Theology in Music

A blog considering theology as illustrated by Western Art Music

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  • A Call that pierces the night

    So closely do I, an organist, associate the first Schübler Chorale (BWV 645) with Advent, that I always find myself surprised to remember – even though I know I have known it for a long time – that the cantata on which it is based (BWV 140) was written not for Advent Sunday, but for the… Read more

  • Eternal light of this our wintry world

    I remember when, as a young Director of Music in a parish church, I was teaching my choir Charles Wood’ anthem ‘O Thou the central orb’, one of my sopranos said to me “I’m sure this is very lovely, but what does it actually mean?” Some might consider that a very fair question; indeed, at… Read more

  • Awaiting the resurrection of the dead

    Yesterday was Armistice day, and although there are a number of pieces of music that could be selected to mark that occasion. For me, inevitably, the first to come to mind is the work commissioned by André Malraux, Minister of Cultural Affairs in France, from Olivier Messiaen in 1963 as a sacred work to commemorate… Read more

  • Rising on wings of faith

    For the post within the octave of All Saints’ Day I have been thinking about Ernest Bullock’s setting of Isaac Watts’ text Give us the wings of faith to rise: Give us the wings of faith to risewithin the veil, and seethe saints above, how great their joys,how bright their glories be. We ask them… Read more

  • Of spiritual moment rather than liturgical

    Another whole repertoire of theological music that this blog has not yet explored is the evening service, the staples of Anglican choral music: settings of the Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis for Evensong. Of so many options for selection setting these well-known texts, with which shall we start? During the second world war a music… Read more

  • Mission and appropriation in the New World

    In 1631 a Franciscan priest in the ‘Viceroyalty of Peru’ published a liturgical manual setting out Catholic rituals explained in both Spanish and the indigenous language of the area he was working in, Quechua. This book includes what is generally considered to be the earliest work of vocal polyphonic music printed in the New World,… Read more

  • From dangerous modernism to the status of ‘classic’

    There is a popular myth – no less mythical for its popularity – that Palestrina composed his Missa Papae Marcelli to address concerns that polyphonic music obscured the import of religious texts, thereby ‘saving’ artistic music in Catholic liturgy after the Catholic Reformation associated principally with the council of Trent. Hans Pfitzner’s operatic retelling of… Read more

  • Coequal in the Father’s light

    In 1892 the director of the Paris Conservatoire is supposed to have said of a dangerously modern candidate for that institution’s professorship of composition ‘Never! If he’s appointed, I resign.’ In 1896 that same candidate took up the professorship under a different director, and in 1905 became director himself in turn. Many years before, while… Read more

  • Lilies floating among the stars

    This week saw Michaelmas, not only the start of a traditional academic year (in at least some ancient universities), but the feast of St Michael and All Angels. It seemed obvious to me, therefore, that this instalment of the blog should consider some musical evocation of angels. Though there are several one might have chosen,… Read more

  • Seen with scornful wonder

    In 1866 one Samuel Stone, curate at Windsor, published Lyra Fidelium, twelve hymns on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed, usually understood to have been in response to dissention in the Church of South Africa about the teachings of a Bishop J W Colenso. Of this set, the most famous and most often still sung… Read more