Dear Friends,
If you haven’t done so and have the time, please give Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee, The Actor's Life For Me, Part I, a read or listen from the podcast two weeks ago.
With little introduction, let’s jump right into today’s laid-back, summer podcast—Part II—which explores the role of the actor, the artist in today’s theatre and film culture.
As always…
With Thanks for You!
D. Paul
Hi-Diddle-Dee, The Actor's Life For Me
A few days after last week’s podcast with its closing reference to verse 6 of the 150th Psalm—“Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord”—I, by chance, (or was it not by chance), switched from the “Real Jazz” channel and tuned in Symphony Hall on Sirius XM Radio (channel 78) and heard a recording of Igor Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms,” commissioned in 1930 by famed conductor, composer, and publisher, Serge Koussevitezky. It first premiered in Brussels on December 13, 1930, but soon afterwards, on December 19, 1930, the Symphony of Psalms made its US premiere with Koussevitezky conducting the gala 50th anniversary of the renowned Boston Symphony Orchestra.
I was passingly familiar with this piece from hearing it in the past but have enjoyed listening to it again over the last two weeks. It’s a stirring work, composed as a choral symphony in three movements based on various verses in Psalm 38 (first movement), Psalm 39 (second movement), and Psalm 150 (the third movement), with its horn and harp motif leading us to the biblical text, which is sung in the Latin (Vulgate). It’s Douay-Rheims, English translation reads:
Alleluia. Praise ye the Lord in his holy places: praise ye him in the firmament of his power.
Praise ye him for his mighty acts: praise ye him according to the multitude of his greatness.
Praise him with sound of trumpet...
Praise him with timbrel and choir: praise him with strings and organs.
Praise him on high-sounding cymbals: praise him on cymbals of joy:
let every spirit praise the Lord. Alleluia.
Stravinsky, commenting on his third movement, informs us that this “…final hymn of praise must be thought of as issuing from the skies; agitation is followed by the calm of praise.” And following in the tradition of his predecessor, Johann Sebastian Bach, whose famed compositional credit was “Soli Deo Gloria” (To the Glory of God Alone), Stravinsky dedicates his Symphony of Psalms, “To the glory of God.” Little wonder that Psalm 150, with its musical celebration of praise has been referred to as “the musician’s psalm,” inspiring over the decades the diverse and talented efforts of Bach, Robert Schumann (he called his Psalm 150 his “oldest completely finished work”), Felix Mendelssohn, Anton Bruckner, Cesar Franck, Zoltan Kodály, with his “Geneva Psalm 150,” Charles Villiers Stanford, and his “Psalm 150: O praise God in his Holiness,” Charles Ives ( a personal favorite), the delightful Benjamin Britten, and an uninhibited, effusively big band, clapping version of Psalm 150 in Duke Ellington’s “Praise God and Dance,” and, oh, let’s not forget Jimmy Webb’s “Psalm One-Five-0,” yes, that’s the Jimmy Webb of “Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon” fame. And this, dear reader and listener, is just a partial list of those composers inspired by the rich, ebullient text of Psalm 150. Yes, there is something more than ambition, more than self and its flesh, more than the mechanics of art that creates the genius of art, and, in so doing, satisfies our deepest longings.
For long before the Psalms and long after, art has been inspired by God, dedicated to God, celebrating the Shekinah of God—the very glory of His Divine presence. And many of you, my dear friends, have stood in awe under the artistry of Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel and have been transported if not transformed by the beauty of Beethoven’s magnificent “Missa Solemnis,” or the tenderly melodic movements of the “Faure Requiem,” or the dazzling colors and dancing figures of a stained-glass window by Chagall, or a divinely provocative short story by Flannery O’Conner.
We may be mere mortals enclosed, seemingly, in flesh and blood, but we are not bound by the corporeal, being uniquely created in the image of God, and thus destined in word, song, and brush stroke to reflect his truth, beauty, and, yes, holiness—perhaps the deepest of all mysteries. It is this “Divine factor” that separates the sublime in art from the pedestrian. Without that vertical connection, most art created is banal, predictable, vulgar, “by the numbers,” if you will, and to paraphrase Macbeth, “A tale,” a song, a painting, a novel, “…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Now, I’m hardly a highbrow, friends, when it comes to movies. Kudos to the brilliant creators of great action movies that allow us to relax for a few hours and let our temporal concerns fly away. Not everything has to be profoundly “redemptive.” But now, so many action movies are formulaic, with the crashes, curses, and brief cohabitations coming at just the “right” moment in the third act—hapless directors and producers hoping to keep our eyes and ears open. Upon review, I found this to be true of my aforementioned movie from last week’s podcast, Inside Edge, which a friend was kind enough to send me an Mp4 of. It’s an embarrassment. I did not play an officer of the law as I had remembered, but rather a smooth-talking attorney for Richard Lynch and his drug-dealing cartel. Talk about selective memory. I repeat: It’s an embarrassment, with a cheesy ending as the cop (Michael Madsen) survives a phony shoot-out finale and walks away with the cartel boss’s girlfriend. But this trifle of a movie represents most of today’s entertainment, particularly the long-running series that runs out of steam midway through the second season, or if not by episode 6 of the first. Oh, there are some good ones out there, but they are the exceptions. How many movies have you seen streaming on Netflix, Apple, Amazon, etc., and wondered, “How did this ever get made?” Or going back to the questions posed in the podcast of two weeks ago, “Is that all there is? Isn’t there something more?” Drawing their melodic inspirations from Scripture, certainly the great composers from Bach to Ellington thought so, but few in the theatre and film world, it would appear, are listening to the same melody.
There was in the not-so-distant past a time when a “winner” at the Grammys, Tonys, Emmys, or Oscars would occasionally point to the heavens and “give thanks to the Man above” for their award. While the gesture may be frowned upon as somewhat artless, the intention was right—to give credit to a great God who is the giver of life with all its good gifts Those acknowledgements are few and far between these days, going against the “anything goes” spirit of the times, and the self-congratulatory narcissism that is Hollywood’s insignia. The generically “spiritual,” of course, are saluted, considered insiders, but the one who specifically identifies as a “Christian,” let alone a Bible-believing Christian, is an outsider, usually ostracized from the mainstream of the industry. And so, the Christian on the stage and screen continues to be portrayed as a caricature—mindless and clueless to the “real” ways of the world—a most suitable buffoon.
And yet throughout the arts, there is this talented and expanding remnant putting its undeniable stamp on “the boards” and on Hollywood, creating works that are authentic, truthful, ignited by that divine spark of originality.
Join us in two weeks for another laid-back summer podcast —Part III of “Hi-Diddle-Dee”—when we will look specifically at some of the artists who are moving past the predictable tropes of cynicism and nihilism and seeking the “more” in their art. Till then, my brothers and sisters in Christ, “Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord” (Psalm 150:6 NIV).
Amen
Chagall’s stained-glass window, All Saints Church, Tudeley, Kent, England, based on Psalm 150.
