Why do we sing?
Posted on April 19th, 2012
This evening I went to the first rehearsal for the Salisbury Diocesan Choral Festival. I’ve never taken part before, but I’m excited about joining together with (potentially) 300 people to sing in Salisbury Cathedral, Sherborne Abbey and All Saints in Westbury!
I love singing and always have, and I am well aware that the majority of people I meet would agree that they at least like it. But WHY? What is it about singing which makes us enjoy it? There is enough biblical evidence to say that it’s a good way to praise God and I could do on for hours about why it’s used in worship, but it doesn’t answer the question.
To help with this musing here is a quote from Josie Long about music in the Orthodox Church (which is usually chanting and quite dissimilar from other church music):
In his work, Byzantine Sacred Music, Constantine Cavarnos states: “The aim of this music is not to display the fine voices of the chanters, or to entertain the congregation, or to evoke aesthetic experience…The aim of Byzantine sacred music is spiritual. This music is, in the first place, a means of worship and veneration; and in the second place, a means of self-perfection, of eliciting and cultivating man’s higher thoughts and feelings of opposing and eliminating his lower, undesirable ones.
“Its use as a means of worship consists in employing it to glorify God, and to express feelings of supplication, hope, and gratitude, and love to Him. Its use as a means of veneration consists in employing it to honour the Holy Virgin and the rest of the Saints. Its use as a means of cultivating higher thoughts and feelings and opposing the lower ones is inseparable from these. There is not one kind of music employed as a means of worshipping God and honoring the saints, and another kind employed for transforming our inner life, but the same music, while having as its direct aim the former, incidentally leads also to the fulfillment of the latter.”
I like the focus on God here, and I wonder if that’s what we enjoy about music? Not only does it make a beautiful sound that is pleasing to the ear, but it also allows us to really BE with something that is beyond our worries and concerns, our distractions and our thoughts. We can engage with singing (or with music in general) in such a way as we just exist for a little while. We become what we are – human beings – rather than what we often seem to be – human doings! Here is another beautiful quote which really struck me on this, this time from the Catholic Church:
“To sing with the universe means, then, to follow the track of the Logos and to come close to Him. All true human art is an assimilation to the artist, to Christ, to the mind of the Creator.” – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Leave a commentChanting, chanting, chanting…
Posted on March 31st, 2012
Christian chant goes back to the very earliest Christian communities and even further, to the Psalms themselves which traditionally were sung rather than read. Today I’ve written a few chants which I am hoping to use at some point in the future. Having spent time with interfaith groups, I know that there are great chanting traditions in the Eastern traditions (Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism) but other than Taizé, Christianity often seems to get left out here. I found a beautiful Jewish chant while I was doing a bit of research which you might enjoy as it is based on words of Moses – Ana El Na Refa Na La
Taizé is my inspiration for singing songs to celebrate the Lord and I am really hoping that writing my own chants will help me express the peace and presence of God that I feel when I sing Taizé music. When I release a CD of chants, you’ll have to let me know what you think!
There’s something about chanting which reminds me of something I read recently about ‘slow prayer’. Here’s the extract – “St. Teresa of Ávila recommended this technique to another nun: Pray the Lord’s Prayer, but take an hour to pray it. Spend a few minutes entering into each individual phrase, until it becomes truly the prayer of your heart, and you become the prayer.” I’ve got a lot of time for the contemplative saints and this quote really rings true for me. By chanting you can grow in the words you are singing. They can mean something different to you each time round. They can reach a crescendo and they can be soft. It’s a beautiful experience to sing chants, and that’s why I love Taizé. The simplicity of the words lets you really open yourself up to their meaning.
So when I was writing some of these chants earlier I was using the words from various Anglican rosaries, which I discovered just this morning! I hadn’t realised that rosaries had made it into the Anglican tradition but have really enjoyed reading about them today. They’ve been around since the mid-1980s according to this website – http://www.kingofpeace.org/prayerbeads.htm. I have toyed with the idea of setting a whole rosary to music and recording it the right number of times so that it is like singing a rosary. I’d love your thoughts on that one!
Chanting is a way to sustain personal prayer. As St. Augustine said, ‘Singing is praying. He who sings prays twice.’ Beautiful! Today I have really felt the unity of these different things – that chanting is a way to pray slowly and thoughtfully, to delve into a relationship with God by using beautiful music to open up the heart and receive the love which God is desperate to share with us all. Here is a chant I’d love to use at some point (I’m working on my Hebrew!) The words are from Hosea 2:18. Video below.
VECHARAT I LAHEM BRIT BAYOM HA-HU
IM CHAYAT HASADE VE IM OF
HASHAMAYIM VE REMES HA-ADAMA
VEKESHET BE-CHEREV U-MILCHAMA ESHBOR
MIN HA-ARETZ VEHISHKATI LAVETACH (BIS)
In this day I make a covenant
with the beasts and the birds
with all creatures that walk on this earth
and bow, and sword, and battle disappear from the land
so that all may safely rest