Yeah, you do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, so first and last letter of Elise's name makes E-E, like E-L-I-S-E, the perfect letters to represent her.
Speaker: And then I think it's cute that Beethoven's name here is so often portrayed with just B-E-E.
Speaker: It's very cute.
Speaker: Because I can imagine Elise just totally being like, hey, bang.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: People do that.
Speaker: It's a thing.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: And if they had some musical romance, it'd be great for him to be like, hey, Elise, like my girl.
Speaker: So is it your conjecture that...
Speaker: she died in childbirth to his children.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yeah, because otherwise he'd have no reason to be so mournful and repentant and remorseful.
Speaker: In the first few measures here, measures one through eight, the left hand can be played
Speaker: With exclusively finger combination 5-1 on the left hand and then cross up to 2.
Speaker: This is where Beethoven the Catholic is super important.
Speaker: His patrons were Catholic.
Speaker: He attended Catholic masses.
Speaker: He wrote Catholic masses.
Speaker: He performed music.
Speaker: Well, he didn't write the liturgies.
Speaker: He wrote the music.
Speaker: One of his final great pieces is the Misa Solemnis, which by music continues.
Speaker: Scholars is considered his greatest work, even though we usually know, like the popular music is more like Moonlight Sonata.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Ode to Joy Symphony 9 sort of stuff.
Speaker: Misa Solemnis is considered to be the, I don't know.
Speaker: Magnum Opus.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's wonderful.
Speaker: And also composed after he went deaf.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: But 512 representing Psalm 51.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And having a left-hand finger cross over is what we call it, even in English, because the pinky, I'm sorry, the pointer finger has to cross over the thumb.
Speaker: And so it's kind of like a small way of doing the sign of the cross with just a finger.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: So also Bible nerd coming up.
Speaker: So Psalm 51 is David's Psalm of Lament after Bathsheba.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Bingo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: Oh, that really ties in that.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A different kind of adultery in Beethoven's case.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If Elise was betrothed or married, which there's no public record.
Speaker: If it's Elise Berenstall, there's no public record.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But the feeling still, like, I think that's the one where he talks about
Speaker: having blood guilt is the way he describes it.
Speaker: And David killed Bathsheba's husband, you know, legally because he's king so he can send who he wants to battle, but knows that it's his fault.
Speaker: And so Beethoven didn't mean to have her have twins and die in childbirth, but he knows it's his fault, at least maybe for the story, but maybe for the reality.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because this was never a published piece.
Speaker: Oh, really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, it's a hidden diary.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It was in his private storehouse and published over 30 years after he died.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there's like other reasons to think that because it could go a few ways.
Speaker: It could be the case that he wrote the story as literature, as fiction, maybe in a moment of inspiration, you know, and just thought,
Speaker: Oh, yeah, you know, there's a lot of good Bible verses that make finger numbers.
Speaker: That could make a pretty juicy story.
Speaker: Maybe I'll do that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then maybe he thought, ah, you know, some of my friends know how to read my secret writing.
Speaker: Nah, if the word got out, people might think this actually happened.
Speaker: And therefore, that could be bad for me politically because they'd say, well, why else would you write such a sad song about something that's not real?
Speaker: And maybe that could be bad.
Speaker: So maybe I'll just put that one in the cupboard for now.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Or maybe it was his private confession and his private way of praying to God and putting in permanent record that he is sorry.
Speaker: And he conveyed that in the language he spoke best.
Speaker: Because it is titled and subtitled for Elise.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: in memory and it has a date april 27 and then the year is put on a lot of these copies but not in the original the original one that was published is just april 27 they put 1810 i think that year would be wrong too i think it's more likely to be 1820 if it was a year that's when she disappears right so okay yeah that is fascinating so much little history to it
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Whoa.
Speaker: Oh, that's sad.
Speaker: So interesting.
Speaker: And very sad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've had, you know, at first it didn't occur to me that it could just be a story because a lot of the other stuff I've been doing, the Bach research and such, um,
Speaker: You know, people interpret Genesis differently.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The Catholic interpretation is these are stories that, you know, have a moral point and you're supposed to interpret them kind of loosely.
