Thus I Heard; Music Linguistics and the Small C catholic church

I’ve been part of the dialogue about music now for well over thirty years – the dialogue on the professional level, the part that includes advanced music theory on “faith” and “belief”.  There is one core element that many musicians seem to find hard to get past initially when they are taking part in the discussion about this specific area of music theory: “God”.  The Buddhism of The Lotus Sutra & the great teacher T’ien-T’ai, and the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin all lead the musician involved with certain specific advanced music theory concepts to the questions, “is there God” & “do Christians recognize the living God” [the transcendental].  The whole discussion will [I hope] be opening up soon, as I am personally in need of a “real job”, or should I make a better cause and say “real employment”[?], but here below is a part of a piece that I hope will be “part of a straw that stirs the drink”:

 

Music Linguist as conduit for Church Participation

The idea of a music linguist is somewhat hidden in latent structure of the foundation of music. The equal temperament “Western tuning” standard is thousands of years old. The base structure of “the Church Modes” is standard across music theory as the core foundation of the dialogue that occurs inside the music vein of living. The “Circle of Fifths & Fourths” is a standard that exists across all forms of music genres that fall within standardized Western music – “Eastern music” generally uses Western forms, but can also add dynamic elements to tuning which complicate the theory [One explanation of "1 cycle [resolution]" tone differences  {Michigan Technical} ] [ Another explanation of tuning {Wiki-pedia} ], but return into “the fold” at certain levels of advanced dialect upon the theory. There are three basic levels of “linguist orientation”:

1. Object oriented whole process – the 1-7 chord function and theory at whole octave state.

2. Note Function process – the theoretical language of the notes of music [in music state].

3. Note object function – the “language” of the notes in their relative object state [music function, language function, relative object function].

These functional design objects are really much simpler than they sound at first. When reaching out to a base audience, and particularly for the purpose of outreach and education, the objects are things like genre, emotional theme, and rhythmic function orientation. While the first and most basic level is “simple”, the complex levels are more deeply involved in the application of advanced music “theory”, recognizing that the motivation for this specific path of education outreach is specifically for the purpose of broadening and deepening active faith based participation in music as a link between [cultural] arts & [cultural] science. If we are not teaching how to “see” the science in the art, we lose some if not all of the relevance of the art. The art itself is an aural communion, part of the science of the teachings of God, who is “heard”.  At least, “thus I heard” ….