The Correct Resolution

This past Wednesday, I was able to see the Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero perform at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s (CSO) summer home at Ravinia, just north of Chicago.  After her performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto—an old favorite of mine—she took a tune unfamiliar to both me and her that a random audience member sung for her and improvised on it.  (For the musically-inclined: she added counterpoint to a random melody on the spot.)  

Improvisation, or making up music as you go along, is normally strictly the realm of jazz pianists, but Montero has made a name for herself by creating improvisations based on well-known (or less well known) tunes suggested to her by the audience.  She does it with all sorts of music:  a Classical/Baroque Happy Birthday, Rachmaninoff’s 3^rd piano concerto à la Bach or à la jazz, a Romanticized national anthem of Scotland, and a latinized Harry Potter.

Certainly, if you transcribed Montero’s improv, it probably wouldn’t satisfy music theory professors who critique composers who spent years on their compositions.  But my jazz piano teacher in High School always said there is no wrong note in improvisation. Whatever note you play is the right one, no matter how weird it sounds to the ear. The trick, though, is how you “resolve” the note you just played.  If your note was dissonant, building tension or perhaps downright discomfort in the listener, do you relieve that tension with a harmonic note, or purposely build it up further for a later release?  The true art of improvising is making that choice deliberately and correction.  So “There is no wrong note in improv—just incorrect resolutions.”

This makes me think of how God works in our lives.  In his allegory, “The Music of the Ainur” from The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien describes the act of God’s creation as that of a composer directing His musicians (angels) in improvised variations on His theme.  Tolkien writes of God as the master improviser and composer, while the Devil attempts to insert His own themes and creations over and above God’s.  Eventually, there are two clearly different musics being played at once. God’s “was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came,” while the Devil’s was “loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison of many trumpets braying upon a few notes.”  While the Devil’s music might try to drown out God’s by sheer force of violence, somehow “its most triumphant notes were taken by [God’s] and woven into [God’s music’s] own solemn pattern.”

I’m always skeptical of the “it’s all in God’s plan” reassurances when things are going rough.  It’s hard to look at the Aurora shootings and say “Yup, God’s plan at work.  Isn’t it beautiful?” It seems loud.  And vain.  And endlessly repeated.

So instead of being endlessly distracted by the discord, I started looking for God’s resolutions, for no matter what notes the Devil may insert, the Master Improviser could certainly resolve them in a way to make even the most ugly act a part of a beautiful composition.  Then, I read this article a friend had sent me a few days after the shootings, and I realized that here was just one small example of God doing just that, and I saw in a moment of resolution a piece of God’s grace.

God gave us free will, and as a result, a lot of things against His law happen.  And it is so easy to allow the Devil’s dissonance to crowd out God’s melody of grace and hope.  Those of us forced to live with the discord can only strive to make sure that we don’t cause it and have the faith to look for those moments of resolution, for in those moments, we find not only grace, but hope.  And not only does hope save us, but with faith, perhaps God will begin to call on us to be a vehicle of hope to another person.  And that is the greatest gift of all.