Speaker: Some people are diehard about, no, 24-hour days of creation, seven of them, rest of them, you know, and okay, however you want to interpret that, it's not the point of this podcast.
Speaker: But for me, a lot of it, when I'm reading the Martin Luther commentary, especially to help, because Bach was writing from the same church in the same town that Martin Luther held, was like hiding from the Catholic persecution, where he was translating the German Luther Bible.
Speaker: At the same time?
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: 200 years later.
Speaker: 200 years later.
Speaker: That's how bad my head is.
Speaker: No, no, it's okay.
Speaker: Two centuries later.
Speaker: But he's literally...
Speaker: in the same town, he's in the hot seat of the Protestant Reformation, and Bach seems to care deeply about this stuff, and knows, and certainly was familiar with both Latin and with Martin Luther's commentary.
Speaker: on Genesis and Martin Luther has, that's one of my resources I brought for you guys to share with the audience.
Speaker: You said what resources would I want to share?
Speaker: Check out the Martin Luther commentary on Genesis.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: And the one on the Psalms is also really cool.
Speaker: I haven't done, I haven't read as much of that one, but the one on Genesis is amazing.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And he's, um,
Speaker: Martin Luther was writing the commentary not as a commentary.
Speaker: He was writing it as lectures for his classroom.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So you read it like you're a student listening to him, and these are his lecture notes.
Speaker: Okay, sure.
Speaker: And very word-for-word formed intelligently, very interesting.
Speaker: And a lot of the scientific questions he brings up are ones that we might be able to resolve better now than during his time.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So one of the questions is on day one of creation, God says, let there be light.
Speaker: And on day four creates the sun.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So Martin Luther tackles that and says, whatever kind of light it was on day one, we are to, I'm going to get the quote wrong, but to paraphrase, he says, we're to understand that it is a divine light of some kind and perhaps better and more radiant, more perfect.
Speaker: And however we can imagine it, then whatever the light is that we received on day four.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: And so I think of Nikola Tesla and the way he describes understanding the universe in terms of wavelengths and frequency, vibration and all that.
Speaker: And I think, what kind of light would it be with our modern understanding, you know, in a post Einstein era, in a quantum mechanics era?
Speaker: And I thought, for me, I think, what is the kind of light on day one that's different in
Speaker: And we know that light is just part of a small fraction of the visible spectrum.
Speaker: What we perceive as light is a very small fraction of what light actually is.
Speaker: Interesting point number one.
Speaker: Interesting point number two is that the whole universe consists of vibrations and there is nothing that exists that is not in motion.
Speaker: And so that very motion itself, the fact that it has energy, could be a Moses way of trying to convey to the people at that time, pre-Einstein, pre-quantum mechanics, pre-light frequencies, you know, pre-Newton,
Speaker: Just saying, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was void and formless.
Speaker: He uses the Hebrew tohu and bohu to describe just a vacant mess.
Speaker: And so he calls it the, oh, he's got a cute phrase for it.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: The primordial ooze.
Speaker: That's what Luther says?
Speaker: That's how it's translated in English.
Speaker: He did it in German.
Speaker: But I think it was German or maybe Latin.
Speaker: I think he was lecturing in German.
Speaker: He was all about the people's language.
Speaker: So probably in German is my guess.
Speaker: My translation is English.
Speaker: But yeah, the primordial ooze of the universe is such a cool way to describe it.
Speaker: And he says, let there be.
Speaker: And Moses is thinking.
Speaker: how can I describe this?
Speaker: How do I describe what God said there could be on that first day?
Speaker: And I imagine like he took off the pause button and allowed emotion to exist.
Speaker: But saying let there be emotion, it's like, no, it's not very clear.
Speaker: People aren't going to get that.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: Let there be energy would be a pretty good English translation.
Speaker: Let there be energy is not a bad rendering of let there be light.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: And does describe that now the waters are moving.
Speaker: Now the spirit of God is, I was sitting in the park one day after reading this, like one of your other questions was how has this stuff affected my beliefs?
Speaker: I had never thought of the spirit of God as just like the feeling of the literal wind on a windy day.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: My son was playing out at the park.
Speaker: We homeschooled, and he's out at our recess.
