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It would be inconceivable that this blog finishes with the music of Messiaen, but I do assure those of you who have stuck through my posts for the last few weeks that next week will feature music by a different composer. While doing Messiaen season, however, it would seem remiss for a post on the Read more
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Messiaen season continues in this blog as we head towards Trinity Sunday. Messiaen was organist of a church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and those who know his organ music will think immediately of the Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité, a cycle of meditations that originated in an event alternating organ improvisations Read more
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As I explained last week, the blog is going to follow something of a series for a few weeks, as the liturgical calendar suggested several items from the works of the self-consciously theological composer Olivier Messiaen. This week we are in the time between Ascension Day and Pentecost, and the musical focus will be on Read more
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For the next few weeks I have planned something of a ‘series’ of posts on musical commentaries on the major festivals that fall over one another at this time of year. Tomorrow is Ascension Day; a little over a week after that is Pentecost, the following week Trinity Sunday and then Corpus Christi. Each of Read more
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Last week’s post concerned The Dream of Gerontius. That work is dedicated using the abreviation A.M.D.G. of the Jesuit motto Ad maiorem Dei gloriam (To the greater glory of God). Benjamin Britten set words of Gerard Manley Hopkins using A.M.D.G. as a title. The same initialism is sometimes asociated with J S Bach, though inacurately: Read more
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The conclave concluded nearly a week ago, and yet because these posts are delivered on Wednesdays this is the first occasion on which this particular blog can use Pope Leo XIV as a springboard for one of our reflections. That said, apart from an unsubstantiated (indeed repudiated) internet rumour which probably began as a joke Read more
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As we continue in Easter Season I turn this week to a choral work by a contemporary composer: Easter Light for choir and organ by Cecilia McDowall. Capturing the mystery of that early morning in a garden rather than the triumph of Christus victor more often presented in Easter works, the composer’s usual rich (though Read more
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One of the questions I sometimes challenge myself with is, if music is itself making a theological contribution, and not only the texts which might be set to music, what theological difference is there to singing the same text to a different tune? This is a parallel version of a set of questions often asked Read more
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Having started to think about appropriate works with which to ponder through the theology of the resurrection in Easter week the plan has been altered by news of the death of Pope Francis. No doubt any pontiff would appreciate a meditation on resurrection as an epitaph, and Francis’s musical taste was both admirable and sufficiently Read more
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As we journey through Holy Week, the blog is taking a slightly different format with short reflections on Marcel Dupré’s Le chemin de la croix, a musical version of the Stations of the Cross. Instead of one reflection released on Wednesday, these episodes are to appear through the week from Palm Sunday until Good Friday. Read more
Theology in Music 