[Ep04] Beauty and Faith Through Sacred Music w/ Catholic Composer Brian J. Nelson

This episode features a conversation with the catholic composer Dr. Brian J. Nelson, discussing the intersection of music, faith, and worship. Dr. Nelson emphasizes the importance of creating well-crafted, transparent, and transcendent music that points beyond itself to lead people to contemplate and worship God more fully. He advocates for a balance between modern and traditional music in churches and encourages musicians and church leaders to be people of prayer and humility, seeking the middle ground between utilitarianism and musical idolatry. The conversation also highlights the need to equip and support musicians within churches, expressing hope for a brighter future where the church can serve as a beacon of light in an increasingly challenging world.

The call for unity and support among musicians is highlighted, and an emphasis on the need for encouragement, joy, and resilience in the face of trials. They express a vision for the church to collectively glorify God more fully through their music and worship, conveying the attributes of God and bringing hope to the world. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the importance of creating a holistic and God-centered approach to worship, aiming to enrich church music and glorify God.

Contact Brian at brian@nelsonmusic.com

Documents mentioned in the episode:

Pope St. Puis X: Tra Le Sollecitudini - Instruction on Sacred Music (1903)
adoremus.org/1903/11/tra-le-sollecitudini/

Musicam Sacram - Congregation For Divine Worship - Instruction On Music In The Liturgy (1967)
www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/instruction-on-music-in-the-liturgy-2200

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contact@beautyandthefaith.com

Our initiative to revive beauty in music:
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https://www.instagram.com/composersforbeauty/
https://www.instagram.com/sdgmusicradio/
https://www.instagram.com/classicalmg/
https://www.instagram.com/magnusgautestad/

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Facebook group (soon to be an app) that fuels the Classical Revival with products and services of beauty:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/togetherforbeautymarketplace

Transcript

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I'm so blessed to be presenting a guest today. He's a doctor in composition. He's Catholic and will take us into that perspective and show us both extremes. He will give concrete principles that we can follow and universal ways of bringing more glory to God, but at the same time using the incarnate principle that we see also, that means that we also have a human side to take into account. For this and more, don't miss out on this episode. Let's do this. There's a war in our churches between modern and traditional music. But the question is this, can we creatively integrate the best of both worlds to unify the body of Christ and glorify the Lord more fully? Join us on this podcast as Christians from various dance share their voice and come together to develop new creative arrangements and compositions that will help us to worship the Lord more fully and to empower evangelism. I'm Magnus Gautestad and welcome to SDG Music Radio. Welcome. We are here. Wake up in the presence of the Lord. I am grateful for an opportunity now to be speaking with a highly experienced composer, and we are going to be dealing with both issues and opportunities in the larger body of Christ to see how we can glorify God more fully and to really start to understand and see what is all the ways that we can reflect God and teach the whole scripture and really come together in that endeavor, come together for beauty. Brian, how are you doing today? Good. Very good. Thanks for having me on today. I'm so glad that you're here. Let us start with an introduction, as we usually do here. Steeped in a deeply rooted music tradition, informed by faith, and inspired by contemporary melody and tonality, Brian J. Nelson communicates timeless messages in a dialect that is universally understood. In his own words, music itself is a language with a vocabulary and a content fully capable of communicating a message of truth by way of beauty. It is this truth that he seeks and delivers in his compositions. He composes commissioned sacred and classical works across a wide variety of genres. He also teaches composition and theory and offers lectures for academic and public audiences. Mr. Nelson can be contacted by email at brian@nelsonmusic.com okay, Brian, so let us start off with a challenging one. What type of music gives glory to God and what doesn't? That's a very good question. I think as committed Christian people, it's something... Committed Christian to Christians who have a specific discipline that they're very skilled in and studied in, it's a question that naturally arises. How can I give glory to God in my specific discipline? What are the implications of my faith and my relationship with God to my work? Because we want to be consistent people. I think that's a very natural and supernatural impulse when we're Christians. But I would say there's a lot of layers to this question. In a certain sense, at the most basic level, music that glorifies God is music that