Refiner’s Fire: Sacred Music by the Masters: “Drippings of Grace”

Religious music has consistently called great composers to their highest artistic achievement.

I am leaning back in a padded seat listening to the recitation of well-worn words: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, and born of the Father before all ages. God of God; Light of Light; very God of very God; begotten not made.…” The words drone on, a repetition of the familiar Nicene Creed, words that once stirred heated debate and massive church councils but which, encrusted with the barnacles of time, today normally elicit ritualistic mumbling or a stifled yawn.

Yet when the speaker finishes, the audience erupts into vigorous cheering. Some stomp the floor, some shout “Bravo!” and a few even whistle through their fingers. I look around. These are not charismatics at a prophecy rally; they are stockbrokers, lawyers, executives, and society figures, all of whom have paid at least $10 to hear the Nicene Creed. For the most part, they fail to see the irony that looms large to me: half-empty churches stand throughout Chicago where scarcely a stray “Amen!” (much less wild applause) is heard, while these nonreligious types pack Orchestra Hall to hear Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.

The “speaker” in this case is the Chicago Symphony Chorus and soloists. But they are faithfully rendering the words handed down by the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325. Those same words, as interpreted by Mozart and Haydn or linguistically adapted by others, are repeated often by skilled professionals in every major city in the Western world.

I know a few musicians and would not suggest that they perform the clergy function in any willing sense. Fortunately for the unbelievers of the chorus these highly charged words of grace are neatly packaged in Latin phrases that glissade safely off the tongue. Yet, as I watch, something approaching miracle seems to occur. A Jewish tenor on the third row, who stiffened up for this perfomance with three Manhattans and a pack of Camels, who gives not a rip for “the only begotten Son of God”—that tenor’s face is transformed. Harshness drains from it; he sucks a deep breath of hope and release from the anxious world off stage and belts out “Agnus dei, Agnus dei” (“Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us”) as though it is the one true plea he has ever made. Perhaps, for a moment, he does mean it.

Perhaps crusty old Beethoven, who, it is said, angrily shook a fist at the thundering heavens before relaxing into death, meant the words as he rolled them over and over in his mind, searching out the most profound way of communicating them. The music, so powerful a carrier of thoughts too unearthly to be fully expressed, assumes its own power, possessing composer, conductor, performers, and audience. For a few hours, performers’ thoughts about union wages and postperformance parties, as well as my own concerns about deadlines and jangling telephones, yield to a sublime contemplation of the unfathomable.

I am not alone—even hardened music critics are vulnerable. Reviewing the Chicago Symphony’s recent recording of Brahms’s German Requiem, Heuwell Tircuit of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote “the performance is divine (in several senses). It constitutes an overpowering experience, one which is not only technically and stylistically perfect, but moving in an uncanny, religious way. When the chorus sings of ‘the living Christ,’ even an atheist can believe in Him.”

When we total the dollars per hour of gospel preached over the National Religious Broadcasters’ airwaves or attendance in Sunday services, do we somehow forget the stunning impact of these monuments to a living Christ?

While I have my doubts about the neutron bomb, the Concorde, and a hand-held TV, I am daily blessed by an ability shared by no generation in history: I can invite into my study the Munich Bach Choir or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. I can sit before my speakers and listen transfixed, as did the European gentry who commissioned the works for their great halls and private chapels.

As music, no one questions the value of the enduring religious works of Mozart, Handel, and Bach. But what of their value as a reflection of the personal faith of the composers? Were they indeed intended as a testimony to deep religious sentiments?

The answer, of course, varies with each composer. A few lived disciplined lives of humble spirituality, best exemplified by pious César Frank and Anton Bruckner. The latter especially wrote his works to reflect his belief that God is good and that all man does should honor him. While hard at work on his Tenth Symphony, he remarked to Gustav Mahler, “Now I have to work very hard.… Otherwise I will not pass before God, before whom I shall soon stand. He will say: ‘Why else have I given you talent, than that you should sing My praise and glory? But you have accomplished much too little.’ ” Bruckner at first evoked the scorn of his university students for his humble faith. Clad in a rural jacket from his native Upper Austria, with an oversized head and wrinkled face, he would abruptly stop his lectures when bells sounded from a nearby church. There on the classroom floor he would kneel and pray before resuming his lecture. Few, however, failed to come away impressed with his devout sincerity and the cathedral-like music of belief he produced.

Two famous composers, Handel and Mendelssohn, served almost as evangelists, memoralizing biblical stories and themes in colorfully staged epics. Handel created 20 such oratorios, including Saul, Israel in Egypt, Jeptha, and probably the most performed classical piece of all time, Messiah. Handel’s audience wept when in Samson the lead character cried, “Total eclipse—no sun! All dark amid the blaze of noon!” The elderly Handel was standing onstage, totally blind.

Mendelssohn contributed two oratorios, Saint Paul and Elijah, as well as two religious symphonies: the choral symphony Hymn of Praise, and the Reformation Symphony. Because of a twist of history, Mendelssohn is not performed often today, due in part to Hitler’s program to rid the concert stage of Jewish influence. (Felix’s grandfather, Moses, was a Jewish philosopher; his father and Felix converted to Christianity.)

Two orthodox Catholics, Mozart and Haydn, produced volumes of church music, but like Handel, composed religious themes for economic reasons: commissions for special church events were common.

