Vibing with Qoheleth
In Rowan Williams’ Grace and Necessity, he describes Jacques Maritain’s account of the composition of art as requiring a first step of careful attention to the ‘pulsions’ of the object of the art, something like its “units of imaginative sense, clusters of feeling, or even ‘knots’ of imagery and cross-reference.”[1] Through attending to the life of the object, the artist is able to make something else which is not the object itself but its ‘re-presentation,’ a something else which reproduces the logic, the pulsions of the object, but in a new way that, as the artistic product draws the person apprehending the art into itself, may offer the person perceiving it a new vantage point upon the original object as the person perceiving the art has the original object’s life cast differently, enabled to see what might before have gone unseen. It is something like the way that disciples of the school of inductive preaching talk about letting the text shape the form and content of the sermon: the latter product ought to be shaped (though it cannot be determined) by the former such that the latter re-presents the original text. The preacher’s speech is not limited only to reading the text aloud; by the Spirit, the preacher must find a way to invite the congregation into the knots and burls of the text such that in its representation the text is seen in a new, more faithful way.
Though in some art forms this transfer from object to art happens in ways that are easily recognizable (like a devotedly realist painter fulfilling a portrait commission as faithfully as possible), in others the move from the pulsions to the art is opaquer. What I have attempted in this project is to compose a piece which befriends Qoheleth. Having spent the semester in careful attention to the twists, the structure, the tensions, and the tone (among other aspects) of Qoheleth’s book, it is my hope that I have been able to allow Qoheleth to shape the composition, the coming-to-be, of this piece. As part of the process for this, it has been helpful to consider some of the other composers who have written music either to which they set Qoheleth’s words or named him as having played a role in their writing process. While Katharine J. Dell does an excellent job of covering the most notable entries in the canon (the Byrds, Brahms, and Norman Dello Joio chief among them), Qoheleth continues to be fodder for more recent attempts in a variety of genres.
The first- and third-chapters’ poems about time hold particular fascination. Steven Winteregg of Cedarville University’s “Reflections on Quoheleth” for solo trumpet features three of the movements around the times — for searching, for loving, and for living — with the muted “Chasing after Wind” in between as a cautionary warning of the vanity of it all. Michael Torke’s “Song of Ecclesiastes” also takes the opening poem in addition to the poem of the times with the last two movements using some of the proverbial material from the ninth and eleventh chapter. Caroline Cobb’s “All is Vanity (Ecclesiastes)” sets out a very Qohelutian tone with the first verse chastening wisdom in the manner of 2:13–14 and the second verse recapitulating the pleasure experiment’s failure. However, she refuses to stick to a properly Qohelutian bleakness in the chorus, taking the presence of olam in our hearts as a transcendental orientation granting us “meaning.” Then in the bridge, Cobb sings,
If there is restlessness, Could there be rest?
If there is hunger, Could there be fullness?
If there is restlessness, There must be rest!
If there is hunger, There must be fullness!
In building to this conclusion, Cobb places herself in the tradition of interpretation of Qoheleth which sees it primarily as setting out the existential problem to which we then find an answer in Scripture. She seems to be suggesting something more like the eternal rest which Christ has made available in Hebrews 4:1–10 than the more mundane rest and fullness with which Qoheleth is interested. Nevertheless, she seems to be one of the few Christian singer-songwriters to want to work with Qoheleth at all and deserves praise for that quality alone. On the other hand, some composers have found the Solomonic persona as being of the most interest: on Chris Pounds’ rap album Chris, the song “Ecclesiastes” makes much of the traditional association with Solomonic authorship, though rather than tying it to Solomon’s old age he attaches the Qohelutian test of pleasure to Solomonic dissipation.
