The title sounds a little ominous, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of thing that tough ex-marine fathers from Texas tell their sons on their first hunting trip. It’s the kind of thing that principles of high schools used to tell students at graduation. It’s the kind of thing that involves my mother as well, although this is not the kind of thing that she would say.
The journey to this title began about ten years ago when I listened to a radio station with a Sunday morning program called Musica Antigua. It features music primarily from Europe from the earliest period when it was first rendered into notes, or survived by being passed down, to roughly the Baroque era, which ran through the 1600’s and early 1700’s. As most of this music, and certainly the best of it, is religious and primarily Catholic in origin, it is surprising that a radio station that loudly promotes Marxism and every fringe PC interest group should play this stuff, but apparently the intellectuals in the crowd simple cannot deny that this is the best music that the West has to offer. It is. And one morning my wife and I heard what I consider to be one of the best of the best, a soul- rendering choral masterpiece by Thomas Tallis called Spem in Alium. He was the court musical genius during the reign of Elizabeth in the latter 1500’s, who was also a Catholic during the Protestant purges. History notes that he was so wonderful that Elizabeth simply turned a blind eye even as high court officials were regularly executed for their Papist ties.
I might also briefly note that the author of Fifty Shades of Gray listens to this music as he causes his sex-mates to suffer in the real world for their (I presume) mutual pleasure, which only goes to show that even the devil can recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. Just as the aforementioned “intellectuals in the crowd” do. Thomas might be rolling over in his grave for this if he has not already been granted his heavenly reward.
My mother was no sadist, and might well have been a saint, but I am no objective observer. What she did have was a tremendous sense for art and music, and when I sent her a rather poor recording of Spem in Alium, she still was able to say, “It is music that makes me proud to be human.” As usual with things my mother said, I would never have thought of that on my own, and as usual, she was right. This music (get the David Wilcox version from King’s College if you are interested) not only gets to the soul, but it enlightens it, showing to us not what we think what we might be, but something much greater. What it does no less proves to us without question that we share in our own tiny selves the unthinkable greatness of God. Listen to this and you get an idea of what paradise is, and what we were meant to be, and still are.
I for one do not allow myself to listen to it that often. I am afraid, for one, that with such familiarity I might begin to treat it as just another bit of choral music. But for two, it is almost unbearable to hear. If I give it my whole intention, I cannot help but cry, in a big way. It pulls something out of me so great that the ‘me’ I think I am really cannot contain it, like the old wine skins bursting with new wine from the parables of the Gospels. It is, or can be, that powerful.
It so happened that I was in another winter funk the other morning as I brought out the bacon and eggs. I decided to grab something like a Gregorian chant from the old CD pile to pick me up and came upon a collection of choral music that was stuffed way in the back. The plastic package was covered in old grease, used obviously for other bacon and eggs breakfasts, but it had no recognizable number on it for me. I put the first of two CD’s on and it played fairly typical northern European renaissance religious works. We sat down to eat as they hummed pleasantly on. Then came the first notes of Spem. Oh no, I thought, I am not prepared for this, but as I went to turn it off, my wife said “no.” So it happened that I had found our first copy, long lost, and now it was coming to bring me out of the fog of early December to a holy light. As it played, I had to leave the room to maintain a level composure, but even from a distance I caught the traces of glory.
Perhaps because of the distant listening I also caught something that I had never caught before, something that reminded me of my mother’s feelings of pride for humanity: that we were potentially so great, made as we were in the image of God, that we were not meant to be just passive witnesses to God’s glory. We were also meant to be active in Him in this world. In other words, with the greatness that we have been offered, it is also absolutely incumbent upon us to act in appropriate response to our gift. The shock I felt was unnerving. Nothing could be more humbling, and even somewhat terrifying, than to find that the price for glory was sublime duty to the will of heaven, even in the opaque world of Man.
