Music as Universal Language, from Creation to Redemption
“It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
The Song of Creation
Music is often called the “universal language.” It speaks to human beings on a unique and powerful level, it can affect us in a deep way. Music, with its rises and falls, its tensions and resolutions, its dissonance and harmony, is not easily explained. Music stands as a testament to the enchanted-ness of God’s spoken world, stubbornly and resolutely refusing to be explained away by any materialistic attempt at rationalization. Music serves no evolutionary purpose, it doesn’t aid in survival, it provides no defense against predators or the natural world. It doesn’t help us survive, but rather, “gives value to survival” as C.S. Lewis put it. It’s an enigma that serves only to direct our gaze upward, toward glory, toward beauty.
Music is embedded in this created world. It’s embedded here because just like story (God is the great and first storyteller), just like language (Christ is God’s spoken Logos), just like love (God is Love), it’s something that runs through the veins of the cosmos, because of who the Creator is. When God creates, it is not a distant or detached affair, rather, God creates by means of His very Word. The breath that emanates from His mouth, the spoken truth of Himself is the mechanism of the birth of galaxies, of life, of swirling wonders and invisible atoms. And the Word which is spoken by the Father is the Word of God, the Logos, the Son. God’s spoken word by which He creates is Himself, the second person of the Godhead, the eternal and equal Son of God. This is important, because music, at its core, is an auditory transmission of meaning, it is language – the universal language. When we speak of God creating the world by speaking it into existence, one possible way we can examine and interpret that is to say that God sang the world into existence. This is the angle that J.R.R. Tolkien takes in The Silmarillion, and it is one we see echoed through various ancient cultures in their creation myths.
In The Silmarillion, the Creator and God of Middle-earth, Eru Illuvatar, introduces the music of creation to the Ainur, his created beings who will help him sing all other things into existence. It’s a divine council of beings joining in the song of their creator, guided by the “themes” he introduces to them in what they ought to sing. Though Eru is the one creator God, his divine council of gods aid in creation by serving as secondary causes, proxies, conduits through which he creates. At the same time, they have real and true moral agency. We see this clearly when, in a scene that mirrors the heavenly rebellion, the divine Vala Melkor introduces dissonance to the theme, ushering evil and rebellion into the world. Even this rebellious act, we are told, only strengthens and expands on Eru’s ultimate theme. Even direct acts of hatred and rebellion against God can only serve, in His sovereignty, to contribute toward His glory, His ends, and His ultimate aim.
“And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Even attempts at sabotaging God’s story find their “uttermost source” in Him, as Tolkien puts it. This is because such rebellious acts are at their core an act of dissonance in a song that God is singing. Music, any songwriter will tell you, requires dissonance. The entire endeavor of a song is built upon the basic structure of dissonance and harmony, of tension and resolve. For a resolution to be satisfying, it must first have had dissonance that begs for a resolution. This is what God is doing in history, in the world, in His creation. He’s telling a story that will ultimately glorify Himself and His Son, and the dissonance and resolve is a part of that telling. This is why even the sour notes have their “uttermost” – or ultimate – source in God. They will serve, in the end, to play a part in the story that gives Him glory. After all, the most glorious story ever told is one in which God Himself enters into creation, dies at the hands of the same evil men for whom the death is died, and rises again to greater and higher glory. A story like this requires evil, it requires dissonance, it requires sour notes. And because of those notes, the harmonic resolution will be all the more satisfying.
And this is what the story of our redemption is – it is the story of discord being brought to resolution, of dissonance being turned into harmony, of a grand symphony of myriad voices working together to make a beautiful and stirring image that depicts the glory of the one who sang it. God has embedded this pattern – the pattern of death and rebirth, of sin and repentance, of evil and its defeat – into creation, because His creation comes from His Word.
And God’s Word, His spoken truth, is the means by which He created all things. He spoke them into existence. Which really means that in a sense, He sang them into existence. Speaking and singing are two sides of the same communicative coin; both are (in our material understanding) the transmission of meaning via audio. And when we consider that the language of God “speaking” the world into existence when He hasn’t a body or a mouth means that there is in some sense, language of “condescension” to aid in human understanding, we see that the difference between word and song is a non-issue. God created by His Word, His Son, His spoken/sung truth. Music is truly a universal language – because it is language, with the rigid denotations removed or broadened.