Speaker: I'm sitting there reading the Martin Luther commentary about day one.
Speaker: He's talking about the Spirit of God hovering over the waters.
Speaker: And hovering is an interesting word.
Speaker: So then a breeze came by, and when you're in an open area, you can see it coming from a distance.
Speaker: And I see the trees in the distance, and I always love watching the wind blow over a lake.
Speaker: It's one of my favorite things about being on a still lake is when the wind is playing with the top of the water.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And so I saw it coming and I was just kind of waiting for it.
Speaker: Like, you know, like, here it goes.
Speaker: It's going to be a good one.
Speaker: And it was a good one.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: And it was just related to what I was reading.
Speaker: And I felt like the spirit of God.
Speaker: What would people think in a context where they have religion, but they don't have much science?
Speaker: It's like, what would they think?
Speaker: It's like the breath of God just blew on them.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And that's a really beautiful thought because then anytime you feel a breeze, you can feel like God is still breathing on you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I've felt that before.
Speaker: Isn't that?
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: That's one of my wife's favorites.
Speaker: She frequently is like, every time that I feel the wind, it's like a reminder that God is present with me and the Holy Spirit is with me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's just beautiful.
Speaker: And then you relate that same idea to breath of life.
Speaker: And when someone dies, the breath goes out.
Speaker: And so our breath is a little metaphor for God's breath.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And it's blowing across the whole universe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not just my little park, you know.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Isn't that cool?
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: And so when Bach is drawing the primordial ooze of the universe, which is what the prelude in C major is supposed to be, he uses half notes that are open on the inside to show the emptiness, the tohu bohu concept.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then puts rests above it.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: In a way that he doesn't need to write all that extra stuff.
Speaker: He has to write extra stuff to break it into three voices.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Three voices of music.
Speaker: But the rest are important because they represent spirit.
Speaker: It's like there, it's on the page, but it's silent.
Speaker: It's a presence and it's there, but it's invisible, it's inaudible.
Speaker: Well, not invisible, but to the audience it's invisible, but it's inaudible, but it's there.
Speaker: And it is there in every measure.
Speaker: And then the notes themselves cascade over in this kind of pattern that looks like wind.
Speaker: And then the bottom two notes, which are the first two voices, make little waves.
Speaker: And so it's this idea.
Speaker: And it's always in that pattern.
Speaker: And so all 33 of the, or 32 of the first measures use exactly the same pattern.
Speaker: And it's all just variations on breezes over a primordial ooze.
Speaker: And if you want the real clincher, here's where Bach is much more a theologian and a scholar than Beethoven.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Beethoven can use the verses.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He can say, this describes my story.
Speaker: And he can put in finger numbers that point to verses.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he can do that with time signatures, and he can do it with a few other mechanisms.
Speaker: But Bach will use Lutheran theology to point to John 3.16 in Prelude in C, which represents day one of creation.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Before the light has even broke.
Speaker: Because right now, the prelude in C is a universe that exists before Let There Be Light.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's prelude in G. Okay.
Speaker: That's the next piece.
Speaker: He gives one whole piece to showing the preexistence of the universe and God's presence there before the moment of light.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And the finger numbers he uses on the left hand can be a three on the left hand, a one on the left hand, which is a middle finger and a thumb.
Speaker: And then the right hand uses an arpeggio pattern.
Speaker: This is exactly how any trained pianist would play an arpeggio.
Speaker: We would do a thumb, pointer, middle, pinky.
Speaker: He just uses thumb, pointer, middle, which are fingers one, two, and three.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: and that adds up to six.
Speaker: And that's one voice of music.
Speaker: So he isolates the voices to give a three and a one in voice one, voice two, and then voice three adds up to six.
Speaker: It's a 316.
Speaker: So that at the moment of before even light, the dawning of, before the dawn of the creation of the universe in the primordial ooze, Bach is symbolizing that he has a plan for salvation.
Speaker: God so loved the world.
Speaker: It's the craziest thing.
Speaker: He blew him
Speaker: mind wow it still blows my mind you can tell like what that is crazy and then the next and then i started to think oh my gosh if you can do that what's going on with all these other measures right and so so far what it appears to be is uh he's cascading through john he's linking because john just for the listeners too um starts with in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god and
Speaker: In Genesis, it's a parallel then to Genesis because in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Speaker: And so John itself is kind of the perfect mirror of the New Testament to the Old Testament.