exists, first of all. I mentioned this because as a parallel to the question the atheist might pose, Why does anything exist at all? Why is there something and not nothing? The very existence of music and its logic, its amazing, almost magical quality, points to something beyond itself right away. I like to mention that because I think it's easy to maybe get a little too cut and dried and say that just this, okay, it's Palestrin and nothing else that glorifies God. I think that could be the mistake of the Cicillian movement, for example, in music history, which was during the 19th century, there were a lot of secular music values and secular music itself finding its way into liturgical services, opera arias, even arguably the orchestra mass. As some people would joke, the orchestra mass is a symphony with liturgical accompaniment. There was a reaction to that in the Cicillian movement to let's get back to true sacred music, namely the music of Palestina, the great Renaissance master who was lifted up by the Council of as the model for sacred music. It's an understandable reaction, but I think ultimately a bit of a dead end. I like to be as magnanimous as possible in the discussion of this question to start. But I think going from there, music that's well crafted. The first thing we know about God from the Scripture is that he's created the world and the universe. It's reflective of his, as it says in Romans. The power and the deity and the glory of God is visible and clearly evident from the things that have been made. By analogy, we made in his image, when we make something good, that reflects, of course, it reflects well on us, but ultimately it points to Him, the creator of all things. Being well crafted and well schooled in our musical craft, I think, is very good. It also, from an evangelical standpoint, it leaves us in good standing. It does nothing to spread good news about God if we're not actually competent and well skilled in our craft. There's music that has an aspect of the human, but also the divine. Music that connects with us in our particular time. Remember, Jesus was incarnated in a particular time, in a particular place. He spoke in a particular way. With all of the Jewishness of his time, all of that history. But he pointed, of course, to himself and to his father at the same time. There's an aspect that music shouldn't be so utterly otherworldly that no one can relate to it. But neither should it be so mired and completely corresponding to its own time that it has value only for its own time. Again, I think this is where things like the Cicillian movement fail. A lot of the music that was written during that time has just disappeared because the idea was, Well, let's get back to Palestina. Let's write like Palestina. Well, that's impossible, even with people with really good composition jobs because you're not living in the time of Palestina. There's a certain artifice that eventually catches up to the music because it's not really speaking to the people of its age, but an anachronistic focus. In a similar way, music that's in a certain sense iconic or transparent. I like the the analogy of the icon with regard to music that glorifies God, especially liturgical music, that it's a music that doesn't stop the listener at its face. It's transparent. It points toward God. The icon, when you look at the icons, there are often certain aspect of icons, in fact, that's part of the theology and the way iconographers are trained. They're trained that are somewhat distorted, if you will. The proportions of the faces aren't completely lifelike. There are certain things that just are not completely real and taken together, they point beyond itself to the person, the sacred person, or especially God being represented. A couple of concrete examples I find. I think take the… For me, the most challenging period of music is actually the classical period, especially the late classical period, say, the works of Beethoven, where they're so… I mean, they are tremendously well crafted. They do speak to a certain time. They do point to the divine. But there's also an opacity there. When I listen to Beethoven, I think primarily about Beethoven and what a great composer he was. There's times where he just reaches out and pokes you and makes sure that I'm following along in his path. So compare, I don't know, Beethoven, and that's a large, let's say, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, compare that to another classical piece, the Mozart Requiem, which has all of the classical aspects of that time, although it does also reach back into chant and baroque music, but it's in a certain sense more transparent. It does seem to point beyond itself more than the Beethoven Fifth Symphony would point beyond itself. Anyway, there's, as I said, a lot of layers to this question. Then, of course, music that's explicitly turned toward God, that's well crafted by a believing person who's open to the grace of God. That could be the most amazing music ever. I mean, a great example of that would be Brooklyner's Choral Works, Locuste, Oostuste, who is a very devout Catholic, and that's very romantic music. It's all very much 19th century music, but it certainly has a very timeless, transparent quality to it that points beyond itself. Thank you so much for laying out very concrete