The French word for lullaby is berceuse, which bears the title of today’s prelude. As you may know, a lullaby is a gentle song, intended to be sung to lull a child to sleep. Composers use this title for dreamy, or peaceful music. The image is very evocative. I think Vierne evokes the image of a doting mother, lulling her child to sleep – tenderly, and lovingly. I hope you can see this image as you listen, but that my playing doesn’t actually lull you to sleep! What’s important in thinking about the visual implications of music is how they help us understand the un-understandable nature of life.

Louis Vierne was the titular organist at Notre Dame, in Paris. His compositions stand out among the finest ever written for the organ. Many people are surprised to learn that he was blind, from birth. Although Vierne was blind, his music creates the most vivid “images” of any other organ composer that I know. How can a blind person create an image that they’ve never, literally seen? They do it like all artists do. They create it figuratively. You can also see what I’m talking about in the words of the poetry in today’s offertory anthem.

If you look at the text of the offertory, George Herbert’s famous poem Come My Way, often associated with the a more well-known hymn tune by Ralph Vaughan Williams, it’s all figurative. Here is a poem about God, yet it never defines nor names God in an objectifiable way. That’s what metaphysical poets do – they create images and intimate knowledge of what we cannot fully “know” or comprehend as form reality. It’s an expression of a belief in God, rather than a definition of God. As with Vierne’s music, it’s an expression of the emotional tenderness of a sleeping child, rather than purely an objectifiable scene. If I am getting a little lofty, think of a word like “eternity,” for example. We kind of know what that is, but our brains are only capable of thinking of eternity as a really, really long time. Music and poetry help us to make sense of what defies the limits of our mental capacity to fully comprehend.

In the prelude by Vierne, he does the same thing as George Herbert is doing with words in the offertory. Vierne is expressing an image, but only one that he could have imagined. His eyes were unable to actually paint a literal picture for him. He creates an unseen image which transmutes into a real emotion. Compare that with Herbert’s poem, which creates a representation of the divine, but never pins it down.

Definitions (like the words “lullaby,” or “God”) never really tell you what something is – words that serve as definitions always fall ever so slightly short. Music and poetry help to expand the cognitive limits of words. Beyond the limit of definition lies what’s beautiful, what’s inspiring, and what is vividly indescribable. So is God -beautiful, inspiring, and vividly indescribable. Artists use imagination to point towards that which cannot be defined. How can we know more than our cognitive capabilities? It’s a great mystery, but music and poets help us to get closer. Being human is also a mystery because we are a creative image of God Himself. That image of God’s likeness allows us to “see,” just over the edge of reality, and the arts help us make sense of that space, that silence, that suspension of time and space itself. It’s wonderful to have poets and musicians who help us make some sense of the unknowable truths within ourselves. They help us make meaning out of our lives, even though we may be “blind” and not capable of fully understanding who we really are.  Soli deo Gloria!