The "minor" mode

"Major is happy, minor is sad", was how my piano teacher explained it to me when I was in second grade. She was teaching me how to listen and hear harmony. It worked; I began to learn to identify major and minor chords. It is many many years later and I hear more discriminately. Harmony, as it turns out, is complex. The minor mode is not merely sad. The minor is filled with richness. It expresses the shadows of mystery, the blessings that grow out of pain and suffering, and the strengthening lessons of depression. The minor is soulful. There is enlivening power in being able to fully experience or hear the difference between the major and the minor modes. I am grateful to my teachers who planted and nurtured this and other important seeds about harmony.

With a closer examination we find that the major and the minor (or happy and sad chords) are inextricably related. Every major scale has a related minor scale with exactly the same notes, the difference is the perspective (or note) from which you start. Every major scale has a minor scale built into it. There are actually three forms of the minor scale: natural, melodic, and harmonic -- each with its distinctive personality. The minor mode, too, can heighten the impact of the major. When classical composers wrote symphonies, frequently a middle movement was in a minor mode to elevate the force of the final movement in the major mode. We need the major and the minor; take away the one and we no longer have the notes to construct the other.

As Christians concerned about the soul, it serves us well to heed and listen to the minor modes in our own life symphony. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted," Jesus preached. Does it say anything to you that hardly ever do you hear a pop song on the radio in the minor mode? I have even heard a rumor of a see-through cathedral in California where the musician was at one time not allowed to play music that was minor because it is not pleasing to the ear. It is almost like glossing over the excruciating horror of the crucifixion and observing only the resurrection. Happy Christians they must be. But there is no Resurrection without the Passion.

Lent is the time in the Liturgical Calendar that encourages us to intentionally face the things that sadly separate us from God. It is a time to admit and embrace our failures, our phobias and our encounters with finiteness whereby enhancing communion with our Saviour. Lent is a time to listen to the minor mode. It's no coincidence that there are three times as many hymns in the minor than in the major in so many hymnals. Be encouraged to embrace the minor mode, and may this Lent be a blessing to all of us.