Speaker: And so in the same measure, Bach is illustrating both Genesis and John.
Speaker: And I don't know any other language that can do that except music.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Super powerful.
Speaker: Oh, that is, that has been the most profound thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Bach does it song after song after song and Beethoven will weave in layers of it as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But man, I never, ever, ever thought that I would see such beautiful art.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Music.
Speaker: It just, it's too much to handle.
Speaker: That is insane.
Speaker: Now, when you hear these pieces, you, you know what they sound like better than I do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I wish I did.
Speaker: Does it, um,
Speaker: Does it musically express the feeling that goes along with these thoughts, would you say?
Speaker: Now that's where if you just look up a recording, maybe, maybe not.
Speaker: Right, depending on how the player is putting in their expression.
Speaker: Because right now we live in a sort of stone age of this music because it's actually, it's not a stone age.
Speaker: I shouldn't say that.
Speaker: It's a literacy gap.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because people are literate in how to play it.
Speaker: It's like Shakespeare.
Speaker: If you don't know what the words are, if you don't know what the language is, then you don't know how to express it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Then you got to know the context, right?
Speaker: And so now when I play it, it's fun.
Speaker: That's the fun for the performer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is to render in a way that feels like what is in it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: That is crazy.
Speaker: And then the artist gets better, like me, the artist.
Speaker: I get better as I learn more about the theology.
Speaker: So when I'm stuck, I'll go to a few resources.
Speaker: I'll check out the Baroque Doctrine of Affect if I want to know the music theory.
Speaker: I've got a cool book for that.
Speaker: Or I'll look up my Catholic commentary, or I'll look up some sayings of the Church Fathers, like you were talking about earlier.
Speaker: But my favorite for the Bach Preludes is the work by Martin Luther.
Speaker: So far, it's my favorite.
Speaker: I don't think I'll find a more...
Speaker: appropriate or parallel resource because it makes sense in the time and yeah, the location.
Speaker: That is just fascinating because I feel that music is probably the art form that's the most sort of self-expressionistic in our day and age.
Speaker: Like
Speaker: As an actor or a director when I'm looking at a script and I'm interpreting that, I might still have my own interpretation, but I really do need to figure out what this person wrote and what they intended.
Speaker: I'm going to talk about Hamlet again.
Speaker: Everybody take a drink.
Speaker: Let's go Hamlet!
Speaker: Greatest acting opportunity of my life was I got to play Hamlet.
Speaker: But I...
Speaker: very similar to with Bach diving into what is happening in the air for Shakespeare at that time.
Speaker: Where is Shakespeare setting this story?
Speaker: It's happening right during the Reformation.
Speaker: Hamlet's going to college in Wittenberg.
Speaker: And Hamlet is also very, has a very Catholic understanding, but then also there's like these weird tugs of grace.
Speaker: It's, there's, similarly, there's this just crazy,
Speaker: you can see them wrestling with the issues of life and unpacking that in a very similar way.
Speaker: And so when I'm doing a play, I expect to see that.
Speaker: But when I'm playing a piece, I don't expect that.
Speaker: And so that's...
Speaker: So interesting.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Well, let's talk about Hamlet for another second here.
Speaker: So as far as English goes, a Hamlet is a small town within the church.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, within the church.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And the dad's name is Hamlet Senior and Hamlet Junior, right?
Speaker: So we got Prince and King.
Speaker: And then Old Sweden is another one who's mentioned.
Speaker: Norway.
Speaker: Norway?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Old Norway.
Speaker: Don't they talk about Sweden anywhere in there?
Speaker: Or is it just Norway?
Speaker: I think it's just Norway.
Speaker: They have a rivalry with Norway.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So do you know about the Stuer murders?
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Look up some Danish 1550s.
Speaker: Haven't looked at that in a while.
Speaker: Danish 1550s drama.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The king...
Speaker: was being harassed by maybe some malicious insiders, and they were trying to make him look crazy.