The Song of the Spheres
That is the sound produced by the impetus and momentum of the spheres themselves. It is made up of intervals which, though unequal, are determined systematically by fixed proportions. The blend of high and low notes produces an even flow of various harmonies. . . . By imitating this system with strings and voices experts have succeeded in opening a way back to this place. . . . Filled with this sound, people’s ears have become deaf to it.
– Cicero, The Republic and the Laws
The ancient and medieval views of the structure and nature of the cosmos are far removed from the dominant understanding today. In our reductionist and materialistic age, we have abandoned the idea of the cosmos altogether, in favor of a “universe.” Rather than a lively, vibrant, ordered cosmos teeming with life and meaning, our universe is mostly empty space, guided by impersonal laws and mathematical realities. We see the stars not for what they are, but for what they’re made of. In the Middle Ages, this was not the case. For them, the cosmos was conceived as being constructed of “spheres,” planets and celestial bodies each on their own set path in their own layer of what we reductively call “space,” spinning along with every other sphere at their own unique pace. As the spheres rotated, guided along their heavenly course by divine wills, the sound of their friction, interaction, and motion created the sound of music. This “music of the spheres” is inaudible to us, the way that the air around us is invisible. We can’t hear it because we’re accustomed to it, in it, and have never been out of it. It’s part of us, the song that creation is singing is a part of the reality we are in.
Though perhaps not physically or technically correct as a view of the solar system, the medieval view is far closer to understanding the nature of reality and God’s spoken world than our modern, mechanical understanding. Music, to the medieval mind, was inherently baked into creation. Music was the best way to understand and explain the inner workings of the world around us. The world around us is in constant motion, a world of cycles, of death and birth, of growing and changing. It’s a vast and complex web of interconnected systems, each supporting another, all weaving together every second. In a word, the world is harmony – not unison, where each voice sings the same note, but many different voices singing different notes, blending into one beautiful chord.
Music binds cultures together, it affects our emotions, it helps us to express our feelings in ways words alone can’t. Music is rightly called the “universal language” (perhaps for our purposes, “cosmic language” would be a better term) because it is indeed a language itself. Who is to say that the “tongues of angels” we are told about in scripture aren’t something more akin to music than to words? We know that heaven is filled with the songs of angels, we know that angels sing when they appear to men – perhaps this is the natural tongue of angels altogether. A cosmic language indeed.
Music tells a story. And because God is a storyteller, telling a story that was written before the foundation of the world, His story is embedded in His sung or spoken creation. The song of death and rebirth, of sin and redemption, of dissonance and resolution, is baked into every atom of the world.
The Song of Redemption
Reality has embedded meaning, because reality isn’t just a habitat for “things” or “processes.” Rather, reality is guided by the hand of a personal and loving Creator, who is guiding it and all things within it to an ultimate consummation. Creation will find its fulfillment on the final day when God sets all things right, when He wipes all tears from all eyes, when every dissonant note is brought into final resolution for all time. The tension will finally be resolved: all sin erased, all slates wiped clean, and all evil put to rest. The eternal state will be one full of singing, of voices in unison and harmony extolling the name of the great songwriter who penned the symphony we’re in.
Music is the universal language because it reflects the nature of reality: it began simple and sweet, until that sour note, that misguided melody, that harsh dissonance, was introduced. That dissonance grew and changed, evolved, until it culminated with the very death of God. And just when the theme was darkest, the light broke through, those notes began to resolve, and the song is now moving toward its final and glorious conclusion, when harmony will reign and the music crescendos to its loudest forevermore. The song that God is singing doesn’t end in a slow fade, it resolves in the grandest and most glorious fortissimo that could be conceived. The song that we’re all a part of is perpetually building to a glorious conclusion, so let us aim to ensure that we are singing our parts, and enjoying the song that our God is singing through us and through this world.
Image Credit: The Concert (1623), Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656).
