Dr. Michael Brown is a very well-known author who is quite prolific. He seems to be ever widening the field of topics that he writes about. The Power of Music is unique in that he has not written a book about this subject before. As the title of the book indicates music has power, it has influence, it has the ability to move people. Its influence can be either positive or negative. In this book Dr. Brown looks at both the constructive and destructive power that music can exert.

The book consists of a preface, an introduction, and twelve chapters. In the course of these chapters the author focuses on a variety of topics related to music. For example, chapter 1 is very autobiographical; Brown writes about his own journey and the part that music has played in his life. He was very interested in rock music when he was a teenager, he played it and attended a lot of the concerts put on by the musical celebrities of the day, groups like the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Led Zeppelin. He also writes about how the hymns that were sung in the Pentecostal church he started to attend impacted him. In other chapters, he moves on to describe the impact of music in the wider culture. In chapter 3, Brown cites Daniel J. Levitin who pointed out the pervasiveness of music in our world; it can be heard at weddings, graduations, funerals, sporting events, and in many other settings (page 31). In chapter 5, the author shows how the Communists promoted their message through song. In chapter 6, he writes about the part that music played in the United States during the time of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War (pages 62-70). Later in the book, Brown highlights the significant place that music occupies in Scripture (pages 142-152). Music is significant in both the secular and spiritual world. It cannot be denied that there is power in music, it engages our minds and moves our hearts and emotions.

Reviewed by John Lathrop

Preview The Power of Music: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Power_of_Music.html?id=0Nl7DwAAQBAJ

Part One: Three Questions

All churches come together to sing, and most Christians would readily affirm that this shared musical practice is a significant element in spiritual life. Yet the exact manner in which music exerts powers of spiritual formation may seem amorphous and elusive. I will approach the subject by asking three questions:

How do song lyrics affect us?

What kinds of musical experiences may subtly exclude some Christians?

What happens when music in the church borrows from music in the culture?

I will explore each of these and then conclude with suggestions for understanding theologically rich lyrics, inviting participation from all congregants, and innovating in areas where the culture may prove unhelpful.

Question 1: How Do Song Lyrics Affect Us?

Lyrics have the power to teach, but indirectly; there are very few songs that resemble a paragraph from a seminary textbook. To illustrate the point, readers may find it amusing to try setting the following doctrinal statement to music:

We believe in one God (eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent) existing as three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in nature, attributes, power, and glory.

Songwriters will find this text unwieldy, and a congregation will find it downright clumsy, even with a nice melody.

In the same way prosaic theological propositions do not usually make good song lyrics simply because they are too direct and too plain. Songs, by their nature, require language evoking imagery and narrative rather than asserting abstract facts, and they teach by awakening the imagination to Kingdom realities.

Even the most theologically rich lyrics reach their best moments not in assertion but in evocation: they speak more profoundly in image than in proposition. For example, the unifying theme of Immortal, Invisible is the paradox of God’s immanence and transcendence—that he is both close to us and distant from us. The finest line of the first verse is In light inaccessible hid from our eyes, which is both a vivid image (that of blinding light) and also poetically ironic (insofar as light, normally the vehicle of sight, here precludes it). The second verse also peaks in a poetic line: Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light. The reader imagines the human states of repose and hurry, and then sweeps them both aside as inadequate to describe the activity of God. Light is normally silent, but here the simile illuminates the purity, energy, and life behind even God’s unperceived deeds: he is silent as light, not quiet as a mouse.¹

Holy, Holy, Holy is an instance of Trinitarian teaching in song. Nevertheless, the direct statement God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity, while edifying, comes off as static and formulary when compared with dramatic scenes like Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. This latter line draws upon things we can imagine: we have not seen the saints casting down their crowns (let alone the glassy sea) but we do know what crowns are and we have seen the ordinary sea, so our imaginations can make the leap and the text comes to life in our minds.