Cage Match

Musically speaking;

On CBC radio two in the morning on Music and Company the host, Tom, has a feature every week that seems to be quite popular. The idea is to compare two pieces of music and let the audience decided which one should “be left in the cage” and which one should be “let free”. Who wins? This week was the “Halleluiah match”; the Halleluiah chorus led by Sir G vrs the chorus led by Sir B. Sir G won by four votes. Tom said that the four people working on the program would each have voted for Sir B so it would have been a tie if they could have voted.
My vote would have gone to Sir B, because to me although musically speaking, the performance by Sir G was more impressive and technically better the performers seemed to be most impressed with their own performance and my attention was drawn to that performance whereas musically speaking, in listening to the performance led by Sir B I could think of the subject of the music rather than concentrating on the music itself. “Lord God Almighty”.
Is the purpose of music objective or subjective? Or both or either? I suppose that sometimes music is for subjective purposes, therapeutic, and sometimes the purpose of the music should be to draw attention to some one of some thing and not to itself. The question comes in how to do that. How best to draw attention to the subject at hand?
Thinking especially of the Halleluiah chorus how do we best glorify the Lord? Should we perform the biggest, best most technically accurate music or should we just let it rip so to speak? I do find it amusing when someone tries to find something wrong with the offering that Cain brought to the Lord. It was not the offering that was wrong, it was the person. God stipulated the when where what why and how of the offerings that Israel brought to Him, but even if someone got all those things right they still could be wrong. There will be people in heaven who never were baptized. Do we celebrate the Lord’s Supper or the death, resurrection and second coming of the Lord when we eat and drink? I have said before that Dale C’s book “How to…Influence People” is dangerous because it works! Even though Dale reiterates time and again throughout the book that you must be sincere in following the precepts of the book, the principles work without the sincerity. There are a lot of different kinds of music and ways to perform music, is sincerity all that counts?
It takes a special blend of adherence to the rules, sincerity, spontaneity and faith in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to Glorify the Lord, “And He shall reign for ever and ever”! !