Could what I say become beautiful music?
This question interrupted my thoughts as I was indulging in one of my favorite learning formats, The Great Courses by the Teaching Company. The eminent Professor Robert Greenburg was postulating how composer’s native language effects the composer’s style.
Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring by J.S. Bach 
and Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy are popular songs for the harp. And with good reason. With angelic arpeggios, these two songs take full advantage of the harps unique range and timbre. These composers are two of my favorites, representing the majority of my “classical” repertoire (insert here me humming Sheep May Safely Graze).
And yet, these two songs, and these two composers, are nothing alike.
Bach writes clear stair steps of melody and energetic geometries of harmony. Debussy is the smooth blending of timbre and tone in mists and streams and eddies of more twentieth century harmonies. Where did these two genius composers find their vastly different muses?
Professor Greenburg points out that Debussy’s primary musical influence was the French language, blended diphthongs and soft consonants. Like French food, the French language focuses on the presentation, how you say, as much as what you say. This theory explains Debussy’s fascination with instruments and tones instead of main themes.
Compare this to the enunciated sound of the German language Bach spoke, brimming with substance and hard consonants. It is no wonder then, that Bach lays out clear musical ideas and harmonic progressions.
Each of these radically different composers say something different in their music, drawing from an internal aesthetic which they absorbed from the language they listened to and spoke every day.
Would my language, both the content and the sound, inspire such beautiful music?
“Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light.
“Word of God, our flesh that fashioned,
With the fire of life impassioned,
Striving still to truth unknown,
Soaring, dying round Thy throne.
“Theirs is beauty’s fairest pleasure;
Theirs is wisdom’s holiest treasure.
Thou dost ever lead Thine own
In the love of joys unknown. “
lyrics by Robert Bridges.