Sour Notes

A composer heard a piece of music in his head, wrote it down, and gave it to a pianist to perform. The pianist did an admirable job of sight-reading, but still hit a significant number of sour notes along the way. The composer asked the pianist to work on the piece, to practice it and try to perfect it. The pianist practiced diligently and, after several weeks, was able to play a very respectable version of the piece. But there were still a few sour notes in some of the more difficult passages. So the composer found a more talented pianist, who studied the piece and played it even better than the first one had, despite still making a few mistakes here and there. Finally, the composer gave the piece to a virtuoso, who spent weeks and weeks practicing it. Even the virtuoso, it must be admitted, had trouble hitting every note correctly, every time. Eventually, however, the virtuoso was able to play the piece as written. Yet, still, the performance did not precisely match what the composer had heard in his head when he first wrote the piece. The composer, you see, had heard an ideal in his head, and no actual performance, no matter how virtuosic, could ever match it.

This is what it means to sin. God has written the music down and we do our best to perform it, but even those of us who are virtuosos will never play it the way the Composer heard it. It is glorious, breathtaking music, but we are imperfect, out of tune, imprecise. We play with broken strings and cracked reeds and rusted valves. We first rush ahead of the tempo and then drag behind it. We divide the beat unevenly, play too loud, misread notes. And we all do this. None of us ever gets the music right.

Does this mean that the Composer hates us for ruining his work? No. The Composer loves us for trying. He hears the right notes, not the errors, and, more importantly, weighs our efforts against our abilities. No composer can ask more of musicians than their best effort, and as long as they give that, any good, decent, just composer will be deeply gratified. And what goes for a composer goes that much more for the Composer.

Are you ready to rehearse? It’s time to tune up.