principles that artists can have in mind when they have a desire to glorify God more fully. They want to be less so God can be more. They want to serve and then get out of the way and then so they can come to God. Doing these things, learning from also how, for example, some visual arts has been crafted or architect, they're pointing, they're leading your attention in a certain direction. There's a certain transcendence, certain universality, certain timelessness that creates that. But at the same time, like you're saying, if you're going to model God, we also see that God came in flesh and blood and walked among us. There is a certain reflection there too that we are actually able to communicate to the human side of people. We do see Jesus speaking in a way people could understand amazing truths in a relatable way. There is two things we need to have in mind at the same time. I think I'm getting you correct here. Yes, right. It's all an analogy of the incarnation and God, He wants to come and come with the Father and dine with us and be with us in our hearts and so forth. That leads to the transformation at a personal and at an artistic level, at least the possibility of that. As we go on in our artistic lives, not every piece is going to achieve that level. We know that from looking at the catalogs of even the great composers. But just walking the Christian and artistic life consistently, God will make use of that. We'll go over to the next question here. This is, I would say, a bit more pragmatic. We do want that this podcast has a touch of practical elements because we are really moving toward that people start to listen to this podcast, they join the discussions, if we will be on in the YouTube, comment field or on our Instagram or whatever it should be, getting engaged. Then we'll actually start to look at these are a strategy that our church as a whole or as a local church can start to glorify God more fully. Now we're going to move a bit more in that direction. I think that we have grounded ourselves first. For a leader in music in churches, that would be the musicians themselves. It could also be those the priests or the pastors that are responsible to lead a musician. What is your main advice? Yeah, I think, well, first of all, be a person of prayer, a God-first, and that can be surprisingly difficult for all of us. Virtue is often spoken about as the middle way between extremes. In music, I think, especially liturgical music, there can be two extremes that take hold. One is music in a purely utilitarian form. Music is just stuff that gets people in the door, maybe holds their attention, got the rock band on stage, so get the young people there. But it doesn't really have the qualities of the things that we were talking about before, of well-craftedness, of transparency, of content that's really appropriate to the liturgy. Sometimes the issue of what is the musical content is completely ignored. There can be a lot of emptiness in music that's very utilitarian. That's across denominations, I can tell you. To avoid, on the one hand, a utilitarian approach that just sees music as a way to get people in the door and maybe keep them there so that something else good can happen. They're very tempting. Very tempting. But of course, the other extreme would be, again, the orchestra mass. I love orchestra masses, but it does become like a symphony with a liturgical accompaniment. There's a level of inappropriateness there of not being able to set aside the grandeur of one's profession and whatever and one's skills to be in service of God and one's neighbor in the liturgy. I think there's a place for the orchestral mass. You mentioned in another one of these questions, the difference between music for evangelization and music for worship. I think those concert pieces are a great chance for evangelization. You could write these beautiful, sprawling pieces, the Mrs. Suleminis of Beethoven or the Bruckner symphonies, today the Requiems and so forth. But being maybe setting aside the very distracting grandeur of those pieces for the sake of pointing others and drawing others into more to the worship of God. Again, that transparency I was talking about music as icon. To find that middle way, be a person of prayer, and then find the middle way between the two extremes of utilitarianism on the one hand and a little bit of musical idolatry on the other hand. School yourself up in principles of sacred music. Now, as a Catholic, we have a lot of resources on that, various documents, and maybe we can put some of those in the show notes. There's Musica SACRE of Pius the 12th and other documents that really help. One aspect of those documents and our tradition is a connection with the chant tradition. I think that even in the Catholic Church, we've lost that a little bit in the last 50 years. I think it's coming back. I'd like to point out one thing. I don't know if you've noticed this in your life, in schooling. Is it Magnus or Magnus? How do you prefer? Well, in English people just say Magnus, but in Norwegian we would say Magnus. But I'm not going to push that. Just Magnus is fine. Okay, Magnus is fine. Magnus is fine. Okay, thank you. No, that's good. Let's see, I lost my train of thought there. Talking about extremes, principles of sacred music, and chance. We know from a