Eugene Hoiland Peterson was an American Presbyterian minister, scholar, theologian, author, and poet. He wrote over 30 books, including the Gold Medallion Book Award–winner The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, an idiomatic paraphrasing commentary and translation of the Bible into modern American English using a dynamic equivalence translation approach.
I have always loved music, but have never learned to read music fluently. There is a fundamental truth in that statement: it is quite possible to have music speak to you even if you don’t know the fundamentals of the language, because music speaks to us in a way that is beyond language. It speaks not only to our minds, but to our souls.
That lack of fluency in the language has not stopped me from writing songs. When I try to write down the music I have composed, it is a painful process. I use a computer program and try to get the notes I hear in my head converted into the notation system musicians rely on. It’s hit or miss.
While you don’t need to be fluent in musical notation to enjoy music, it certainly helps to become familiar with musical language. When you start learning about how music is made, you come to appreciate even more, the effect certain arrangements of notes have on how music communicates. For example, there is a difference in tone between minor keys and major keys. They not only sound different: they FEEL different, and the message changes. There is a good reason that certain combinations of notes create “dissonance” and other combinations sound and feel “mysterious.” The exploration of the language of music is a journey worth taking.
Music allows us to look at the entire human experience from a different perspective. It shows us that we can express feelings without words. Music has a language that speaks to us and gives us experiences in ways that are different from what we can learn from books and other forms of communication.
Eugene Peterson says it very well. “When we are normal, we talk. When we are dying we whisper. But when there is more in us than we can contain, we sing.”
Make your own kind of music. The world needs to hear your song.