One Beat at a Time

"Class, how are you going to do with that beat?"  Dr.Richard Lin (1925-2015)

We got married in October of 1976 after we both had graduated from Samford University in June. While she was earning a pharmacy degree, I earned  a double major of music and education. We moved together to Louisville, Kentucky the next year for me to continue my music education at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary(SBTS). There I earned a Master of Church Music with a major in choral conducting. I was named at graduation "The Outstanding Conductor of the Year." Considering the competition, I was very proud of that award. I still am. Am I bragging?  Yes, I think I am.

I seldom mention that I attended SBTS because I fear that people know something about what the seminary is today.  In light of what it is, unless you were there, there is no way to appreciate what it was. It was world-renowned as a school of theology and its music school was second to none in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).    According to what you may think about "Baptist" or "Baptist School of Music", you probably aren't all that impressed.  But in 1979, I earned a Master of Church Music degree  from one of the most respected schools of music in the country. It was no Julliard or Eastman. However,  it was not only respected as a school of "church" music but as a school of music. The summer before I entered SBTS I talked to a church music director who had dropped out there. He said,  "Regardless of what you think will happen at a theological seminary, you are going there to earn a masters degree in music. And they don't give it away."

Besides the general core curriculum, each student declared a major field.  I chose conducting. Although my education prepared me to conduct any music ensemble, including band and orchestra, my emphasis was choral conducting.

Dr. Richard Lin fled Communist China  and immigrated to the United States in 1952. His English was good and certainly understandable, but he had a heavy Chinese accent and got syntax jumbled up. That habit was part of what made him so warm and endearing. He was not only a significant professor of music, but became a significant mentor and friend.

Besides group classes in conducting,  I had private conducting lessons as well.  Both in class and in private, Dr. Lin held me accountable for every beat of every measure in a piece of music.  There was no bluffing or coasting through a musical score; he held my  "feet" to the fire. My arms and hands became an extension of my heart.

In our mothers' wombs there was a moment in time when the goop of amniotic fluid became organized enough that our tiny hearts started beating. Our lives began. There will be a moment in time when our hearts beat for the last time.  In between there is a definite number of beats. That number is counting down now. While you read this article, your heart will beat about 350 times. During the next twenty four hours, it will beat over 100,000 times.  At the end of the day, that will be 100,000 beats less than the total you are given. Today, or one day, just as surely as it started with beat one, it will stop. Then in the time it takes you to read this, your life will stop as well. There will have been a definite number of heart beats. That's all you got.

We live our lives as if we have time to waste. We count the minutes until five o'clock so that we can "get on with our lives" and do the things we really want to do.  We hurry through dinner so that we can watch TV.  We watch a show we're not all that interested in until the show we want to see comes on.  Meanwhile, our hearts are beating--diastole, systole, isovolumic contraction and isovolumic relaxation time, all in one second. This process repeats itself about 3,600 times while you watch your favorite show.

Just as Dr. Lin held me accountable, I have held my choirs accountable since then. No wasted beats. No wasted measures. No wasted anthems.  Heart and meaning."Choir, how are you going to do with this music?  How are going to do with this day?"

Since the early 1980s, the  Southern Baptist "Theological" Seminary has deteriorated to a fundamentalist Bible college. And there is no school of church music.  At times I'm tempted to feel that that degree and that conducting award are only useful as wallpaper. Especially since I've hung up the baton, I wonder what any of it meant.  But over the years, as I have stood before a choir,  that training still pulsed through my veins. it still sang in those voices.  And I knew  in those moments that none of it was wasted.  That all of it meant something. That all of it means something.

The pastor of the church where we were going after graduation  drove from Rossville, Georgia to Louisville to attend my graduation dinner.  When I introduced him to Dr. Lin, Dr. Lin put his  hand on my shoulder and said, "David's a good man. You're getting a good man."  Dr. Lin, you were a good man as well. Your hands became my hands.  And your heart became my heart. And it still beats through mine every day. "How am I going to do with this beat?" Regardless of what that degree is now worth, I'm going to make it count. I"m going to make it mean something. I only get about 100,000 heart beats today and I'll never get one of them back. Diastole, systole, isovulumic contraction, and isovolumic relaxation time.  I've moved into relaxation time.  But rests in music are as important as the notes.  Dr. Lin taught me that.