historical, musical, historical research that Bregory and chant, at least some of Bregory and chant, is explicitly based on Jewish psalm tones. Think of that. Going back to the very beginning of the church, our sacred music was deeply connected with the sacred music of Israel. Israel, of course, is God's original chosen people, continues to be his chosen people. That hasn't changed. Although the chosenness that God has brought through them has expanded to the whole world. But anyway, as his chosen people, there's maybe a little hint of objectivity there. In other words, if we're looking to find an authentic, sacred music that glorifies God, maybe a good place to start would be the chant tradition that goes all the way back in some sense, in some discernible sense to the music of the Jews and the way that's been elaborated and developed over the centuries in the church. I think there's something about chant that's really important. It's easy to think, Oh, my gosh, how is that going to connect with people? But you and I have seen the chant CDs that come out over the last 30 years, they're huge best sellers. They will reach people who wouldn't necessarily buy a set of Beethoven symphonies or Mendels and Choral works or something like that. But chant really seems to reach across boundaries. Liturgical music, I think, some connection with chant. Then I guess lastly, just to be humble and realize that you're at the service of God in the liturgy and God's people, and it requires some humility, some give and take. Well, I really love that you're able to give very clear and concise principles once again and going back to our roots, trying to find ways to come together before the church got so scattered in all directions. We know that for Lord Jesus that he has a desire for us to come together. I think we have different challenges of that. But a big, low hanging fruit, I think, is musicians leading the way through beauty and through the amazing priority God has given for the arts, through his church and through the Bible and and say, These are ways where we can communicate. These are ways where we can together evangelize all nations. These are ways where we can actually learn from each other because there are such great treasures been developing over hundreds of years and even thousands of years. If you even include the people of Israel and since the Solstice and before that, we've been glorifying and singing to God since the beginning of time. I think that was also a really good time, good point. We also go back in history and use that also as something where we can learn and discover. And maybe there are some wisdom that we have lost many times. Yes, right. It is great wisdom that is really good for us and that God has intended for us that have just been obscured by many experimentations. So lots of good points there. You definitely gave me something to think about, Brian. We can go over to the next question. You already touched on it. Maybe you have something else to add on that, with the difference between music for evangelism and music for worship, where the boundary goes there. Do you want to expand on that a little bit more? Sure. Well, I think, first of all, if we're honest, I noticed this long before I was really practicing my faith. But when I was in college, for example, I noticed that some of the very best music of various composers seemed to be their religious music. It was remarkable. I would be singing in these different ensemblees. Like I sang in the early music ensemble. I remember singing this amazing music of various composers from Bach to Pallestrinah and everyone in between, Mareton, all of these great composers. I remember thinking to myself, This music is so good and it's pointed to something that's so beautiful that if that's false, we really shouldn't be singing it because it's too convincing. If the thing it's pointing to doesn't exist, we really shouldn't be singing it. Not that I really followed through on that. I kept singing it. Well, not necessarily believing it, but it did. It pointed beyond itself. William Byrd was another one, the great English composer, William Byrd. I think that liturgical music, of which almost all of that was liturgical music, does seem to bring out the best in composers, and is, in a sense, because of that, the most evangelistic. It does seem to point to God whether it's being performed as part of a mass or church service or on a concert and a concert hall or at a festival, it does seem to have an evangelistic quality about it. I would say getting back to some of the different genres. If I think there is an appropriate and there's a time and a place for different genres within a mass, if you had this progression over hundreds of years, these mass settings getting more and more elaborate and longer and longer and longer, peaking out in the mid to late 19th century with the orchestral masses, and to a point where it started to overshadow the mass itself, the act of worship itself. I think there's a natural and almost logistical necessity to have those be more in a concert or a festival setting, perhaps done in a church. I was listening to a recording of one of Brookner's Masses, which was formed in a church. I think that's a beautiful thing. It's not part of a mass. It's not liturgical music in that sense, but it's done in a liturgical setting