Ideas from music by Peter Relf

Just like a piece of music, a sermon exists in time.  From silence, the composer begins a musical idea and shapes it until a desired conclusion is reached.  The preacher takes a similar journey when crafting a sermon.  It is not the same journey.  A sermon that slavishly followed a musical form could quickly become ridiculous.  Even so, there might be some insights for sermon construction from exploring how music is put together.  Let’s see, or rather hear, what might happen.

A game of two halves
Binary form is simply a piece in two halves.  It starts in the home key but shifts away by the half-way point.  In music, this section would be probably repeated to reinforce the melody as well as the move away from home.  Congregations tend to prefer not having a full replay at half-time – highlights would be enough!  The important point of half-time is to be clear that we’ve moved from where we started, that where we are now feels unfinished, incomplete, and that there’s more to look forward to in what’s coming next.  This is what football pundits do at half-time too.

The second half starts with new material in the away key, perhaps exploring twists to the melody in remote (probably darker) keys before returning to home ground.  In music, that half too might be repeated, but for a sermon, a short conclusion that draws on earlier ideas could well be enough.  The home ground at the end is not exactly the same as the starting point.  The listener has been taken through the less familiar and the less comfortable in order to reach a new, satisfying final goal – an emotional journey, not just an academic exercise.

Where’er you walk
You may be familiar with the song from Handel’s Semele: ‘Where’er you walk cool gales shall fan the glade’.  It starts with a gentle, relaxing Tune A just right for gentle summer breezes, then at ‘Where’er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise’ it moves to a more energetic, upward thrusting Tune B and new harmonic territory.  After that, it’s back to Tune A, which an accomplished singer would decorate so that the familiar becomes much more colourful than the gentle first time around.  This is Ternary form in the ‘da capo aria’.

Ternary form’s challenge for preachers is the equivalent of the repeat of Tune A (the ‘da capo’).  Perhaps a sermon’s opening that was negative or pessimistic could be transformed at the close into a positive, uplifting conclusion after exposure to a middle section that focussed on the transforming work of Christ.  A format like that could be both a proper application of the musical form (listeners would understand the shape if the original pattern of words were used again at the end, but modified to express hope / justice / love) and a proper expression of Christian good news.

The Kenwood Sonata
In sonata form, after an exposition of main themes comes a development section, which toys with snatches from the themes and puts together different and separate musical ideas in exciting, challenging ways.  After that the main themes are recapitulated before a closing coda.

It’s the development section that could make a stimulating middle to a sermon.  If binary and ternary forms have been a mix of ideas and emotions (in cookery, folding ingredients together), then the development section of sonata form has the mixer on full power.  Themes get fragmented into short motifs.  Motifs are tossed around, juxtaposed, overlaid.  Their character and mood is changed.  Harmonies change more rapidly.  Tension rises.  New ideas surface.  Unsettling!  Disturbing!  Oh for reassurance, for security, for peace! (cue the recapitulation).

Sonata form is prompting us to think again about the pace and emotion of sermons.  A measured sermon which keeps its equilibrium may be missing something important.  There could be scope for changes of mood and pace, for a deluge of thoughts that are not fully worked through, for the placing of this against that (however briefly) and for changing sentence construction, as in the previous paragraph.  In our kitchen at home, the mixer sits unused for much of the time.  Now I’m wondering how much I use the Kenwood Sonata in sermon preparation…

Fishing for gems
Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet has a movement based on a song ‘The Trout’ that Schubert had written earlier.  This movement is in the form of a theme and several variations.  The tune gets played by different combinations of instruments and is given different treatments from variation to variation.  By the time the cello has its moment of glory in variation 5, the tune has become so lyrical that it’s virtually a new melody.  After that, a simple version that is very similar to the original song brings the movement to a happy close. 

Improvised jazz pieces also work in the same kind of way where musicians perform a song together and then let soloists feature the character of their instrument at the same time finding fresh qualities in the song’s music.  Now there’s a thought.  Once in a while, how about a [jazz] band of preachers who start and end together and have brief solos along the way.  One sermon, several artists?  How might they perform together?  This article doesn’t have all the answers!

In conventional sermon construction, the theme and variations approach is sometimes described as ‘faceted’, where aspects of a theme are appreciated and contrasted in the way that a jeweller might delight in a precious stone.  From one gem comes variety and splendour. 

Round and round we go
We’ve all heard sermons that go round and round where the effect was not exactly inspired or intentional.  Rondo form is rather better.  An opening theme appears again and again like a refrain.  Imagine a chorus where the refrain stays constant but the verses are not the same tune each time.  Some pop songs  make use of rondo form – it’s not limited to classical music alone.

For a sermon, as for a rondo, it is essential that the recurring theme is memorable and still sounds good after several repetitions.  Equally, the contrasting sections need to be sufficiently different from the rondo theme to make its return welcome.

Under construction
Every sermon has been constructed somehow – there are many ways to do it.  Even so, it’s easy to slip into a familiar ways of organising sermon material.  This foray into musical form has given me a few ideas for sermon construction that I hadn’t thought of before.  Perhaps you too may find something here that could help shape your next sermon.

Peter Relf is a Local Preacher in the Mansfield Circuit