From Heavenly Harmony
Musical Chains of Gold
In the opening chapter of his 1969 book, An Antique Drum, Tom Howard describes two radically different ways of looking at the world, two opposing "myths" that inform perception, thought, and action. According to the "antique" mind, all experiences in the natural world—the created world—are meaningful because they are "images" or exhibitions or cases in point of the way things are. (The subtitle of Howard's book is The World as Image.) According to the new myth assumed by the modern mind, the things we experience in the world don't mean anything; they just are.
Howard playfully reminds his readers that the old myth was characteristic of the era conventionally regarded today as the "Dark Ages." Now that Enlightenment has come, we can put away childish things. Before, all earthly experiences—sights and sounds, colors and fragrances, birds and beasts, springtime and harvest—could be regarded "as epiphanies of what was true at the heart of the matter." That essential connection between the temporal and the eternal was the bond that established the value and validity of the mundane: the mundane was never merely mundane. Now, isolated in the immanent frame of a diligently secular age, the earth is not charged with the grandeur of anything (or Anyone).
More Than Pleasant Sound
Philosopher D. C. Schindler has argued that the "un-imaging" of the world—the modern denial that the world is an image of transcendent realities, a denial he describes as the iconoclasm of the intellect—presents Christians with the challenging necessity of "the recovery of Christian art, Christian literature, and indeed Christian culture more generally." One of the goals of this column is to nurture a healthy musical imagination by encouraging a broader awareness of forms of musical expression that take seriously the capacity of music to be more than pleasant sound.
Consider the testimony of Francis Steele, a professional singer who performed in over a thousand concerts with the premier Renaissance music ensemble The Tallis Scholars, as well as serving as a founding member of The Sixteen. In an interview with fellow singer Jonathan Arnold, Steele offered a description of the experience of music as an epiphany:
I frequently sing William Byrd's Tribue, Domine. It's a motet whose text deals both with the mundane, the fragility of man, and the numinous, the omnipotence and nature of God. In expressing the latter, it explores and expounds the nature of the Trinity with words more judiciously chosen than poetically inspired—in fact the text alone scarcely moved me on any level. But Byrd's music, when sung, articulated that text just as a great actor would his lines, and in doing so lent it an authority and persuasiveness that I could never discover in the text alone. It even seemed to inspire my colleagues. Singing that piece seemed to bring me as close to that mystery, of the Trinity, as I shall ever approach, and as close to (inarticulate, non-rational) acceptance of it as I shall ever come. Yet neither proximity nor consent were derived from any explicable source. I make no claims for this account . . . yet it does seem to suggest that music can engage with the numinous in a way that words and reason cannot.
Steele's observation is one of a chorus of voices assembled in Jonathan Arnold's 2014 book, Sacred Music in Secular Society. In this provocative volume, Arnold describes the remarkable place held by sacred choral music in secular concert halls. Arnold is well qualified to address this question; like Francis Steele, he has sung with The Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen, as well as with Polyphony and St. Paul's Cathedral Choir. But he also holds a Ph.D. in church history from King's College London and is an ordained Anglican priest.
In his book, in addition to talking with fellow bass Francis Steele, he interviews conductors who have specialized in sacred choral music (Peter Phillips, Harry Christophers, Stephen Farr, and James O'Donnell), two composers (James MacMillan and Robert Saxton), philosopher Roger Scruton, and theologian Rowan Williams. Some of his interlocutors are believers, some skeptics or agnostics. He has also collated a large number of other interviews, essays, and reviews in an effort to examine the paradox of spiritually and theologically powerful music that thrives in public venues as something more than entertainment, even if its performers and audiences are nervous about articulating the nature of that Something More.
Drawing the Ear
In the "Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy," the Second Vatican Council declared: "The musical tradition of the universal Church is a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art." While we can rejoice that this vast treasury is more accessible on recordings and in concerts than ever before, there remains the nagging question of why so many churches continue to neglect (if not repudiate and malign) this legacy of witness that has the potential to re-image the world. As Arnold writes in his book, "Sacred music . . . is a powerful witness to an alternative reality, which is beyond materialism and secularism. It encourages us to consider the numinous and ineffable." It conveys exactly what true seekers are seeking. But most churches continue to offer stones rather than bread.
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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more on music from the online archives
33.3—May/June 2020
Bach's Cantata BWV 106, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbesteZeit (God's time is the very best time) by Ken Myers
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on the Importance of Fathers to Churchgoing by Robbie Low
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