There have been a few occasions during my time here when an organist has failed to arrive for a service and as a result I have attempted to accompany the hymns on the flute. Only yesterday did I discover that this was a sin. The philosopher Aristotle says that the flute is an immoral instrument, opposed to reason and should be prohibited to young people. And the early fathers of the church agreed with him. St Jerome said that a good Christian girl should not even know what a flute is. He also forbade female singers in church as their morals were likely to be suspect.
Though this is one early Christian tradition, which has failed to survive the test of time and reason, music in church has had a chequered history. The early Christians were suspicious of flutes and female choirs because they played such a prominent part in pagan worship; music for a Christian then was associated with sensuousness and superstition. Nowadays people tend to be suspicious because they think too much music turns worship into a concert, or they resent not being able to join in, or because it makes the service too long. Both ancient and modern suspicions have their point; so on this Sunday on which we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church we have the opportunity to consider once more the connection between music and Christianity, between musical inspiration and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Why should we listen to religious music or any kind of music? What effect does music have and what connection should it have with the rest of our lives?
If we look briefly at what we have heard about the Spirit so far in this Eucharist we shall discover four things. First, that the Spirit breaks down the barriers between those kept separate by language, class and religion. Second, that the Spirit inspires people to prophesy, to see visions and dream dreams. Third, that the Spirit inspires different gifts in us, which are all at the service of the common good. And fourth, that the Spirit gives us peace, through the forgiveness of our sins. What links all these effects is that people are taken by the Spirit to a new place in their lives and that this translation brings about an increase in goodness. But where such transformation is offered by the Spirit, there is also a warning. To work against the Spirit is to bring destruction. Ignoring or failing to appreciate the presence of the Spirit is dangerous.
While fearing music, the early Christians had of course to recognise that music does feature positively in the Bible. And so gradually, they began to accept that our spirits could be lifted by music to worship more fervently. Music can excite a longing for God. You can quite literally sing for joy. So music in church developed to the high point of the Middle Ages until the Reformation put it once more under the moral microscope.
Martin Luther often gets a bad press, but Church Music owes much to him; he regarded music as existing on the same level as theology. Music is a gift of God which disposes the heart to virtue; it reconciles those who hate, it calms the enraged, it makes courageous the despondent, it raises the spirits of the sad. Music in Church, Luther said, is like a resounding sermon, and nowadays you might wish that more sermons had the same effect on us as the music of Bach can do.
And yet if we fast forward to the twentieth century we come to those notorious concerts which kept Jewish musicians from the gas chambers so that their guards could listen to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms even in Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen. In such places there seems not much evidence of music disposing the heart to virtue. One of the greatest traditions of musical culture proved powerless to save Europe from totalitarianism; in fact some would say that music became the servant of state oppression. If this can happen then music must surely be without moral significance; music can do nothing significant other than be itself and be heard.
And yet, you could say that what happened to music in Auschwitz was an example of blasphemy. For if we believe that music like the Schubert Quintet in C is a gift from God, then the failure of those guards to be changed by that beauty and see the evil of what they were doing is blasphemy. The performance judges them. Just so, the musical improvisations on the harp in the private houses of the complacent and pampered rich of Samaria was condemned in the eighth century BC by the prophet Amos. They ignored the ills of their people and the demands of justice and even their music condemned them.
It lies in the capacity of great music, whether by Bach or Britten, Schoenberg or Schubert, Walton or Weelkes, to move us into a deeper level of reality, to transcend our present state of thought and feeling. In the moving words of Iris Murdoch it provides, ‘a stirring image of a pure transcendent value.’ For many people, she says, in an unreligious age music provides their ‘ clearest experience of something grasped as separate and precious and beneficial and held quietly and unpossessively in the attention.’ And if that is so then music is one of the ways in which the Holy Spirit communicates with us. It is one of the ways in which barriers are broken down as literally in Daniel Barenboim’s orchestra of Arabs and Israelis, playing at the Proms this year. Through music the Spirit inspires and encourages and moves us to dream dreams. And it judges us.
Today is the beginning of Christian Aid Week. As we listen to the music of this service and this festival, as we keep time with this music, a child dies every three seconds somewhere in our world from causes that could have been prevented. One, two, three.
Lord have mercy and inspire us with your Spirit to work for that kingdom where all may share in the good things of your creation. Amen.
Stephen Tucker