We know what that duty is, too. We know we know because of the heroes we make. Our true heroes lend their lives in sacrifice to others, but not only to save human forms. The hero’s sacrifice is also to bring the shining reality he sees back to the normal world. It is the reality of eternity, the reality that brings us to tears through such works as Spem. The hero honors glory by showing to us and himself that life is only a small thing in the shadow of heaven. Such sacrifice, whether carried through to the death or in a long life of dedication, is the meat, the measurable substance, of holy works of art. The one gives the encouragement for the other, while the other gives the reality to the art.
The ways to become a hero are written for us in holy texts and sometimes secular works, but there is a catch: for most, these texts do not bring with them the joy and conviction necessary to strive towards perfection. The Bible, for instance, is more a stern reprimand than an inspiration to many most of the time. It is said – and I have experienced this – that such sacred readings can only inspire us through the gift of grace, which can be asked for but cannot be controlled through any formula.
Ah, but music! Music can move anyone in the desired direction. How far one is moved depends upon one’s receptivity, but something almost always happens with music. For instance, I hate nasty gangster rap “music” because I feel its violence and hatred. If I wanted to feel it, I would feel it more intimately, but feel it I do whether I want to or not. And so it is with sacred music. One might reject the feeling, but it is there for the offering. The language of music, it seems, can come pre-wrapped in grace. In this it might well be a language akin to that of angels. It does not bring the reason for doing this or not doing that, but it supplies the power to overcome the reluctance to follow a calling.
Willingness, then, is what it ultimately gives us, whether it is an empowerment for war or for heaven. With war, there is death, and still we march on to the pipes and drums; with heaven, there is life, but still we have difficulty. Death is easy, it seems, compared to life, but we have been given the language of angels to help. We can choose to listen or not, but it is there. It is there to help us fulfill our sacred duty to compliment the spiritual gift of glory right here on earth. It is a tremendously difficult, heroic task, but the call to duty that comes through such gifted composers as Thomas Tallis is so compelling, so beyond bounds, that we sometimes are made willing to suffer the pains of discarding our old skins to prepare for the new wine.
The title sounds a little ominous, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of thing that tough ex-marine fathers from Texas tell their sons on their first hunting trip. It’s the kind of thing that principles of high schools used to tell students at graduation. It’s the kind of thing that involves my mother as well, although this is not the kind of thing that she would say.
The journey to this title began about ten years ago when I listened to a radio station with a Sunday morning program called Musica Antigua. It features music primarily from Europe from the earliest period when it was first rendered into notes, or survived by being passed down, to roughly the Baroque era, which ran through the 1600’s and early 1700’s. As most of this music, and certainly the best of it, is religious and primarily Catholic in origin, it is surprising that a radio station that loudly promotes Marxism and every fringe PC interest group should play this stuff, but apparently the intellectuals in the crowd simple cannot deny that this is the best music that the West has to offer. It is. And one morning my wife and I heard what I consider to be one of the best of the best, a soul- rendering choral masterpiece by Thomas Tallis called Spem in Alium. He was the court musical genius during the reign of Elizabeth in the latter 1500’s, who was also a Catholic during the Protestant purges. History notes that he was so wonderful that Elizabeth simply turned a blind eye even as high court officials were regularly executed for their Papist ties.
I might also briefly note that the author of Fifty Shades of Gray listens to this music as he causes his sex-mates to suffer in the real world for their (I presume) mutual pleasure, which only goes to show that even the devil can recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. Just as the aforementioned “intellectuals in the crowd” do. Thomas might be rolling over in his grave for this if he has not already been granted his heavenly reward.
My mother was no sadist, and might well have been a saint, but I am no objective observer. What she did have was a tremendous sense for art and music, and when I sent her a rather poor recording of Spem in Alium, she still was able to say, “It is music that makes me proud to be human.” As usual with things my mother said, I would never have thought of that on my own, and as usual, she was right. This music (get the David Wilcox version from King’s College if you are interested) not only gets to the soul, but it enlightens it, showing to us not what we think what we might be, but something much greater. What it does no less proves to us without question that we share in our own tiny selves the unthinkable greatness of God. Listen to this and you get an idea of what paradise is, and what we were meant to be, and still are.
