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Sermon Illustrations: Music

George Gershwin did not sit around, waiting for inspiration to bring him good ideas. Oscar Levant, who lived with him, says Gershwin got more of his ideas just by playing. Whenever he sat down to the piano to amuse himself, something came of it. He looked upon his work as play. Creating his career was his way of having fun. His life was clear proof of the theory that the way to learn how to do anything is to do it.

Walter Scharf, a Paramount staff arranger, was charged with turning Berlin's tunes into full-fledged orchestral numbers. Irving Berlin may have been a genius as a songwriter, but he actually wasn't much of a musician. Famously self-taught, he flouted "rules" he didn't know existed. When once asked how greater technical knowledge would impact his songwriting, Berlin answered succinctly: "Ruin it." Reader's Digest December 2004 p 68

A person in Duane Vanderklok's church complained about the volume of the music. He said, "I'll buy you special earplugs." That didn't solve the problem because "the problem was never the music, it was the attitude."

I was a percussionist when I was at music college. During one particular rehearsal of the student orchestra, my section kept making mistakes. "When you're too stupid to play anything," the professor conducting us sneered, "they give you a couple of sticks, put you in the back and call you a percussionist." A fellow student who was playing next to me whispered loudly, "And if you're too stupid to hang on to both sticks, they put you in the front and call you a conductor." Reader's Digest February 2007 p 117

How many folk musicians does it take to change a light bulb? Four. One to change the bulb and the other three to sing about how good the old one was. Reader's Digest December, 2008 p65