The Symphony That Almost Wasn't

In 2012, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra nearly cut its percussion section during budget negotiations. The logic seemed sound — why pay four musicians who sometimes sit silent for entire movements? Then principal percussionist Tim Genis pointed out something the board hadn't considered. In Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the triangle plays exactly sixteen notes across the entire final movement. Sixteen notes out of thousands. But those bright, shimmering tones cut through the full orchestra at precisely the moment the music swells toward its climax. Without them, the finale loses its brilliance. The audience may never consciously notice the triangle, but they would feel its absence.

Every orchestra has its first-chair violinist — the one who draws the crowd, the one whose name appears on the marquee. But conductors know the truth. The bassoonist anchoring the low register, the second oboist blending color into a passage, the timpanist who steadies the rhythm like a heartbeat — remove any one of them, and the whole sound unravels.

Paul understood this instinctively. "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you.'" In the body of Christ, the greeter who remembers every name, the custodian who unlocks the doors before dawn, the prayer warrior no one ever sees — they are the sixteen notes that make the symphony whole. The Most High composed every part on purpose. No member is expendable. The music demands them all.