Speaker: So they'd do things like make his bedsheets wet, and he'd go to bed, and he'd be like, why are all my sheets wet?
Speaker: I can't sleep in this.
Speaker: And they'd be like, oh, my lord, what are you talking about?
Speaker: They're perfectly dry.
Speaker: Gaslighting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so they were trying to give him a reputation for being crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he had some political enemies who he decided to throw a banquet for.
Speaker: And then when they arrived, he imprisoned them and murdered them himself.
Speaker: Oh my.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And I think they were the stewards.
Speaker: And I think that's why they're called the steward murders.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He went into each jail cell and murdered each one of them by himself.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And like 50 different people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Crazy, right?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You think I'm crazy?
Speaker: I'll show you crazy.
Speaker: Well, at the time that Hamlet was written, King James was king of Scotland before and became the first king of Great Britain.
Speaker: Elizabeth handed it to him to unite the nations.
Speaker: And then his wife was Anne of Denmark.
Speaker: So the Danish family line and the Danish history was real close to her.
Speaker: Real close and personal.
Speaker: Like these were, you know, relatives basically.
Speaker: This was in her recent history.
Speaker: For us, it would be, because that was 1610s or so.
Speaker: When was Hamlet?
Speaker: Like 1605 or 1610?
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I know Tempest was 1610.
Speaker: 15 something years previously.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It'd be like for us nowadays, the JFK assassinations.
Speaker: For them, it was the Stewart murders.
Speaker: Super crazy.
Speaker: Well, anyway, so Denmark, super tiny country...
Speaker: It is a Hamlet in comparison to Norway.
Speaker: Norway is huge.
Speaker: And so this idea that like maybe the Norwegians were like, we would like Denmark.
Speaker: How can we get it?
Speaker: Like, hmm, let's see their king just died.
Speaker: Let's dress up as king and trick the dumb prince.
Speaker: He's still a college student, right?
Speaker: This idea that he's going off to hang out with his college buddies is important because, oh, he could be jerked.
Speaker: So anyway, so I like to interpret Hamlet.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Not as a real ghost story.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I like to interpret it as a sort of conspiracy theory.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Where Norway in particular is trying to come in.
Speaker: That's a fun interpretation.
Speaker: And take over Denmark by tricking the prince to slaughter the royal family from the inside out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because right at the end of the play, who walks in?
Speaker: Fortinbras.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hey, baby.
Speaker: The plan worked.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That is interesting.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: We'll take this castle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Isn't that fun?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know, right?
Speaker: That's so fascinating.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: A question this keeps bringing to mind, just with art in general, but of course music, there's such intentionality to these pieces and to this writing.
Speaker: Does it feel like we've lost that in the creation of our art?
Speaker: Or are we just seeing so much more art today?
Speaker: Because obviously...
Speaker: Beethoven and Bach are the greats of their time that have sustained until now.
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: There's so much intentionality in everything you're talking about.
Speaker: It sounds like he has to do a research paper as he's writing each note practically, and that's not...
Speaker: the way I would write music, I would start making low tunes.
Speaker: I mean, maybe he knows all of that already, but... That's the thing.
Speaker: He knows it already.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I think part of it is to keep it interesting, he needs some kind of inspiration.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, and he was living at a time when if they needed to have an orchestra, they couldn't just have auditions.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They needed to get some kids from the community and raise them.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: and then teach them everything you need to know.
Speaker: We need an orchestra in 20 years.
Speaker: Start making kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was pretty much like that, you know, and they couldn't just make instruments either.
Speaker: They couldn't just order some.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They had to like plan this out and have them made.
Speaker: And so he needed to teach his own music students how to play.
Speaker: And that's what these were.
Speaker: These were educational pieces.
Speaker: And we see little snippets of several of the preludes in works that he used to teach his own son.
Speaker: Some of them were copied by his wife.
Speaker: He had two wives, and there's some in different, they call them different hands, different, like, what do you call it?
Speaker: I'm not sure which one.
Speaker: I'm thinking of the notebook for Philip Carl Emanuel, or what's his name?
Speaker: One of Bach's kids.
Speaker: Bach had like 20 kids.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah, so anyway, he had to teach his students.
