Cognitive Musical Dissonance

ITunes© is like crack, once you try it you need a family intervention to stop using it. There's got to be a 12-step program out there.

Today my musical cognitive dissonance reached glaring proportions when I downloaded into my IPod© the new Nickel Creek cd Why Should the Fire Die, which is their third album. They started out as a bluegrass influenced trio, but have musically matured under the direction of their wunderkind mandolin player Chris Thile. I also picked up some songs from a band which sounds like Nickel Creek did three years ago, named The Greencards. They are from Australia of all places.

Then I downloaded music from the newest album by Magdalena Kožená, Lamento. She is a Czech mezzo-soprano whom I heard sing at last year's Mostly Mozart festival. We had great seats, third row, and she was definitely the high point of the evening. I also picked up some nice arias from another of her cds, La Belle Imagini, which has some lovely pieces by Gluck.

So what does this have to do with Jesus? Well, Nickel Creek has Christian convictions bubbling up through its music occasionally, and Kožená sings like an angel, and when an angel sings Bach...well, it can only be sublime. The selection I love most is a transcription by Bach of Francesco Bartolomeo Conti's Languet anima mea, which is interestingly, a Roman Catholic piece, celebrating the union of love between Christ and the soul. So even Bach had some dissonance, only he didn't have an IPod©.