At this time of year, as we celebrate the feast of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music, I am always reminded of a film shown on the BBC in 2001, called Conspiracy. It tells the story of the Wannsee Conference which took place in 1942 to resolve \’the Jewish question\’ – how were all German spheres of influence to be made free of their Jewish population? Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh) and Eichmann (Stanley Tucci) dominate the proceedings and make it clear that the solution has already been decided by the SS. At the end as everyone leaves the lakeside villa, Heydrich wanders over to a gramophone and plays the 78 on the turntable. Out of the flared horn comes the sound of the first movement of Schubert\’s String Quintet in C major. The irony is chilling.
The pianist Alice Sommer-Herz, when she played Schubert in her concerts in Theresienstadt, used to pray that somehow through the power of music Hitler\’s path would be changed. She also said of those concerts, \’Whenever I knew that I had a concert, I was happy. Music is magic. We performed in the council hall before an audience of 150 old, hopeless, sick and hungry people. They lived for the music. It was like food to them. If they hadn\’t come [to hear us], they would have died long before. As we would have.\’
The conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler, stayed in Germany because he wanted to bear witness to a tradition of musical understanding in a German culture which had no place for Nazism and which would give hope to those not wholly given to Nazism. Hitler often attended his concerts, but they made no difference to him, however fine the performance. And after the war Furtwangler was castigated for his decision to stay in Germany.
So do we have to say of music that of itself it has no moral force? It may have brought comfort to the prisoners of Theresienstadt, perhaps by reminding them of home and of the times when they first heard and were moved by it; but in the Concentration camps – the guards and the prisoners alike listened to what music could be made there. \’In five of the extermination camps, the Nazis created orchestras using prisoner-musicians, forcing them to play while their fellow prisoners marched to the gas chambers. The suicide rate among musicians was higher than that of most other camp workers …Many musicians were forced to watch helplessly as friends, family and fellow Jews were systematically destroyed. Auschwitz/Birkenau alone featured six different orchestras, one of which contained no less than 100-120 musicians.\'(www.holocaust-lestweforget.com)
What all this points to is the danger of divorcing the beautiful from the good and the true – the trinity of platonic thought, taken up by Christian theology as transcendental and inseparable categories of Being. In the history of the church, especially in its early days there was always a deep suspicion of music because of its kinship with sensuality and its place in pagan rites. Flute players were believed to be deeply immoral. Music was, however, eventually baptised through sacred song; Augustine is supposed to have said \’He who sings well prays twice.\’ Or again more certainly, \’He who sings praise, not only sings, but also loves Him whom he is singing for.\’ For centuries music was divided between the music of the church and the music of the courtly dance and the music of the common people. Perhaps only with Romanticism does music begin to be exalted to the level of religious experience, and with the decline of faith music becomes a kind of secular religion \’what in the last resort is the self contemplation of an urge for life which does not recognise its own limits\’ (Karl Barth) or in the case of the Nazis, an urge for mastery.
Barth\’s warning might point us toward a set of difficult questions; where might a love of music come from? Does its place in our lives sometimes provide the (unhealthy?) satisfaction of emotions which otherwise would remain unsatisfied? Is it a means of escape? Is it selfish? How would we justify the expenditure of money on music when there are so many Charities crying out for support? Is the music sung and appreciated in church done out of love for the One we are singing for and to?
Perhaps the beginning of an answer to all those question has to be found in our belief in the glory and beauty of God. What we celebrate at Christmas represents the coming together of the human and the divine, the spiritual and the material. So perhaps it becomes possible for the glory of God to be hinted at in what we find beautiful on earth. When near the end of his life a woman anoints Jesus feet with expensive perfume in a house in Bethany, Jesus says that she \’has done a beautiful thing to me.\’ (Ma. 26:10) It is possible for human beings to do beautiful things which combine the spiritual and the material. And when musically they are done for God, whether we are cast in the role of performer or listener, something may be released in us which engages us more closely also with what is good and what is true. What we have to guard against is the possibility that in appreciating the beauty of the music we forget the One who is the source of all beauty – and idolise the music in and for itself.
Christmas is always a very musical time; the Advent Carol Service, the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, the familiar carols and the mass settings for the Midnight mass and Christmas day, and no doubt at least one performance of the Messiah. After its first performance Handel is reputed to have said, \’I should be sorry if I only entertained them, I wish to make them better.\’ Perhaps that is the challenge to us of all music and especially our Christmas music, performed for the greater glory of God – does it make us better people?
The Vicar writes
Stephen Tucker