Handel's Messiah and AI (and Chopin's Funeral)

About a week ago, I had the privilege of attending a performance of Handel's Messiah with my eldest daughter and my mother; for many, this is considered a traditional opening of the holiday season. This was my first time hearing this piece performed in its entirety from the prophecy of the Savior to the final revelation of heavenly praise and the triumphant Amen. Words will not adequately capture the emotions experienced during this experience, but I heard the most beautiful note in my entire life sung by the baritone soloist- the "-ed" of the word "anointed." To think that such a simple morpheme could be so powerful when sung speaks to the unique influence of humanity on music, the arts, and creative expression. This moment took my breath away. This moment sparked the thought "Oh, how we need more of this!" While so much of the world and education is speeding toward AI, it may be culture and the arts that the world most needs right now.

Handel composed Messiah in about 24 days in the summer of 1741. In roughly three and a half weeks, he produced over 250 pages of music, spanning 53 movements that tells the story of the Messiah from the Bible, using lyrics from 81 verses in 14 different books.

There was no algorithm, no AI or machine writing the choruses, the arias, the recitatives, or the soaring “Hallelujah.” Just a human being, painstakingly working, listening deeply, letting what was on his heart and what was in Scripture be carried through instruments and voices in a way that still moves us deeply today. The Messiah is a testimony to human creativity, persistence, inspiration, and reverence. It is what it looks like when we give time and space to deep work, when we allow creativity to consume us, and when we allow art to address our deepest longings and strengthen human connection.

Meanwhile, in schools and colleges, AI is being positioned as the solution to everything. Many institutions are scrambling to integrate AI into every corner of the curriculum, promising efficiency, personalization, and future-proof graduates. A recent article by The Atlantic exposes the rise of AI in higher education not simply as a technological shift (the modern calculator as many have suggested), but as a cultural one. And it’s harming the very formation education exists to protect. When students can outsource their thinking, their writing, even their curiosity to a machine, the result isn’t efficiency; it’s erosion. Erosion of attention, of struggle, and of the slow, human work through which wisdom is actually formed, and deep satisfaction and fulfilment can be achieved. Professors now face a classroom where trust is fraying: Did my students write this? Did they think this? Do they even know why this matters? The article warns that as campuses adopt AI wholesale, framing it as innovation, inevitability, or even cost-saving, the institutions unintentionally undercut their own mission. Many institutions are moving forward full-speed, quickly attempting to infuse AI into all classes without complete knowledge or understanding of the impact of such efforts. Education risks becoming hollowed out, a performance of learning rather than the real thing. And the casualties pile up quietly: weakened character, diminished perseverance, shallow understanding, and a generation less equipped to wrestle with the deep questions that make us human. AI may be powerful, but the article makes one point unmistakably clear: when it replaces rather than supports human formation, it becomes a force of cultural decay.

The push towards AI carries significant trade-offs. The automation of writing, thinking, research, and production threatens the very capacities that education, when properly understood, should cultivate: original thought, critical analysis, deep focus, creativity, empathy, ethical discernment. These are the type of skills that are not instantly produced but slowly nurtured. Skills that emerge only when human minds and hearts are given the time to wrestle with ideas, to sit with mystery and marvel, to ask questions, to struggle. In the rush to get more done, to stay cutting edge, and to compete, we risk losing the soul of education. We risk turning learners into input-output machines trained to process, summarize, produce, but not to wonder, to hope, to feel beauty, or to create meaning.

Why We Need to Be Culture-Builders Now

This is where culture and the arts matter now more than ever. Works like Messiah remind us that our vocation is not just to transmit information and harness AI for a more productive (some say simplified) life, but to shape humanity. To build communities rooted in beauty, connection, redemption, grace, and truth. To offer places where people breathe together, feel together, mourn together, rejoice together, and remember what it means to be human before God and one another. If you've ever attended the Messiah, you see this shared humanity over 280 years later when audiences rise together out of reverence at the moment the Hallelujah Chorus begins.

If education becomes only about efficiency, speed, and measurable outcomes, we risk forgetting that the deepest learning, the kind that changes hearts, builds character and spiritual formation, fosters empathy, and supports hope, is often slow, messy, and occurs in connection with one another.

Maybe that’s why, as I heard that one glorious note vibrate through the air and settle in the hall, I felt that same breath catch in those around me as well. The world doesn’t need more instant answers. The world needs beauty that lingers. Music that haunts. Art that demands our vulnerability and community that demands our presence.

Let us not cede the shaping of human imagination and intelligence to algorithms. Let us not give up on waiting, on listening, on deep work. Let us be the ones who slow down and build culture with intention, and who risk being “less efficient” in order to be more alive. Some of the greatest legacies we can leave are not data points, but souls awakened, hope rekindled, beauty shared across generations.

There is another experience burned into my memory: a year ago, I attended a concert in Paris commemorating the 150th anniversary of Chopin’s death. Mozart’s Requiem was performed in the very church where Chopin’s own funeral had taken place, on the very day it happened a century and a half earlier. No algorithm can recreate that kind of presence, that weight, that human continuity. Moments like these remind me why culture matters and why the arts demand our protection and preservation, especially in education. AI may accelerate what is efficient, but it is the people, the shared experience, that makes our experiences transformative. And in a world rushing toward the automated and the optimized, perhaps our calling is not to readily jump in feet first and eyes closed in the name of progress, but instead to build the kinds of experiences (and schools) that still take our breath away and make us more deeply human.

Full Disclosure: I fully embrace AI and make use of it regularly in my work and own learning. This post is not intended to express an opinion against AI in all contexts, but an encouragement to thoughtfully examine how our actions to infuse AI into education at all costs will undermine learning. If you'd like to read more about the arts and their ability to transform learning and development, read Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross.