I have only recently been introduced to the less secular music of the composer probably best known musically for his scores for the early carry-on films, and arguably even better known as a detective writer under his pen name of Edmund Crispin.

R. Bruce Montgomery was, however, a former Oxford organ scholar, and wrote church music in an idiom of his own. His Oxford Requiem was first performed in the Sheldonian Theatre in May 1951 by the Oxford Bach Choir and the London Symphony Orchestra. Reviewed in the Musical Times in July the same year, some influence of Fauré, Brahms and even Walton was discerned.

Two other notes in that review, however, caught my attention and merit reflection in a blog about music and theology: firstly, that ‘the music as a whole left the impression of coming from a mind eager to forge its own pungent harmonic idiom, and–of still greater consequence in a Requiem–from a mind accompanied by a heart capable of strong feeling’ (from which I take the post’s title); the second a comment that ‘the work approximates to Brahms’s German Requiem in its protestant character, and the words have been carefully selected from the Psalms and the Burial Service so as to allow the confident hope of the Christian believer to alternate with grief and thereby provide the necessary musical contrast.’

These two very different sorts of observation both speak to theological issues that might fruitfully be reflected upon. The first invites us to wonder where the imaginary fault line between feeling and thinking might be conceptualised: is great feeling, rather than careful thought, the most appropriate attribute to need in a composer of a requiem (or anything else for that matter), especially from a theological as distinct from a musical or sentimental perspective? They are not, of course, exclusive, but I am reminded of Messiaen’s distinctions between ‘mystical’ and ‘theological’ and also between ‘technique’ and ‘sentiment’ when talking of his own music.

The second comment in the review makes a number of assumptions about the difference between Protestant and Catholic conceptions, but provokes interesting comparison on the links, and maybe even possible contrasts, between Germanic and English forms of post-reformation Christianity. That the work is entitled a requiem and yet does not use the texts that any Catholic would presume belongs to that genre is no doubt pointed; and yet, does not retaining that title point to some inclusion or at least continuity within Western Theology, and the value we all place in proper mourning for our departed friends, even if believing them to rejoice ‘upon another shore and in a greater light’?

Montgomery was not exactly a celebrated figure, and struggled with alcoholism for much of his life before dying himself of related problems aged only 56. He wrote his requiem in memory of Godfrey Sampson, organist, teacher and composer; perhaps we can listen (though a recording of the entire work is sadly lacking) in memory of him, and pray for the repose of all who now rest in expectation of the resurrection of the dead.