Just Hum Your Favorite Hymn

   There is singing, and then there is music - that mysterious sense of supreme beauty that runs a thrill down one's spine; that isn't so much a sound as a feeling of wholeness and grace. It has much to do with the musician's performance, though part of it is in the attention of the audience, the attuning of the performer's emotions to the piece and the listener.
   Of course, not everything that is called music can evoke that sensation. Some opera can do it; many concertos, sonatas and rhapsodies; toccatas, fugues, oratorios and cantatas; hymns as well, if sung in the right spirit. Much of the popular music fails to capture that peculiar sense, particularly the types that are filled with vulgarity, anger and anarchy, for the sense I am speaking of does not come through any of those forms: it comes through pathos, peace, joy or sacred purpose.
   To give a sense of what I mean, here are a few of the songs I've found that evoke the feeling I am attempting to describe:

   - And of course many pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach. 
   There is some power to music that has the potential to ennoble, uplift, and inspire. It is a sad reflection on our society (in any country!) that we cannot create music with the emotional resonance that our ancestors achieved.