Theology in Music

A blog considering theology as illustrated by Western Art Music

Lent

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • In simple adoration

    In the week of Mothering Sunday, I am reminded that Volume 15 number 86 (December 1951) of Ohio’s Lorenz Music Publishing’s The Organ Portfolio, contains a short piece for organ entitled Adoration. It is by Florence Price, and has become popular, often in rearranged form – the solo violin version seems particularly prominent. Price was… Read more

  • A Hymne to Christ

    In 1619 John Donne travelled to Germany as a ‘chaplain’ on a diplomatic mission. Before setting out he penned a poem entitled A Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s last going into Germany. In 1940, when others were heading from England to Germany at considerable cost (I am not sure about the idea of war… Read more

  • Imploring for faith

    In 1970 French organist Jean Langlais wrote a composition for the organ competition at the Paris Conservatoire; a technically demanding piece he entitled Imploration pour la joie, and was probably an expression of happiness in his personal life. He added to it two further Implorations after the one for joy: one for indulgence, which could… Read more

  • How wretched am I really, and what do I need to do about it?

    Another composer who is likely to have been awaited by readers of a blog with this title is the great J Sebastian Bach, mountain of the North German musical landscape and foundation stone of much teaching of music theory. Ash Wednesday gives me an excuse to return to a set work from my A Level… Read more