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Collaboration Results in Great New Things

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Four and a half centuries ago there was a struggle over the high art of vocal polyphony in sacred compositions and the church’s need to have its sacred texts presented in an intelligible manner. Strong measures could have been made to thwart the expressive writing of vocal counterpoint, but certain composers such as Giovanni Palestrina made strides to collaborate with the desires of church leaders. The result was the vocal polyphony that is still the model for the instruction of contrapuntal writing and the intelligent, clear expression of a text.
 
Two centuries later, and two and a half centuries ago, there was a struggle within the faculty at St. Thomas School in Leipzig between the cantor of the school, J.S. Bach, and the new rector, J.A. Ernesti, a pioneer in the literary historical criticism of the Bible. Bach believed scripture could best be understood and interpreted through music and worship, while Ernesti believed reason dictated a more scholarly approach to biblical interpretation. J.S. Bach’s creative gifts, in collaboration with the ideas of the emerging "age of reason", resulted in his monumental Mass in B Minor, which, by the way, was also a collaboration with the “ancient” polyphonic vocal expression of Palestrina, that remained alive and well in Bach's creative imagination.
 
Collaboration is motivated by a common goal held between two or more entities that moves them closer to their mission, that can’t be achieved alone, that will not be able to be achieved with current resources, or that will not be able to be achieved as effectively without a partner. Collaboration results in creativity, and often, new approaches to current dilemmas.

 

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Comments

  1. If committees were comprised of people who all agree, what would be accomplished that one person could not do? Your point is obvious.
    So far as the Bach suggestion goes, who could argue with that? It’s a suggestion.
    To your point, I know of a situation where one person is “worship coordinator.” There has not been a committee meeting in three years. One enters the church to see a platform
    transformed to look like a stage, with no communion tablei or pullpit which are replaced by a trapset, music stands, microophones, one each for several singers called a “praise team.”
    Two women who wear skirts that are well above the knee, a 300 pound octavist and a lead singer dressed in white are the show. After nearly 20 minutes the minister rolls his little                podium-on-wheels to centr stage.  He is the only person heard from until dismissal. Choir is allowed to sing only 2 times monthly.
    Yes, if there were a committee, things might be different. Oh, for some collaboraation!
     
    Agreeable,
     
    EP

  2. Greetings, Edward,
     
    …And thank you for the dialogue. One of the aspects of collaboration that I think is misunderstood is the notion that collaborators have to be friends, or even like each other.  The goal of collaboration is not to reach consensus, since agreement does not necessarily lead to learning or challenge. Collaboration takes advantage of the tension that comes with differences. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, said, "Politeness…is the poison of all good collaboration." My thinking is that collaboration is the fruitful cultivation of tension, which I think Bach worked out in his Mass in B Minor. I think our differences are where latent opportunities for growth and creativity reside. I have no doubt that the evidence demonstrates conflict, but if you will allow me, I am suggesting that the Mass in B Minor is the working out of that conflict.
     

  3. Tim,
    Thanks for sending me to research the significance of J. A. Ernesti at St Thomas Church and his conflicts with J. S. Bach.
    I arrived at a very fine Lutheran web site – Logia.org. Scanning carefully, I looked for collaboration, but only found conflict, unless
    your suggestion could be under the aegis of “unity of opposites.” Also, how can the success of the B Minor Mass be in some way
    related to the conflict between Ernesti and Bach other than chronological coincidence?
    It could be that the existing conflict made Bach more resolute in his beliefs and stimulated in his creativity. One source even
    suggested that Ernesti was a pioneer in “liberal” theoligical thought while Bach insisted on the significance of music in education
    and probably conserving his trusted beliefs. It seems that Ernesti’s meddling with procedure was harmful rather than collaborative. 
    Bach would have loved a phrase I heard in reference to one denomination’s problems – “It’s the stigma of the intellect.”
     
    Just Thinking!
     
    EP

  4. It is, as I’ve argued in other places and to other people, the “win-win” approach to doing just about anything.  No one person has a monopoly on the best ideas, or the best ways of doing something; the very person that would otherwise be thought to be “insignificant” in terms of position or power or authority may indeed be the one with the key notion or idea.  In my twenty years in the military as an officer, my willingness to cultivate the views of the private soldier was often looked down on by the majority of my brother officers – not my sister officers in the main, be it said – as being “unprofessional” or simply “catering to the unwashed masses” – and this in a military organization that represented a society aiming to recognize the equality of opportunity and value of each individual.  (Imagine the problems in a more hierarchical society!)  Nonetheless, I thought that most of whatever success I enjoyed in the military was due to collaborative approach I took to doing just about anything that didn’t involve straightforward “you do this now” types of approaches.  It was the reason I decided I wouldn’t have been a very good combat arms officer, but had a chance at being a decent combat support officer – that the degree of cooperation and collaboration required of such a person fit my personality and my outlook on things.  And it is, I believe, why I so enjoy choral music:  it is utterly (though not completely) collaborative and demands that the director, as well as the chorister, subordinate whatever superfluous ego he/she has to the greater good, to the accomplishment of a greater product, the one whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  This can mean that the whole “mission” may not be reached today, or tomorrow, or the day after that; but it does mean that we continue to approach ultimately reaching the goal – but its a parabolic effort, because the ultimate goal is not reachable in its entirety, but can only be approximated.
     
    Ron

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