There is a common expression among musicians, “You’re only as good as your last concert!” And certainly, there are footsteps a musician takes in approaching the ideal performance—practice and rehearsal beforehand being obvious ones. However, if we see the performance as already a complete, right idea—as an expression of God’s being—then its perfect unfoldment is assured.
In the Bible, we read: “He performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him” (Job 23:14). And, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, we read: “Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power” (p. 192). I have found both of these ideas particularly applicable in approaching musical performance.
Christian Science teaches that man (meaning each individual person) coexists with God as His spiritual idea—by reflection and expression—rather than existing in an orbit of his own apart from the Divine Being. This sense of oneness with God comes from spiritual sense, the ability we all have to understand God. As Science and Health explains, “Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality” (p. 298). Through spiritual sense, one discerns God’s creation, including man and the universe, as wholly spiritual. Any performance, then, is seen as an expression of God’s beauty, to which performers and audience alike will respond.
