Ave Maria at the Baptist Wedding, Taylor Swift at the Child's Birthday Party: A Note on Words and Meaning
July 1994. Vicksburg, Mississippi.
My California family has come to the Deep South for a wedding. One of our number has fallen in love with a comely daughter of the Magnolia State, and the clan has dutifully traveled to this sweltering, history-and-humidity-soaked city on the banks of our nation’s greatest river.
The wedding is in a Baptist church and follows the rites of that faith. At least, until the musical interlude between the initial homily and the exchange of vows. A mezzo-soprano stands in the balcony and gives us a lovely version of Ave Maria. My mother squeezes my hand hard.
“Roger Williams would be very cross,” mama whispers in my ear. (Mama taught religious history. Roger Williams helped start the Baptist Church in the colonies.) I whisper back that Martin Luther is doing acrobatics in his grave. We both are pretty dang sure that singing a hymn to Mary and asking her to intercede for us (“ora pro nobis peccatoribus”) is absolutely incompatible with Baptist theology.
But. The Schubert melody is very pretty, and it is familiar, and it adds beauty and solemnity to an occasion meant to be beautiful and solemn. Surely, mama and I agree, that is enough.
Yesterday, I sit with my children and their mother at a memorial service for a dear family friend. This friend was not religious, but she did love music. One of the mourners offers a very affecting and intricate hula dance set to Elvis Presley’s “I’ll Remember You.” With our eyes still wet, another mourner rises to speak, and after a brief recollection of the departed, launches into an a capella rendition of the third verse of “Amazing Grace:”
Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come
'Twas grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home.
The mourner at the microphone raises her hands and asks us to join her in the refrain, and we all do. Atheists, Unitarians, a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews and agnostics do as asked, and the room fills with the familiar words:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see.
Those who weren’t already crying after Elvis and the hula have now quite lost it with the communal singing of arguably the most famous of all hymns. I think of whispering to my daughter that there are almost certainly no Calvinists in the room, and the deceased was certainly not someone who believed in the doctrine of grace that is shot through John Newton’s words. I think better of it because my daughter is fifteen and would receive my comment as an unwarranted criticism of something very moving that has been offered in love. My daughter would be right.
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
'Cause you know I love the players
And you love the game
Taylor Swift released the single “Blank Space” when my daughter was in kindergarten. In January 2015, at Heloise’s sixth birthday party, we played a handful of Taylor songs on repeat -- and at one point, the little girls gleefully screamed the above lyrics.
A more conservative mother of one of Heloise’s friends approached us after the party. She was very polite, but firm. “I know it seems silly,” she said, “But I believe words matter. It is not appropriate for children to sing these lyrics, even if they don’t what they mean.”
This woman and I had a brief but civil discussion. I argued that intent is what mattered; the mother at hand made the case that words had a constitutive power even if the person speaking or singing them did not yet fully understand their meaning. It was an emotionally charged but very interesting philosophical discussion about language and its implications. We did not agree, but I promised we would consider her request to better monitor the playlists at future celebrations.
I do not believe that singing “Ave Maria” at a wedding makes a Baptist into a Roman Catholic. I do not believe singing “Amazing Grace” at a memorial service serves as a soteriological statement. I do not believe playing “Blank Space” at a six-year-old’s birthday party functions as an endorsement of future promiscuity and mental instability. I do not believe these things because I believe very strongly that the feelings we feel when we sing or hear certain songs constitute a reality that is every bit as important as the literal meaning of the words themselves. (Think of how many of our most beloved modern Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers and lyricists.)
“I believe words matter,” said that mother upset about Taylor’s song. I agree, but surely it would be an impoverishment if we could only sing songs whose words matched our politics and our principles. When I sang yesterday of that “sweet sound” that “saved a wretch like me,” part of my brain said, “You know, Hugo, the use of ‘wretch’ here is clear reference to the Calvinist doctrine of Total Depravity as declared at the Synod of Dordt in 1619.” The better part of me said, “That may be true, but the way the music makes us all feel is much, much more important.”
Though truth and love can never really differ, said the poet, when they seem to, it is better to choose love. And though words and meaning and intent should, in some ideal world, always cohere, when they don’t, it is better to celebrate intent.
PS:
In 1982’s The Wrath of Khan, Mr. Spock dies, heroically. (He will, of course, come back in the next movie.) At the funeral, starting at 1:10 of this clip, the bagpipes kick in with the familiar tune. It is very moving, but I do not think the great Vulcan was a Calvinist.