The Case for Excellence

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." - Ludwig van Beethoven

Photo by Maximilian Brand on Unsplash

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” - Colossians 3:23-24.

When my Dad taught me how to play Smoke on the Water on guitar, I just knew I was destined to be a rockstar. My fingers formed the same three to four chords in the same sequence over and over, and it was like I’d unlocked the secret to guitar mastery. I could feel it already, the blaring speakers, spotlights, people screaming—I’d even learned the first third of the guitar solo (my Dad never taught me the rest). For years, guitar, piano, and singing dominated my life. I did all the things musical kids do—choir, playing for church, playing in crappy high school rock bands, all of it. I have perfect pitch, and excelled in music theory and writing. Music is a second language on both sides of my family; Mom’s side of the family are all multi-instrumentalist geniuses, and Dad is the most gifted guitar player I’d ever seen. I was fortunate to inherit an intense love for music.

Alas, though I never became a rockstar (don’t tell my kids) I never stopped playing, even if I’m a bit rusty. I still play guitar and sing for church from time to time, and I can still make my way around the piano. But, in all my years of playing, I’ve never felt like more of a musician than when I mastered the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on piano. When I say, “mastered”, I don’t mean just playing while reading the sheet music. I practiced this piece with such dedication and intensity that the music moved through my body, to my fingers, to the keys, with my eyes closed, only glancing at the sheet music to remember where I was. I lost my sense of time, and it was, for lack of a better word, transcendent. The final C-sharp minor chord droned from the keys, and I caught my breath. I’d experienced something. I had finally played what was a challenging piece for me, with excellence.

This year, my wife and I went to two concerts. I surprised her with tickets to see John Legend, and she surprised me with tickets to see Stone Temple Pilots and Godsmack. For the record, I lose the fight for who controls the music in the car every time. Something about kids, appropriateness, blah blah blah. This is the first year in the 7 that we’ve been married that we’ve gone to concerts like this, as finances, babies, and being inundated with work have been barriers. Both concerts were amazing, but what blew me away was how many people were all gathered in one place to watch the same thing. In both venues, literal seas of people sang the same songs, clapped (or headbanged) to the same beat, and cheered in the same moments. Thousands of people all shared a common goal, to watch a person or group of people play music with excellence.

It’s no secret that people are hungrier than ever post-COVID to have a live experience, to go somewhere and participate in something fun. But it’s not just the desire to go out and see something live—whether it’s a football game, a rock concert, or a play, we all have a shared desire to witness greatness.

When a guitarist or a violinist nails their solo, hitting every note with precision and grace, we clap. When an actor delivers a monologue with power and raw emotion, we gasp, maybe even cry. When a football player scores a touchdown, especially when the odds are against him, we cheer and high-five each other. In each shared moment, we look at the crowd around us and smile, acknowledging that we just saw something wonderful. We celebrate what we as humans are capable of in our greatest moments. Religious or not, we somehow understand that these experiences approach something divine. You can’t look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and describe it any other way.

Art isn’t the only arena for us to display excellence; it’s in all we do. When the janitor comes by to clean my office every day, I’m appreciative, even if they only empty my trash. But in the mornings, when I open my door and notice that they dusted the cobwebs in the corners, cleaned the floor, and even dusted my desk, I’m in awe. I have to find out who it was so I can thank them. At a restaurant, I’m thankful if nothing goes wrong with my food. But when the server and the chef go the extra mile to make the meal special, even if it’s something as simple as being kind and gracious, it’s noticed.

My favorite moments are when I happen to notice someone doing something above and beyond in their work that nobody would notice if they weren’t watching closely. It’s the barber going over his work one more time to make sure everything is perfect while their client’s eyes are closed in the chair. It’s the florist delicately positioning each flower in the bouquet so they fall just right. It’s the grocery store cashier bagging the items while smiling and talking to the shopper or even offering the little kids a lollipop. Each person understands that the job they do is about more than recognition. Whether an artist, a cashier, or a janitor it’s about doing their work with skill, with professionalism, and with an excellence that’s not only satisfying—it approaches something divine.

Conversation is growing about whether using artificial intelligence in all our endeavors is necessarily good. Even in the writing community, there’s debate about where proper use ends and laziness begins. Should we be so dependent on it to check our grammar, or should we familiarize ourselves with the rules of grammar so we can be more competent altogether? Should we let it list all the synonyms we should use, or try to find one ourselves? Like most topics, I wouldn’t say the answer is black or white.

Music, however, is a different story. People have unapologetically strong feelings about AI’s involvement in music, whether it’s writing lyrics, or the music, or both. We acknowledge that many of today’s pop artists have entire songwriting teams, sometimes consisting of dozens of people, all with the sole purpose of writing a hit, and nothing more. Yet, there’s something about AI’s involvement with music that feels…artificial, even cheap. Even if a song is written by a team of commercially driven, artistically indifferent hacks, at least they’re humans. With AI, the lyrics may be entertaining, the melody may be cool, but how can we ascribe any value to art that has no human experience behind it? How can we call music composed by AI excellent? If you’ve ever heard AI-generated music that you didn’t know was AI at first, I’m sure you can recall the feeling of betrayal once you discovered it was. If you haven’t experienced this, just search for the band The Velvet Sundown, you’ll see what I mean.

“and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills—” Exodus 35:31.

Introducing: Masters of the Craft

Classical music has always been close to my heart, and I believe that it is now more important than ever for us to rediscover it and the composers behind it. In an era when so many art forms seem lost in the face of AI’s intrusions, we need to remind ourselves of the centuries of humanity that came before us, composing the music that inspired everything we know today.

Starting this week, and then continuing every other week, I will be writing something new: Masters of the Craft. These writings will be short profiles honoring some of the most influential composers in history, giving brief anecdotes about their discipline, artistry, and dedication to their craft. This will still be part of The Race, just a different thread of writing, though still linked to thoughts on faith and humanity.

It’s no coincidence that, if I hum the first 9 notes of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, you will hum the next 9 notes without even thinking. You already know the first 9 measures of Beethoven’s Fur Elise, and if you don’t believe me, search it on Youtube and try not to hum it. Whether it’s Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Chopin, the contributions of these musical heroes are ingrained in us, even if we think we’ve forgotten.

Behind iconic pieces of music are stories that are not just admirable, but deeply human. No matter how sophisticated AI becomes, it cannot recreate the beautiful depths of the mental struggles Rachmaninoff underwent before composing his famous comeback with Piano Concerto No. 2. AI cannot adequately capture how important Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor was to the Polish people during World War II. The ethereal feeling of mastering Moonlight Sonata cannot be described by something that is not human. I’m even convinced that AI is nothing next to a boy grinning ear to ear with his father’s guitar in his arms after learning Smoke on the Water. It’s these feats of mastery that remind us how important it is to strive for excellence in all that we do, not just because people may see it, but because it is transcendent in and of itself.

I look forward to sharing more with you on Masters of the Craft.