Musicians Network News
CONCERT SERIES
Published on 20th June, 2010 at 6:03pm by Richard Williamson.
Please pray for a Musicians Network member with a big vision!
Please pray for a Musicians Network member, who would rather not be named as they originally come from a restricted country where being a Christian is not allowed. This person has asked us to pray for a series of concerts they are planning. Here's what this MN member writes:
I'm going to Vienna 28 June to 5 July for my first evangelistic concert at Yamaha Hall, this concert was put on by a church there in Vienna which a mission partner linked with my church. It's very exciting and we're just working on the final details, as well as practising hard!
My vision is to go to all the mission partners from my church, and provide an evangelistic event for them with classical music/recitals/concerts, giving testimony, and so they can invite their own contacts.
All the concerts are tailored somewhat to the culture of the place I'll be visiting. In Vienna it'll be towards "Questions of Beauty - with their rich culture and quest of beauty, with Mozart and Beethoven, still, true Beauty can only be found in Christ. I build the concert around C.S.Lewis argument of desire, longing, and another kingdom in The Weight of Glory.
His argument:
In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
I will have opportunity at the end of the concert to give a short testimony. The programme note will be read - and the programme note is built around this theme of beauty (written in Austrian like a poem) and read dramatically like in a play.
It's basic plot is: A imaginary person searching for beauty, prides himself with such perfection as Mozart (sonata in F major k332), wondering about the feeling of longing he has for beauty (Chopin mazurkas op 67), finds that this longing comes again and again (Franck violin sonata 4th movement), people say to him "Do not keep searching life - this is all there is" and blame him of not living in reality, but he defends himself with Beethoven Op 10 no 3 sonata (especially 2nd movement), then he feels even when he finds beauty, it lasts only a moment then vanishes (Debussy Fire works prelude). He finishes with a question: "Is this really all there is? Can I ever find true, lasting beauty?" - and to which question I start my testimony. Then to finish I will play Beethoven Pathetique - only the 2nd movement - a time for people to reflect on what they have heard. Then as an encore, I'll be playing with a violinist Salut D'Amore, sending them off hoping that they saw something of Jesus.
:) I'm very excited. Please pray for the programme.
Published on Sunday, 20th June, 2010 at 18:03 by Richard Williamson, with the following tags:
concertseries.
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