that I think is very beautiful and appropriate. I think, again, getting back to just the craft of music, music being well crafted, tapping into authentic human emotions while staying away from maybe extremes. It'd stimulate base emotions to an excess or something like that. Again, one might point to some of the crazy big romantic works of Berliost and whatnot. It's great stuff, but it's so over the top. It's maybe not the healthiest music. I guess those are some additional thoughts. The music for worship, I guess I would say this. Certainly, for obvious reasons, as a classically trained composer, I do favor the classical tradition and liturgical music. But even within the classical tradition, there's a whole host of music that I would never use in worship. In other words, classical doesn't mean sacred necessarily. A Beethoven piano sonata during the offeratory? I don't think so. It's great music, but I don't know how conducive it is necessarily toward contemplation or worship and so forth. I think it might be more appropriate for the concert hall. Within classical music, there's a really fairly narrow range of music I would use for the liturgy itself. But the liturgy isn't the only place for music. Just as... It's not like we live our entire lives inside the church building. There's a lot of healthful, good things we can do outside of church and bring what we've received into the world. That's a good point. I think you're clarifying many things here. Music has many functions. For example, my wife is from Ecuador and she likes- Mine too. Mine too. Where? From Guayaquale. Where is your wife from? My wife is from Guayaquale, where she's from? And my wife is from Boyko as well. She's right here. How are you? That's wonderful. There I learned to appreciate, of course, some... She can appreciate, for example, salsa music. When salsa music is done between a man and a woman in a marriage, it's a beautiful music to really bring that type of passion together, a romantic passion. That's the function of it. That's how it's being used for. I've seen Christian salsa music, but in many times it's not that effective to bring about the presence of God because it's made for another purpose. That doesn't mean that it's sinful. Of course, you can be a Christian movie composer and do a great job of having fitting beautiful music to that scene, and that it's a certain excellence in that which can reflect God. I think that's important to know. I've been speaking with other in the body of Christ, and they're talking about that we really need artists need to, instead of saying that this music is evangelistic, they can say that Christian look at themselves as evangelists. And that if they have that perspective that I'm going to build relationships with my music, I'm having a heart for them. Then their whole work of being a musician becomes also a way of being an evangelist. There's many ways that the Lord can use such a willing and available person. I think that is important to know. But if the goal is to worship God more fully, and if your goal is with your music that they will have a sense of the presence of God, that their mind will be drawn to think of Jesus, look at Jesus, to walk with Jesus, to eat with Jesus, to pray to Jesus, to be with God in scripture. If that's the goal that you want people to do that more in their life, then there is a certain, like we're talking about, a certain transcendence or transparency element that is in the music that points beyond itself and the more earthbound functions, which music can do. You can have music that is great for making people feel appreciated on their birthday, for example. And that music isn't sinful to celebrate your birthday, but it's a different function. I think that some of the principles you're saying brings these thoughts to my mind that we should be careful of saying this music is from the devil or something like that, but it has different functions. Right. I think that's very true, and these are good questions to be considering. I think the the danger is we can become a bit puritanical and say, Yeah, this is the devil's music or whatever. But the issue of time and place, of purpose, of function naturally produces different kinds of music, many which are just fine. Okay, so let's move on to another challenging question. So that's what we would like to do here. Let's step out of our comfort zone as artists here. How can Christians come together to make more beautiful music both for modern and traditional churches? They might have some of the same steps moving forward. They might have a little bit different challenges. What do you think? Yeah. When you say modern and traditional, are you speaking of communities primarily or buildings or both? Tell me a little bit more about that. That's a good point. It requires some definition. When I'm thinking modern, I'm thinking modern worship music, which usually is a band or a very simple setting with maybe music popular since the '70s until now, that type of more of a low church, typical, evangelical, I would say. There might be some of that also in the Catholic Church. I'm not so familiar with that. But then traditional, there you can be either just hymns with piano, but you can go all the way into chant or it's just more of that not modern pop type of music. That's right. Sure. I think that touches