I for one do not allow myself to listen to it that often. I am afraid, for one, that with such familiarity I might begin to treat it as just another bit of choral music. But for two, it is almost unbearable to hear. If I give it my whole intention, I cannot help but cry, in a big way. It pulls something out of me so great that the ‘me’ I think I am really cannot contain it, like the old wine skins bursting with new wine from the parables of the Gospels. It is, or can be, that powerful.
It so happened that I was in another winter funk the other morning as I brought out the bacon and eggs. I decided to grab something like a Gregorian chant from the old CD pile to pick me up and came upon a collection of choral music that was stuffed way in the back. The plastic package was covered in old grease, used obviously for other bacon and eggs breakfasts, but it had no recognizable number on it for me. I put the first of two CD’s on and it played fairly typical northern European renaissance religious works. We sat down to eat as they hummed pleasantly on. Then came the first notes of Spem. Oh no, I thought, I am not prepared for this, but as I went to turn it off, my wife said “no.” So it happened that I had found our first copy, long lost, and now it was coming to bring me out of the fog of early December to a holy light. As it played, I had to leave the room to maintain a level composure, but even from a distance I caught the traces of glory.
Perhaps because of the distant listening I also caught something that I had never caught before, something that reminded me of my mother’s feelings of pride for humanity: that we were potentially so great, made as we were in the image of God, that we were not meant to be just passive witnesses to God’s glory. We were also meant to be active in Him in this world. In other words, with the greatness that we have been offered, it is also absolutely incumbent upon us to act in appropriate response to our gift. The shock I felt was unnerving. Nothing could be more humbling, and even somewhat terrifying, than to find that the price for glory was sublime duty to the will of heaven, even in the opaque world of Man.
We know what that duty is, too. We know we know because of the heroes we make. Our true heroes lend their lives in sacrifice to others, but not only to save human forms. The hero’s sacrifice is also to bring the shining reality he sees back to the normal world. It is the reality of eternity, the reality that brings us to tears through such works as Spem. The hero honors glory by showing to us and himself that life is only a small thing in the shadow of heaven. Such sacrifice, whether carried through to the death or in a long life of dedication, is the meat, the measurable substance, of holy works of art. The one gives the encouragement for the other, while the other gives the reality to the art.
The ways to become a hero are written for us in holy texts and sometimes secular works, but there is a catch: for most, these texts do not bring with them the joy and conviction necessary to strive towards perfection. The Bible, for instance, is more a stern reprimand than an inspiration to many most of the time. It is said – and I have experienced this – that such sacred readings can only inspire us through the gift of grace, which can be asked for but cannot be controlled through any formula.
Ah, but music! Music can move anyone in the desired direction. How far one is moved depends upon one’s receptivity, but something almost always happens with music. For instance, I hate nasty gangster rap “music” because I feel its violence and hatred. If I wanted to feel it, I would feel it more intimately, but feel it I do whether I want to or not. And so it is with sacred music. One might reject the feeling, but it is there for the offering. The language of music, it seems, can come pre-wrapped in grace. In this it might well be a language akin to that of angels. It does not bring the reason for doing this or not doing that, but it supplies the power to overcome the reluctance to follow a calling.
Willingness, then, is what it ultimately gives us, whether it is an empowerment for war or for heaven. With war, there is death, and still we march on to the pipes and drums; with heaven, there is life, but still we have difficulty. Death is easy, it seems, compared to life, but we have been given the language of angels to help. We can choose to listen or not, but it is there. It is there to help us fulfill our sacred duty to compliment the spiritual gift of glory right here on earth. It is a tremendously difficult, heroic task, but the call to duty that comes through such gifted composers as Thomas Tallis is so compelling, so beyond bounds, that we sometimes are made willing to suffer the pains of discarding our old skins to prepare for the new wine.
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