Speaker: And so it's a question as to why he didn't say, this is going to go through the book of Genesis.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Verse by verse, chapter by chapter.
Speaker: And you need to read it not in alphabetical order like it's published.
Speaker: You need to read it in the order of the circle of fifths.
Speaker: And after we go to the sharps, we're going to go through the flats.
Speaker: So it goes, you know, C major, no sharps, no flats.
Speaker: Then G major, one sharp.
Speaker: Then two sharp, three, four, five, six, seven.
Speaker: And then the second story of creation in Genesis 2 starts one flat, two flat, three flat, four flats.
Speaker: And he wraps it up in those four pieces because he has a lot of flexibility.
Speaker: People sometimes ask something like, how could he do that?
Speaker: How could he plan it?
Speaker: Well, it's because you can make a piece as long or as short as you want.
Speaker: Some of them are only 20 measures and others are 180.
Speaker: He had more of a story to tell and fewer key signatures to work with, so he just made one of them really long.
Speaker: He can make them in sections and movements if he wants.
Speaker: Now...
Speaker: Is it thought that people would figure this out at the time or that he would tell people at the time or it's just something that he alone knew?
Speaker: There's reason to believe that he had pressure from the church or the town that...
Speaker: paid him to not do this kind of stuff.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Why is that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the first time Bach was ever publicly censured was by the elders of his church for, it's cute when you see translation in like old timey language, like for putting trills in places that confuses the audience or confuses the worship.
Speaker: That does seem like a very weird nitpicky thing for a theologian at a church to get hung up on.
Speaker: I know, right?
Speaker: Like nowadays we talk, like there's always this problem with like the tension between the music ministry.
Speaker: Put that jungle music away, right?
Speaker: Like, it's like, no, everybody's always so picky about the music.
Speaker: Well, back then it was trills and places that confuseth.
Speaker: But he uses trills to do things like show a sort of a magical miracle act happening like the wizard would like... Oh yeah!
Speaker: Oh great!
Speaker: That translates, yeah!
Speaker: You know, Fantasia does that sort of thing, Sorcerer's Apprentice or whatever.
Speaker: But he also uses it to denote sight.
Speaker: And that happens because the first time we see him appear is when, I think it's the first time we see him.
Speaker: One of the first times we see him appear in the preludes in the order of the circle of the fifths and in the Genesis order that I use is when the creation of the sun and stars are happening.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: They twinkle.
Speaker: They twinkle.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Look at them.
Speaker: They kind of get lighter and brighter.
Speaker: And so musically, it's kind of like just a small rise and a fall, just a note apart.
Speaker: And it just sounds like a twinkle, right?
Speaker: So he uses that to denote sight.
Speaker: Same thing then when Noah, after the flood, is found drunk in his tent and his son comes in and sees him naked, put a little trill there to denote sight.
Speaker: It's like, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you can change the trill.
Speaker: If you want to make it sound dissonant, it's a jarring trill.
Speaker: And people might wonder, why on earth would Bach choose those notes for that thing?
Speaker: It's because he didn't like what he saw.
Speaker: Or it was something wicked about it.
Speaker: And so you can use chords and intervals and all sorts of patterns to make it not sound so good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But when it's beautiful, it can be very good.
Speaker: You can use rhythms that help denote joy.
Speaker: There's all sorts of ways.
Speaker: That's what the doctrine of affect is.
Speaker: It's like, how does it create an affect in our heart?
Speaker: How does it hit with the audience to sound like it's supposed to... This story illustrates.
Speaker: So did you say he wrote music for basically all of Genesis?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so I'm not done with the research to know how far it goes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But I've gotten to about the first 20 preludes.
Speaker: It's 24 preludes and 24 fugues.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Fugue means flight in Latin.
Speaker: And so it seems to start right around the time that Abraham is taking off and leaving for the promised land.
Speaker: I still have to learn a lot about my Genesis history here, but that, I think, is the point.
Speaker: And so the first 12 chapters of Genesis are the primeval history, and that's up through Tower of Babel.
Speaker: Is that the last story?
Speaker: Yeah, because then that's when you move.
Speaker: They separate and you go to Abraham.
Speaker: Boom, yeah.