on avoiding the extremes of utility, on the one hand, and idolatry on the other hand. I think it's tough. I think an attitude of… You don't want to say that popular music can't be used by God, even in worship, it certainly can. I think it has a lot to do with the attitude and the spiritual openness of those who are making the music. They can do it in such a way that it's really very tastefully and beautifully done and not distracting. Or it can be a rock concert, which is distracting. The same can be true in all humility of classical musicians. That's what I call the white-wash-tomb principle, where you have this beautiful choir and they're singing. It's amazing singing and there's that conductor up there in the organ and it's just all so glorious. But there's backbiting and bitterness and clawing for attention and advantage on the part of the musicians. It can be like a sheep's clothing, a completely secular approach to music that uses the outer trappings of religion to advance its own ends. That thing, even though it's very beautiful on the surface, it can exude a poison into the congregation and especially into the community of musicians who are making the music. Anyway, I don't know how I got on that. But coming together to make more beautiful music for both modern and traditional churches. I think one thing we can do is to have sacred concerts. A great example of this, I did this for my 10 years working as a church musician, Lessons and carols, the tradition of Lessons and carols, which came from the Anglicans. It's a little over 100 years old now, which is this wonderful… You have the scripture readings, the nine readings, nine lessons, the readings charting salvation history all the way through the birth of Christ and the epiphany, and then ending with the reading of the prolog of the Gospel of John. There's the reading, and then there's a musical response, a choral piece, perhaps a hymn, and then you go on to the next reading. This is a wonderful way, ecumenically, I think, to get people together to do these types of sacred concerts. Some of the things, Magnus, that you're working through and trying to build up in your organization for composers and together for Beauty for God, I think are very positive. So festivals, meetings, conferences, fellowship, I think, is very important, helping each other to walk with God. In a certain sense, when we put first things first like that, the second things tend to come more naturally. Whereas if we can be with one another and really help each other walk with God and live the Christian life, then the fruit of that will be impressed in ways that we can only imagine. Whereas sometimes if we put the music first and it's all about this great performance or whatever, that can work too. But I don't know, just keeping first things first, I guess, as we approach our common endeavors together. I'm excited to see… I love the vision that you have. I'm really excited to see where that goes. So praise God for that. Yeah, praise God. I believe it is his will or else I wouldn't have done it right. I could have found easier things to do with my life. So if I was in the flesh, I'll probably do something else. But I love it. I am so empowered when I do this. I can do it all day. I meet so many interesting people and I see a lot of... I hear personal stories talking with people and there is a lot of need where many have such a heart to glorify God more fully. They have beautiful music and it's just been a tendency to not... If it's within the churches or being in the universities, that type of transcendental music hasn't been really given enough structures to come out to the people. But if we just look at the tendencies in architecture right now, where they really are going down into scientific methods and they see that scientifically modernist building stresses people mentally when they don't have any ornament to hang on to. They can track that with the eye movements and things like that. When they do surveys, many places in Europe, 75% of people prefer classical architecture. I think within those 25, there is probably a little bit of conditioning that has happened as well. It might be an even higher. Because of these universal longings we have for belonging and to start to wander and come into those deeper ways of experiencing reality, which beauty puts us into. I think we live in a time now where many things are about to change and that we need to equip people right now to meet that demand. Because it really is going to... Within the architecture, it's really how quickly they can now train craftspeople. That will be the factor of how quickly they can actually develop urban centers in a more humane way. The same thing now within church music and in the churches, to be able to equip churches and be able to have people that can teach new people and do it in a sustainable way, we need to start with the creators, we need to start with the leaders. And then I think we will also see a great, like a grassroot movement growing in also in this area. I just wanted to encourage everybody who's listening right now, if you are in a worship band or you are a classical musician, a keyboard player in a Baptist Church, or if you're a master in Gagarin' chant, wherever direction you are in the larger body of Christ, and if you feel undervalued and you know you