Jazz and Franciscan Spirituality

My name is Matthias Petzold and I am a jazz musician: saxophonist, improviser, composer, bandleader. Through my profession in the OFS, the Secular Franciscan Order, I also belong to the Franciscan family.

I became a jazz musician at the age of 14, when I happened to hear the radio programme “Jazzplatte der Woche” (jazz record of the week) on SWF 2 and decided to find out what these fascinating and sometimes awkward sounds were all about. I became a Franciscan at 26, when my wife and I – fairly newly married, with a daughter not quite a year old, and only recently back in regular contact with the Church – sat in on a talk about the Franciscan Third Order. We knew at once: this is where we belong, this is where we will be at home with our concerns and our quirks.

But why is that? Why is an improvising musician drawn to the Franciscan outlook? And why were the old ladies in the OFS fraternity of my home town so honestly and spontaneously delighted by the saxophone improvisations I soon began to contribute to the services? I will try to give an answer by looking at a few things that matter both in jazz and in Franciscan life.

Creativity

What fascinated me most immediately and most lastingly about Francis, as a musician and an artist, was his creative way of shaping his life and tackling problems. Many turning points in his life are bound up with surprising and vivid ideas and actions, with which he turned the whole situation round and found completely new solutions, both for his own life and for the society he lived in.

He met a leper, and instead of just giving him some money and riding on, he got down from his horse, embraced him, and so gave both their lives a new meaning. He was called to account by his father, and instead of either obeying him or getting into an argument with him, he gave him back his clothes and stood naked in the cathedral square of Assisi. He saw the ruined church of San Damiano and heard the call of Jesus: “Rebuild my house”, and instead of talking or collecting money he immediately set about repairing the church with his own hands. He was unsure which road to take at a crossroads, so he spun round and round until he fell down dizzy, and then set off in the direction in which he had fallen.

Whether one thinks of the sermon to the birds, the visit to the Sultan, the writing of the Canticle of the Sun, the way he dealt with his brothers as handed down in countless stories, or the ritual staging of his death: again and again he broke out of the familiar and the expected and created new ways of seeing, experiencing and changing the world.

Besides his serene and cheerful disregard for all conventions, two things stand out in particular: his natural and unquestioning faithfulness to what he had recognised in his conscience as right; and his complete refusal to criticise others. He wanted to win people over with his ideas, not force them on them. He stressed both of these again and again, with great clarity. In his Testament he writes that no one had shown him what he should do, but that the Most High himself was the source of his way of life. And he impressed on his brothers again and again that they should not take up positions of power, but should work only through their example.

Francis did not want to change the world by fighting evil, but by creating new good. In this he meets many artists of today who understand their work as a spiritual contribution to transforming the world. They rely on the transforming, life-shaping power of creativity, which overcomes conflicts and opens up new paths into the future.

Improvisation

Now there are many ways of being creative and developing ideas. In European culture, writing has always played a large part in this. The author who writes a great work; the philosopher who sets down a complex system of thought on paper; the composer who writes symphonies or operas in his study: they are the prototypes of the Western cultural ideal.

As a European jazz musician I certainly know and value the worth of the culture that has grown out of this. But I also know that in deeper and existentially more significant layers of the human soul there is something else: the spontaneous flow of ideas; drawing and shaping directly from the realm of the unconscious and the unformed; shared visions arising from the encounter of different people. In short: the improvisational, which comes before anything is fixed in writing and which is, after all, the basic impulse of jazz.

Francis, too, always developed his ideas spontaneously and in response to the situation at hand. He never prepared his sermons, and we are told more than once that sometimes nothing came to him and he then simply said nothing. He often interrupted his addresses with songs or dance steps. One of his brothers told how he imitated a violin with two sticks while singing songs of praise to God.

And he was always sceptical of fixing things in writing, whether through theology or through canon law. He did allow it, because he saw the practical usefulness of these cultural techniques, but he knew that real life can never be captured or preserved in texts. In his letter to Saint Anthony, who also worked in the order as a theologian and teacher, he wrote: “I allow you to teach sacred theology to the brothers, provided that in this study you do not extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion, as it says in the Rule.” So: allowed, yes, but what really matters lies in life and in a living relationship with God and with people.

Towards the end of his life he said to his brothers: “Brothers, let us begin, for up to now we have done very little, or even nothing.” For me this Franciscan spirit of beginning is closely related to jazz, which comes into being anew in every concert and leaves behind what has been achieved so far.

Creating a style

At this point one could fairly object: spontaneity and doing without written records are all very well, but how, then, did Francis pass on the message of his life?

Here we have to talk about a peculiar and even disconcerting point that Francis emphasised again and again: the power of a life lived convincingly as an example. Again and again he says that the brothers should do this or refrain from that “for the sake of example”. When a brother presses him to finally write a Rule for the order, he points to himself and says: “Here is your Rule.” And he even stages his own dying publicly, surrounded by the whole order, to impress his message on the brothers once more. Later this peculiarity was condensed into the formula that Francis was the “forma minorum”: in his own person, the rule of life of his order.

Taken this far, it seems strange at first. In matters of love, devotion and piety we expect as little calculation as possible, and the Gospel strengthens us in this, condemning as hypocrisy any religious acts staged for public effect. So with Francis one has to look closely: first and foremost, all his actions are deeply authentic. He does what he thinks is right without paying attention to the effect on the public. And he acts spontaneously, without a preconceived plan. Only in a second step does he become aware that precisely in this way he sets people in motion, unfolds a spiritual power and shapes a way of life that others can take as their guide, but can also rub up against. Someone once said something like this: “If Jesus is the Word of God made flesh, then the saints are commentaries on that Word made flesh.” That is exactly what Francis is about. With his whole life he responds to his encounter with Jesus, and so his life becomes a concrete and exemplary interpretation of the Gospel.

Here, again, there is a link with the way many contemporary artists, and jazz musicians in particular, see themselves. Just as Francis shaped a way of life that is meant to have an effect in the world, artists aim to bring forth a style that expresses and conveys their own feelings and thoughts. Such a style succeeds only if it is truly authentic. But it must also develop a shape of its own, one that holds good in different contexts and carries and communicates the artist’s message before anything is fixed in writing.

For jazz musicians especially, this style does not lie in the tangible structure of a piece of music. It lies rather in the indefinable overall aura that an artist creates as a person and through his artistic expression. When the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis was asked what he considered his lasting contribution to this world, he said: “My sound.” That is, his tone, his unmistakable, sensitive and expressive trumpet sound, which is instantly recognisable. Perhaps this is best compared with the passages in which Francis speaks of the “fragrance” of certain words and situations.

In this context one can also think of the action artist Joseph Beuys, who regarded every human being as an artist who shapes his life as a “social sculpture”. For Beuys, an encounter was an exchange between these social sculptures, through which they influence each other. In those terms, Francis shaped his life as a sculpture that he wanted to resemble Christ more and more, but which nevertheless – or rather precisely because of this – is utterly individual and unique.

Conclusion

As the thoughts set out above show, there is for me personally a natural point of intersection where jazz and Franciscan spirituality meet. I try to shape my life and my musical work out of this basic experience. I am glad to be able to walk this path, which gives me inspiration and strength. And I am happy to receive a great deal of positive feedback from Franciscan-minded sisters and brothers who feel touched by the music that comes out of it.