Last night went to a music concert in Paisley Abbey. The music was unfamiliar, but the New Cologne Chamber Orchestra played to a good crowd, in a building brightened by evening sunlight, and it was a good place to be at the end of a busy burst of work in between holidays. I was able to listen without much visual distraction because we couldn’t see the performers! A level church nave, a seat well back, and some big people in front of me, ensured this was a primarily auditory experience. And the pew seats were clearly designed to prevent sleeping through anything going on at the front!
The flute concerto was the highlight. I’ve always found the flute a wistful, playful, gentle sound, which can express all kinds of yearning, joy, loss and love. Looking down to the magnificent stained glass window, brightened by a sunset, and hearing the sound of flute accompanied by strings – it was prayer through sound, without words. Not unlike my description earlier, prayer as ‘a wistful, playful, gentle sound, which can express all kinds of yearning, joy, loss and love.’
On a more discordant note – the connection between flutes and drums, in military music, and in the West of Scotland and Northern Ireland, I find offensive. Whether the band is Irish Republican or Orange Lodge, I find the whole performance of marching music commemorating religious conflict inimical to a gospel of peace and reconciliation. One of the most effective exposures of the brutality and hatred that underlies flute and drum music as an expression of religious hatred is in Bernard MacLaverty’s novel, Grace Notes. There is a scene well into the novel where the philabeg drums feature as the destructive, rhythmic symbol of the violence they both foment and portray. The flute is capable of such beautiful, creative, life affirming sound, made by the shaped and directed breath of the performing musician – but so likewise the flute can be made to serve the violent, commemorative sounds of ancient hatreds kept alive by musicians performing for quite other reasons. As an expression of religious conviction – on whichever side plays them – they are a shame and an embarrassment.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God – the flute music I heard last night, in the setting of a place of worship, with the sun streaming through stained glass, in a pre-reformation building, was a gentle defiance of all that would pull our human lives into discordant conflict.
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