Theology in Music

A blog considering theology as illustrated by Western Art Music

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  • Heard but not grasped

    Beside the death-bed of his brother, one of England’s foremost composers made a second attempt at setting some words of poet Adelaide Procter. Arthur Sullivan’s setting of The Lost Chord became one of the most famous parlour ballads of its time and afterwards; a version of it was one of the very first recordings of… Read more

  • The light of life in the midst of death

    Though it appears as I write (8 April 2026) that a cease-fire in Iran may have allowed for some deferral of escalation in that part of the world, I have been reflecting on power and threat in the same week that the Church has been celebrating the resurrection. Doing so reminded me that the composer… Read more

  • Stations of the Cross

    Last year for Holy Week I did a set of posts commenting on Marcel Dupré’s Chemin de la Croix one at a time. This year I am afraid I have not had time to prepare additional posts, but for the regular Wednesday post during Holy Week I am thinking about another set of musical Stations… Read more

  • Sins prowling around

    Next week will be Holy Week and I intend, as I did last year, to work through a musical setting of the stations of the Cross (last year I did Dupré’s chemin de la croix). This week, though I am still thinking Lent more generally, so instead of somehow marking the installation of the new… Read more

  • Fugue for the Mother

    My post in the week of Mothering Sunday takes as a starting point the mother of Christ: it is a work for organ, but closely associated with the Magnificat, the song of Mary. Bach’s BWV 733 is sometimes called a chorale prelude and sometimes a fugue on the Magnificat. The German text, Meine Seele erhebt… Read more

  • Fear and trembling

    This weeks post concerns a piece by a composer once described as ‘half monk half naughty boy’ – Francis Poulenc. Presented as the first of his ‘four motets for a time of penitence’, though composed last, in early 1939 (I will leave it to readers to decide whether I’m thinking of it in March 2026… Read more

  • Not to condemn the world

    Last Sunday our principal reading in church was from John 3. For that reason the subject of this week’s post has been echoing round my head for the last few days: the setting of John 3.16-17 which forms the 9th movement of Stainer’s Crucifixion.  Often dismissed as among the less fortunate outputs of a Victorian… Read more

  • An acrostic call to conversion

    Continuing through Lent, I have been listening to Tallis’s settings from the Lamentations attributed to Jeremiah. Understood to have been written in the 1560s and setting the Latin vulgate (despite the English church’s general adoption of the vernacular), the setting in part one is of the first two verses of the first lamentation and the… Read more

  • Have mercy upon us

    For Ash Wednesday, let us consider the glorious setting of a penitential psalm that constitutes one of the most famous tales of music ‘piracy’ before the internet: the setting of Psalm 51 Miserere mei in decorated falsobordone by Gregorio Allegri associated with Holy Week services in the Sistine Chapel – within the Papal palace –… Read more

  • Peace among torments

    It seems potentially unjust that we are in the second year of weekly blog posts before I first reflect on a work by the giant of English Choral Music that Charles Villiers Stanford undoubtedly is: giant of English Choral Music despite being Irish in origin. Probably early works, his three motets (opus 38) are unusual… Read more