have more potential, you know that for some reason all these music have come to you and you want to be a faithful steward of that. So when you meet Jesus, he say, Well done, good and faithful servant, committed to the joy of your Master. You want that. You want to be faithful with what you have. I would just encourage you that there are a lot of people that want that. I have also, and I think we're going to have them on the show, just non-musician, just people sitting in the pews, in the congregations, honest feedback about how they experience worship. Because I had people come up to me when we have been to meet at the bigger conferences, and they come to me and they say, Magnus, I know that you haveYou're the guy now that tries to really create more of a holistic approach to worship and glorify God more fully. I got to say, Magnus, there was two songs today I wasn't able to worship when that music was there. It was a struggle. It was hard because I wanted so much to be there, but it just distracted me and I could see a real sorrow in him. I think many times our pastors and priests, people don't want to rock the boat. They don't really get all that feedback. My heart is here is really for... I have a very human perspective in addition to having my mind on Christ and wanting to make sure we have God-centered worship. I also have a real heart for all the musicians that feel frustrated or isolated or underappreciated, and also for all of those in churches that just know that with some tweaks here or just some more variety, that they would be able to worship God more fully in all his attributes, and that the whole of the Bible could be taught through the Music Ministry of the Church. I hope that is an encouragement and that you are able to now start thinking about these things. Whoever are listening now, engage in the conversations. You can also contact me on contactbeautyandthefaith. Com, which is our more overall organization, if you want to be on the show. Brian, now I want to take my attention over to you and how people can connect with your music or what you are doing. Where do you want people to go, Brian? Sure. People can just contact me by email. That's probably the easiest. Brian@nelsonmusic.com just like it sounds. We can put this in the show notes, too. I do have a couple of recordings out. I have two main branches of my work. One is sacred music. I have a CD of response, oral psalms for the mass for canter, organ, and choir. Then I have a CD on the more classical side, chamber music, choral works, many different things. There's a lot of overlap, of course, but there's a little bit of distinction between those two different tracks. We can put those in the show notes, too. I'm excited we've got this conference coming up here that looking forward to that as well. I guess it'll be in the past by the time people hear this, but I would say that. I would just say, too, I just find it very encouraging what you were just saying about whatever a person's background is, God is there with them, and we need to be with each other and really encourage and help each other and to not be afraid. The enemy, the ancient serpent, wants to divide and conquer. There's a lot of that. I know certainly in the classical world, a lot of isolation and despair. Even in the midst of all this great tradition of beauty, it can become all about performance and achievement. I've heard stories about pianists committing suicide because they can't play list. They just can't do it. I mean, these kinds of tragedies. I would just want to encourage, as you did, everyone not to be afraid, not to give up hope, and let's come together and help each other be an effective witness to God in our music. And a joyful one, a joyful witness. Absolutely. Showing that joy, there's a lot of there's a lot of reason to rejoice. We do hear Paul expresses in inspired scripture that in everything, rejoice. If you're in prison, you can rejoice. Even if you are struggling financially because you want to keep her integrity of making the music that you hear and that you love, keep on rejoicing. There is a promise to those who love God and all things work together according to his purpose. There is purpose in suffering, and it can be a way to sanctify us spiritually. That's right. I would find there, instead of praying all the time for all those trials to go away, maybe we should pray for strength. And then sometimes the lesson is repeated until it is mastered. So let us be faithful and rejoiceice and that this is an opportunity not for despair. Like so much of the Nileism we see in the world, this is a time for the church to have hope. There is a great hope for heaven. There's a great hope for Jesus' second coming. There is a great hope that we can now, more than ever, be a light in the world, which is getting increasingly ugly in so many places in the West, that the church can step in, in love and be that light that can shine even brighter now. That is my great hope. Thank you so much for listening and tuning into this episode. You can see us on YouTube. There we put both subtitles and video to remember things better. You can also listen to us on the go. You can multitask that and be able to leverage your time if that is necessary for you. Thank you again for your ears to this podcast and let us glorify God more fully together.