Speaker: So I think Abraham starts around the Fugue 1, and I don't even know which one is going to be the starting one yet.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: But some of the ways that I find this stuff is when something is really unusual musically, it's usually doing some kind of work for illustrating something.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so it's easy to kind of, that's how I have to triangulate where does a section start and end.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I found some that are pointing at, oh, who is it that gets the...
Speaker: the daughter like Sarah and what are the girls names?
Speaker: Oh, are you talking about Rachel and Leah with Jacob?
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's who I'm talking about.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So he's betrothed to one.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then the other one marries him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's this part.
Speaker: And get him drunk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So it's a 14 year thing because he's supposed to work for seven years and work for seven more years.
Speaker: A series of 14 notes in a row is how he can denote the time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Each note represents a year.
Speaker: Beethoven does similar things with how many measures are in the birth sequence to show how long Elise was pregnant.
Speaker: And then the birth of Cain and Abel.
Speaker: You can find nine months of notes.
Speaker: Like each note represents one month of pregnancy.
Speaker: And then a happy birth.
Speaker: And then, well, no, no, no.
Speaker: bad birth right right and then the second one yeah see and the way i'm remembering that is because i remember how it sounds and so the first sequence is nine of like waiting you know it's kind of like a tic-tac-y kind of sound too like like time passing uh and then a few measures later we have the birth of abel yeah and after the nine months it's happy because okay we got a good one got a good one right so
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Stuff like that.
Speaker: So anyway, so the fugues do seem to still be going through Genesis.
Speaker: I'm just not sure if he completes it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But there's also Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2.
Speaker: So 20 years later, he did another set of 48 pieces.
Speaker: And I haven't even begun to look at that yet to figure out what's in it because I'm just trying to stay focused.
Speaker: sure i'm the one man that is just crazy so has it been hundreds of years and you're the first one to figure this out i don't think so because i think beethoven uh either figured it out or his teacher i think is more likely okay beethoven writes really positively about his teacher uh in correspondence they stayed in touch later you know like i've stayed in touch with several of my teachers
Speaker: He says his name is Christian Nefa.
Speaker: This guy was a member of the Freemasons and the Illuminati.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And I know from personal experience that Freemasonry is very symbolic.
Speaker: And I wouldn't say that it directly, I was a Freemason for a while.
Speaker: I'm not anymore.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yeah, I know, right?
Speaker: Rewind.
Speaker: I want to go back in your story.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So symbolically, the Freemasons are all about different types of imagery, handshakes, gestures, right?
Speaker: The words that we use, the numbers.
Speaker: A lot of these things, the types of higher-order thinking that I talk about, huh?
Speaker: Once a Freemason, always.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: There's a lot I like about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Overall, I really don't know much about it.
Speaker: I mostly give it a thumbs up.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: And a lot of really great guys, too.
Speaker: So if any listeners are out there looking to connect with some really great guys, there is also a female version, too, the Eastern Star.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: You know, the main thing that drew me into Freemasonry was the mantra that it's taking good men and trying to make them better.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: You know, and I thought, I would like to see if they can live up to that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And in a lot of ways, I do.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: But like any organization, just
Speaker: So yeah, nobody's perfect.
Speaker: So it's fine.
Speaker: It's cool.
Speaker: It is fun to be a younger Freemason though, because a lot of us are looking for mentors.
Speaker: I was talking earlier about if I had somebody really smart who could help me through some of these struggles,
Speaker: There's a lot of that, but the kind of wisdom you get, I'll say, is a mix of perspectives.
Speaker: A belief in God of some kind, higher divinity, or in order, is required for some kind.
Speaker: So no atheist can be a Mason.
Speaker: But it ranges from a lot of different worldviews.
Speaker: which can be a great thing.
Speaker: Like create some dialogue and people get to know other people and, you know, learn why people and have those nice discussions in a group that at the end of the day is kind of required that you are still like brothers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, it's like a brother.
Speaker: It kind of forces you to have a good faith dialogue instead of just tearing each other apart.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: And just like when brothers fight in real life, you know, mom or dad or somebody will be like, let them work it out.
Speaker: Let them work it out.
