How listening to John Tavener is like faith

Sometimes it's hard to listen to John Tavener's music.  He likes dissonance.  It hurts, especially when you're listening to a piece at orchestra volume.  You have to resist the temptation to turn it down to avoid hearing the brokenness, the grating ugliness that scrapes your ears raw.

If you're going to be able to leave the volume where it should be, you have to believe that Tavener's music is going somewhere so beautiful that all the pain will be for something.  If you hear the ugliness that loudly, the beauty is like sudden relief from suffering, like sweet cessation of pain, like the joy of something inexpressible welling up inside you.

Anyway, you must have faith that the pain is worth it, or you'll miss the fullness of the beauty.