Br. Augustine Buckner
The best moral formation often comes from music. It was my first year singing in our Dominican Schola and I was learning the intricate beauty of polyphony. A more seasoned brother leaned over and let me know that I’d really “internalized the tempo.” “Great!” I thought to myself, “I’m getting the hang of this.” My face must have betrayed self-confidence since he went on to explain that this wasn’t a good thing. His advice was simple, “You need a metronome.”
By “internalizing the tempo” I had stopped paying attention to the movement of the whole choir. I was internally consistent, singing the right notes, all in good time, but I had fallen off from the piece as a whole. Polyphony is an elaborate form of singing. It’s a conspiracy in which the singers must move and breathe together, in which the quality of each singer is not measured on the basis of his own sound, but on how each blends with others. Each singer must move and adapt to the sound of the whole, being drawn out of his own timing into a common tempo. The resulting glorious sound is only possible through the proper ordering of complementing pieces. If a part tries to dominate, the piece will fall apart. A choir’s perfection arises from this small community’s commitment to its common good.
In its mutual self-giving, polyphony appeals to our desire for communion. God made us in his image and thereby made us with a capacity for relationship (see Gen 1:26–27). By his own reckoning, it’s not good for us to be alone (see Gen 2:18). Man, a mystery to himself, is capable of communion and yet often chooses isolation. But like a choir, if we are to live with others in a genuine community it’s not enough for us to “internalize the tempo.” Our most beloved communities—the family,  » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2025/01/you-need-metronome-augustine-buckner.html