Profound religious music has even flowed from the pens of men whose lives were decidedly irreligious. Consider Tchaikovsky, an unhappy, paranoid homosexual who drank too much; yet he gave us a remarkably rich setting of “The Lord’s Prayer.” Or Brahms, raised in brothels and probably not a Christian, though he knew the Bible well, who came up with the brilliant German Requiem.

Beethoven wrote few religious works, but both he and Gustav Mahler struggled with issues vocalized by Mahler: “Whence do we come? Whither does our road take us? Why am I made to feel that I am free while yet I am constrained within my character, as in a prison? What is the object of toil and sorrow? How am I to understand the cruelty and malice in the creations of a kind God? Will the meaning of life be finally revealed by death?” Musically, however, these two asked their questions in dramatically different ways: Beethoven shook a Titanic fist at the heavens; Mahler wrung his hands in despairing angst.

Religious music has consistently called great composers to their highest artistic achievements. Of his hundreds of works, Beethoven only wrote two masses; yet he asserted the Missa Solemnis was his greatest composition ever.

Part of the reason lies in the implicit challenge of rendering themes that had been attempted by nearly every other great composer. Imagine the task of giving novel treatment to a text so devoid of startling literary images as the Nicene Creed. Palestrina churned out 93 such masses. Those who followed him competed like Olympians to express the familiar in startling, arresting ways.

I believe the real secret, though, must be found in the implicit depth of those Christian themes. In contrast, the United Nations, during its recent twenty-fifth anniversary, commissioned a composer to write a piece entitled “To Posterity.” Fresh music can come from small thoughts—occasionally a good piece surfaces even from all the current drivel extolling teen-age love, for example. But give a genius like Beethoven a concept such as “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” or assign Handel the surreal setting of “Worthy is the Lamb” in Revelation 5, and you can begin to understand the fuel that has ignited music through the centuries.

A case can be made for the theory that music would never have reached its glorious zenith in Western civilization without the combustive energy of Christian themes. I will leave that question to the theorists. I do know, however, that when I read Revelation 5 and then drop the needle on Handel’s version, chills race up my spine. Music short-circuits the senses with a direct pathway into human emotion. My beliefs about God and grace and redemption are transfigured by the creative products of musical geniuses who plumbed those same wild, liberating concepts.

Above all others, one man symbolizes the perfect blending of musical and religious ideals. I refer, of course, to Johann Sebastian Bach, father of most major developments in Western music. What other figure has earned a cover portrait on Time magazine 250 years after his birth?

Essayist Lewis Thomas was asked what composer he would use in interstellar communication. His reply: “I would vote for Bach, streamed out into space over and over again. We would be bragging, of course, but it is surely excusable for us to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.”

Born in the shadow of the Wartburg castle where Luther translated the Bible into German, Bach became the single composer most identified with the church; in his case, the Lutheran church. Bach was no saint: he was always offending students and opposing any authority who restricted his musical freedoms. But he had a clear goal. The purpose of his music, he said, “should be none else but the glory of God and the recreation of the mind.” Bach attacked this goal with an insatiable thirst for perfection and a formidable knowledge of the Bible. He wrote as though God himself was scrutinizing every note and phrase, beginning most manuscripts with the Latin abbreviation JJ (“Jesus, help”) and ending with SDG—Soli Deo gloria (“to God alone be glory”).

Bach’s approximately 300 church cantatas range from meditations on the relationship between Christ and his bride, the church, to exultant celebrations of the final resurrection. In his last days he could confidently dictate this message: “Come, sweetest death, come blessed rest and take my hand and gently lead me on.” While literally at the edge of death he dictated one last chorale to which he gave the superscription, “With This I Step Before Thy Throne.”

Of Bach’s most important works, the Passion of Our Lord According to Saint Matthew is generally acclaimed as the greatest choral work ever written. It received one performance in Bach’s day, caused little stir, and lay unperformed for exactly 100 years. Then in 1829 Felix Mendelssohn received a copy of the manuscript from his teacher, who allegedly bought the original from a cheese merchant using worthless manuscript pages to wrap cheese. Mendelssohn staged a revival of Saint Matthew, unleashing a tidal wave of enthusiasm for Bach that has never ebbed. Before he had finished preparing the work for performance, the 20-year-old Mendelssohn had been converted to faith in the Christ.

I heard that great work in a summer concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at Ravinia Park near Chicago. Three thousand people gathered for the four-hour performance. Once again I was struck with the irony of such a crowd: an upper class in evening finery dining by candlelight on Ravinia’s spacious grounds, balanced by a strong contingent of the scruffy blue jean set. Chicago’s North Shore Jewish population was liberally sprinkled throughout. All listened enraptured to the forthright retelling of Jesus’ crucifixion adapted from Matthew’s Gospel.

Five times in the performance the entire choir sang the haunting passion chorale tune which we know as the hymn “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.”

The scene was as far removed from that dusty, bloody night on Calvary as any I can imagine. Yet somehow the master had weaved his spell. Paid performers in evening gowns and tuxedos rendered the agony and horror of that dark day, as well as its profound significance for all mankind, far better than any heavy breathing Southern evangelist macabrely describing nail prints and thorn marks.

Who knows what impact that performance had? I know of no church revivals sparked by classical music. But in me, a believer, the painstaking care invested by music’s greatest mind in expressing the one event that split history in two had found reward. C. S. Lewis referred to great art as the “drippings of grace” which can awaken in us a thirst for the true object. Under the right master, those drippings can become a flood of God’s presence. SDG.

Philip Yancey is a free-lance writer in Chicago, who also serves as editor of Campus Life Books.

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