FROM HEAVENLY HARMONY by Ken Myers
A Tudor Tutorial
In churches that retain the regular singing of the Sanctus, worshipers are reminded that their song of adoration—"Holy, holy, holy"—is sung with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven. Our earthly worship echoes the harmonious praise of a heavenly host. In Christian theology, not just formal worship but the whole of creation has often been understood as a musical expression with heavenly sources. David Bentley Hart has observed that,
According to Gregory of Nyssa, creation is a wonderfully wrought hymn to the power of the Almighty: the order of the universe is a kind of musical harmony, richly and multifariously toned, guided by an inward rhythm and accord, pervaded by an essential "symphony"; the melody and cadence of the cosmic elements in their intermingling sing of God's glory, as does the interrelation of motion and rest within created things; and in this sympathy of all things one with the other, music in its truest and most perfect form is bodied forth.
Readers of C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew or J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion will remember accounts of the origins of all things in which heavenly music is depicted as an agency of Creation. In such accounts, Lewis and Tolkien are echoing Christian poets such as John Dryden; his poem, "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687" begins: "From harmony, from heavenly harmony / This universal frame began. . . ."
While pre-modern Christians (and pagans) regarded music as having and making transcendent connections, modern culture has promoted the idea that music's meaning is purely subjective, beginning and ending in a merely material world of autonomous individuals. This is an aspect of modernity that has received far too little criticism from Christians. So, with the kind permission of the editors, my Contours of Culture column is with this issue metamorphosing into From Heavenly Harmony,a series of reflections about sacred music, introducing readers to books and recordings that may assist in the recovery of some lost ideas and sounds.
A Gift from Andrew Carnegie
If asked on a game show or in some artsy version of Trivial Pursuit to connect industrialist Andrew Carnegie with music, most of us would answer, "Carnegie Hall." As it happens, New York's famed concert venue is only one performance space made possible by Andrew Carnegie's sense of noblesse oblige. Carnegie's home of Pittsburgh and its suburb of Homestead, Pennsylvania, also have concert halls bearing his name, as does Lewisburg, West Virginia, and Dunfermline, Scotland, his birthplace.
Dunfermline is also the home of the Carnegie U.K. Trust, one of the many charitable organizations enabled by Carnegie's largess. Established in 1913 to improve "the well-being of the masses of the people of Great Britain and Ireland," the trust is another important link between the steel and railroad billionaire and music, a link of particular interest to Christians who care about stewarding the great legacy of sacred choral music.
In the 1920s, the Trust supported a massive project of scholarship and publishing that transformed the musical life of the U.K. and of many individuals and communities far abroad. That project was the publication of a ten-volume collected edition of music by the great Tudor-era composers. Between 1922 and 1929, Oxford University Press released the complete edition of Tudor Church Music, and also made available performing editions of the music for purchase by choirs. Most of this music had until then been unavailable in modern editions,
which meant that, unless one had access to scores hand-copied from manuscripts preserved in libraries, singing or hearing this music was impossible.
Especially for English-speaking Christians, this was a huge loss. The music in question was by some of Britain's greatest composers, working in a period widely acknowledged to be the high watermark of choral music. These are the Shakespeares and Donnes of English music, and many of their compositions are settings of sacred texts for use in liturgy or in private devotional settings. (This was, after all, a time when most educated people could read music, and it was not uncommon to sit at table after dinner and distribute part-books for four- and five-part singing, often of sacred texts.)
Thanks to Andrew Carnegie's generosity, this forgotten music was recovered and made widely available for churches and college choirs. Today, nearly a century after Carnegie's death, this music is still part of the standard repertoire for many churches.
Ken Myers is the host and producer of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Formerly an arts editor with National Public Radio, he also serves as music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Ivy, Virginia. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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