Speaker: But it,
Speaker: There's also a point where they'll be like, okay, okay, break it up, break it up.
Speaker: You go to your room.
Speaker: But then the next day or later that day, they'll be like, okay, now you guys say you're sorry or make up or whatever.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: It's good like that.
Speaker: That's what the Freemasons like.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It can be like that.
Speaker: It can be like a lot of things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Man, well, I think we've got to probably wrap it up here.
Speaker: I'm curious.
Speaker: I mean, I feel like we could just keep going.
Speaker: This is insane.
Speaker: We'll do a part two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you have any plans for publishing anything?
Speaker: Sharing the insights?
Speaker: Or are you still just deep in the research phase trying to get...
Speaker: Yeah, it is researched enough that I'm starting to get public, which is why I'm here in the first place.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: Everyone's gonna know now.
Speaker: I know my girlfriend is super encouraging about me being vocal about it.
Speaker: She hears about it at dinner.
Speaker: I've got some great discovery.
Speaker: She's like, you should be making a YouTube channel.
Speaker: You should be telling people about this.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: pretty introverted and I like to, you know, so it's a, it's a little bit of a stretch for me to, well, props to you for being on a podcast.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's, uh, it's okay.
Speaker: We're introverted too.
Speaker: So we're just three introverted guys doing a podcast.
Speaker: This is probably my favorite way of being public and introverted.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Three dudes in a room right now.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's pretty introverted.
Speaker: So, but yeah, my website has, uh, more and more stuff coming out.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm making the new courses.
Speaker: And like I said, I,
Speaker: I will delete four videos for each one that I publish.
Speaker: Or more sometimes.
Speaker: Some that have been deleted 20 times or more.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: I'm working on the Preludes course, and when I discovered all the symbolism stuff, I had to make it.
Speaker: I have made it about 10 times.
Speaker: At least 10 times.
Speaker: Like, anyway, so I'm just starting to publish that.
Speaker: And I'll have downloads for people that want to check this stuff out.
Speaker: I would love to put some links up to the books that I'm talking about, the Martin Luther commentary and such.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, share briefly.
Speaker: So you mentioned the Martin Luther commentary.
Speaker: Were there any other resources for you that you're like, these are great for an artist or a believer who's developing?
Speaker: So for the believer side, I would just totally go with Martin Luther for starters.
Speaker: If you want to dig into this.
Speaker: It is so fascinating to try to apply the science, modern science, to a lot of these questions he has.
Speaker: One of them was about, he just straight up says something like, we know that there's more water being withheld from
Speaker: from the outside of the earth and that must just be by god's power because there's more water than land sure and he's talking about ratios or something i guess but when we think about like ice caps for example as a way for god to pool the water into one place that seems to be the theological problem he has he says how how how is it that god would put all the water into just one place how would he pull it into one place
Speaker: Well, you think about ice and ice caps.
Speaker: Go up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bingo.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: It's like, well, there are ways of doing that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he says, I don't know how.
Speaker: And he maintains his faith anyway.
Speaker: He doesn't let those questions tear him apart like a young me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, he says, not sure yet, but I believe enough that I'm going to let that one just kind of work itself out over time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: So, good ones.
Speaker: One or more is the Bach Well-Tempered Clavier.
Speaker: And Marjorie Warnell Ingalls.
Speaker: This one is more for the musicians who want to start to understand a perspective on the way that the music creates different feelings.
Speaker: She, however, doesn't seem to understand how that same work that she's writing about is organized into Genesis.
Speaker: Idiot.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: I wouldn't even joke.
Speaker: I have a great debt to this lady.
Speaker: But like most people, boy, how easy to miss.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's a subtext to music, which is crazy to me that instrumental orchestral music can have a subtext.
Speaker: But that is just so cool.
Speaker: And one that's so rich.
Speaker: I'm shocked.
Speaker: I'm going to continue to be shocked because I'm just getting into it.
Speaker: In 10 years, I will know hopefully so, so, so much more about this.
Speaker: Well, man, that's amazing.
Speaker: Thank you so much for coming on, chatting with us.
Speaker: I'm glad we had a space to give you a nice long form opportunity to go through it.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: It's been great, guys.
Speaker: This was fun.
