For the Biblical writers God’s universe is a musical universe. From Alpha to Omega, from the Beginning to the End, from creation to apocalypse the cosmos is suffused with music. According to the writer of Job at the beginning of time “the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy.” At the end of time, according to the Apocalypse, the redeemed will sing “in a loud voice ‘Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain to receive power and wealth, and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!’ ” In the meantime Biblical characters such as Moses, Miriam, and David sang ecstatically unto the Lord. The choir of angels greeted the birth of Jesus, singing “Glory to God in the highest!” Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn after the Last Supper before the events of his passion, death, and resurrection unfolded. St. Paul exhorts his readers to sing “psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs.”

This divinely inspired and directed music was instrumental as well as vocal. The Psalmist enjoins instrumentalists to “play skillfully” upon the strings, to praise the Lord with the lyre, to “make melody” to him on the harp. Unfortunately the well-known references to the organ are probably a translator’s anachronism, but consider the role of the ubiquitous trumpet in the Biblical narrative. It sets an appropriately solemn tone for the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai, it plays a sometimes critical role in Israel’s holy wars, it calls the sinner to repentance, it announces the resurrection of the dead and the unveiling of God’s final purposes. “Let every instrument be tuned for praise!”

The desire to create something beautiful for God appears to be a fundamental component of religious experience. Joyce Irwin has noted that “the phenomenological evidence from the world’s religions demonstrates that the association of religion and music is nearly universal.” It is in the sacred music of Christianity that this fundamental impetus within human consciousness has found its richest embodiment. From the beginning, music has played a vital role in Christian worship, despite the reticence of certain Fathers of the church, the ambivalence of people like Augustine, and the destructive iconoclasm of the Puritans and Philistines of every age. Indeed, the sacred music of Christianity is one of the greatest achievements of the human spirit – human creativity directed to the highest possible end. Seen from another angle, imagine the history of western musical art without the desire of most of its greatest composers to create something that mirrors in sound the beauty and perfection of God.

Music in worship, like all of liturgy as Kierkegaard reminds us, is directed to an audience of One and our aim, as in all of life, is to please Him. The praise and the glorification of God is, accordingly, the primary purpose of church music. The music we offer at the Chapel of the Cross falls into several categories. The first is the so-called “Ordinary,” the fixed texts of the Eucharist: Kyrie (“Lord have mercy upon us”), Gloria in excelsis (“Glory be to God on high”), Credo (“I believe in One God”), Sanctus (“Holy, holy, holy”), Benedictus (“Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord”), and Agnus Dei (“O Lamb of God”). These texts are of great antiquity, some taken more or less directly from the Bible, and their evolution is an important topic in the history of the Church. All of the other texts of the Eucharist may also be sung (e.g., the Lord’s Prayer, Prayers of the People) and we sometimes do this at the Chapel of the Cross. The “Ordinary” is usually sung here by the entire congregation, although on some occasions both the solemn and festive nature of these texts is enhanced by beautiful and complex settings sung only by the choir. These texts may also be recited, and they often are, although they lose the extra dimension provided by music. As Augustine said, “They who sing, pray twice.”
The second category might loosely be called “hymns.” Foremost among the hymnody of Christianity are the Psalms, the “hymnbook” of both ancient Judaism and primitive Christianity. In both religious contexts the psalms were sung rather than simply recited. A second category of hymn is the canticles (literally “little song”), sacred songs or poetry (almost always from the Bible) used in liturgy, particularly in the Divine Office (see the earlier article by Dr. Pfaff). Some come directly from the Old Testament: Venite, Jubilate Deo, The Song of Moses, the Song of Isaiah, or from the Apocrypha: Benedictus es, Domine. Some of the best-loved come from the Gospel of Luke: Benedictus, Magnificat, and Nunc dimittis. Others, such as Te Deum are the product of Christian tradition. As with the “Ordinary” the choirs usually lead the congregation in the singing of these texts, although on occasion (as at Evensong) the choirs sing choral settings by master composers. This category also includes the particular glory of the Protestant tradition, and that is what most people mean by “hymn.” These sometimes masterful and sometimes pedestrian verses play a powerful role in worship and in personal spirituality. We characteristically open and close our services, mark transitional points, and accompany the taking of communion by singing hymns. The careful selection of hymns reinforces the biblical and liturgical themes of particular services, and they can be unforgettable markers along the cycle of the liturgical year.

A third category of music is the voluntary—anthems, motets, organ compositions offered in worship for the praise of God and to heighten the liturgical experience of specific days and seasons. These musical offerings call upon the best and most dedicated efforts of those people in our church who are talented and skilled in music and want to put their talents to the highest possible purpose: the worship of God. Their offering to God is made on behalf of all, and all can ‘participate’ by prayerful listening and indwelling of a sacred universe of sound.

This leads naturally to the second major function of sacred music: the intensification of Christian consciousness and building up in Christ of all who hear the music performed in church. Steve Elkins-Williams once told me that a homiletics (preaching) professor of his had said that the purpose of preaching was “to make the mystery of God present to His people.” After a performance by our choir of J.S. Bach’s incomparable Mass in B minor, Steve wrote that this dictum was even more applicable to music and its role in the life and worship of a Christian community. One could take a rather psychological twist on this spiritual intstrumentality, as the Luther quote suggests. John Calvin wrote that “song has great force and vigor to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God.” Hildegaard of Bingen had a ‘soften them up’ approach: “A musical performance also softens hard hearts, leads in the humor of reconciliation, and summons the Holy Spirit.” Yet Hildegaard’s music itself is as elusive as the Spirit described by Jesus in the Gospel of John: we hear the sound of it, but do not know where it came from or where it is going. The fact is that things of God are unfathomably deep and can never be ‘deconstructed,’ de-mystified, or rendered one-dimensional. And that is, perhaps, the most radical and enduring function of sacred music. As Aldous Huxley has written, “ we cannot isolate the truth contained in a piece of music; for it is a beauty-truth and inseparable from its partner…If we want to know, we must listen.”