In an exquisite neo-soul idiom, Me’Shell Ndegeocello’s “Ecclesiastes: Free My Heart” features themes that are fitting with Qoheleth’s most pessimistic moments. While the verses take the straightforward themes of cyclicality, futility, and impossibility of gain from the opening poem, the chorus’ prayer for a freed heart suggests the longing for death’s sweet release as “the human spirit goes upward” (3:21) — though, really, who knows? Might it be death to which she sings? In an instrumental vein, Stevie Wonder’s “Ecclesiastes” off his much-maligned 1979 double-album Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants moves along on organ and synthesizer at a stately andante, perhaps imitating the unceasing turning of the cosmos. Ambrose Akinmusire takes for the track “J. E. Nilmah (Ecclesiastes 6:10) a verse otherwise neglected by composers: “Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what human beings are, and that they are not able to dispute with those who are stronger.” As a jazz trumpeter playing with his quintet, Akinmusire is not often tied into any given tonality or structure as this composition begins with very understated piano and trumpet lines and gradually growing more and more chaotic before finally ending without resolving. Given that the album The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier To Paint attends throughout to broken and lost black bodies, he may be finding in Qoheleth’s confrontation with the inability of humans dispute with the stronger one (taken to refer to God in the scholarship) rather a depiction of the vulnerability of black bodies in a white supremacist culture to the disproportionate use of force by the police, for example.
What I hope this has made clear is that as an object for musical representation Qoheleth can be made to serve a vast number of purposes. Some of these, like Cobb’s “All is Vanity” and Chris Pounds’ “Ecclesiastes,” may take Qoheleth more as a foil whereas others like Ndegeocello and Akinmusire find words that name their experience of futility. One thing I did not find was any music which attempted to find a glory in the ordinary, a recognition of the simple joys which God has given us.
This is what I have tried to represent in my “A Song to Qoheleth.” It employs a D-Dorian modality throughout, a mode which resists ever sounding resolved. The A-Section toggles between Dm13 and G11 chords, a pair which would resolve to a C-Major in a different tonality. Instead, the use of a CM7 and an A11 in the turnaround pushes the progression back into the Dm13 again. In this irresolution, I have hoped to capture the Qohelutian sense of a teleology that is either absent or unknown by mortal souls. The chromaticism of the B-Section which moves through CM7, Bø7, Em7♭9, and B11 suggests a similar lack of resolution. In addition, much of the soloing throughout dwells in the whole-tone sequence in the center of the D-Dorian scale (F, G, A, and B), building towards a lick in the final fuzz-wah guitar solo which follows the whole tone scale on up. Since the whole-tone scale does not have the predictable patterns of wholes and halfs which make up the diatonic scales that almost all Western popular music is based around, it has a sense of aimlessness which made it a favorite of the early twentieth century avant-garde (and Stevie Wonder’s ascending riff in “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life”).
In the course of surveying Qoheleth-inspired music, it became clear to me that Qohelutianism does not necessitate any single style of music. Akinmusire’s semi-tonal jazz quintet is not inherently more Qohelutian than the late Romaticism of Brahms’ “Vier ernste Gesange.” I chose a funk-rock-fusion idiom for this composition for a couple reasons, first among them being that it is a style of music that strangely warms my heart. Second, I would argue that the greats of this genre had a way of standing outside the popular trends of their day and using what they liked while also flicking their Qohelutian cigarettes and doing their own thing. Steely Dan borrowed from rock, jazz, pop, funk and more to craft their own distinctive blend of seedy lyrics, catchy hooks, and outrageously rocking solos. Steely Dan’s songs have a way of sticking your nose in humanity’s hebel while refusing to grant that hebel ought to preclude the possibility of enjoying life (often in ways that — much like Qoheleth — seem designed to make nice religious people blush). In the fusion scene of the seventies, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, and bands like The Weather Report found the bebop tradition played out and were interested in taking some of that harmonic complexity and virtuosic soloing into music that used the recording techniques and electronic instruments that went into the most adventurous rock albums of the era. In their fusion albums, they found themselves standing outside both jazz and rock. Part of what makes Qoheleth himself is how he stands within and without the wisdom tradition and the norms of the canon: I strive to follow that posture in this song. Lacking the technical chops of a Herbie Hancock or a Larry Carlton (whose riffs on The Royal Scam guarantee him a musical immortality that Qoheleth did not believe in), I trust only that the spirit of Qoheleth will sustain this composition.
[1] Rowan Williams, Grace and Necessity, (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2005), 28.
