I last spoke from this pulpit about music at our celebration of S Cecilia, when I talked about music as an offering to God to convey our adoration. It seems appropriate to consider music again tonight, immediately before the Annual General Meeting of the Friends of the Music. This time I want to draw your attention to the importance of music as the personal experience of those we attract to our worship. If you ask the average member of the Parochial Church Council why they think we should allot so much effort and so much money from the church=s income as we do to music – and, grateful as we are to the Friends for their contribution, it does not cover the total expenditure – the answer is likely to be in the first place that the music brings in the people, particularly at Evensong. A number of my friends prefer to worship elsewhere on Sunday morning, but value the chance of being with us on Sunday evening. I do not assert that it is only the music that brings them: some come for no more flattering reason than that their own churches close down at lunchtime and they have nowhere else to go. But I believe that without our choir we should have almost as much difficulty as their churches in maintaining a regular Evensong congregation of any size. They come, to some extent anyway, because of the standards of worship we maintain.
Why does the music attract them? In the first place, because it gives pleasure. It is a long time since the Church started to be reluctant to say that pleasure comes from God. In the fifteenth century, partly for fund-raising purposes, the Church authorities concentrated on sin, and got people worrying about hell; in the sixteenth century, the reformers inherited their emphasis on punishment, and in subsequent Puritanical generations it came to be assumed that religion and misery were consanguineous. I want to assure you, despite traditions to the contrary, that pleasure was created by God and is nothing to be ashamed of. The truth is that human beings have been indulging in the pleasure of music for a very long time, even though churchmen felt obliged to say that we were primarily concerned with other things, such as well-organized liturgy. I think it would be a lot healthier just to admit that we like it, and I see no reason why God should disapprove. After all, he created us to be happy, and, as the Westminster Confession asserts, >to enjoy him forever=. This must involve the eternal music of heaven. My point is that music on earth also brings happiness, and God is in favour of that.
It is very rarely the words that count. I was a little embarrassed before Christmas to be preaching one morning when the anthem was Mendelssohn=s well-known >How lovely are the messengers that preach us the gospel of peace=. But I didn=t notice a single person looking at me.
The music itself preaches to us of peace. Melodies and harmonies tell us, of course, of God=s beauty. The composition of music is, above all things, the devising of a structure in time. The need, perhaps not always conscious, for the listener to appreciate this structure connects us with the creative activity of the Father. Of course, for each of us our response is personal. I prefer Palestrina to Rutter; I accept that this is a personal view. It is admirable that Lee and David are willing to make room for many schools of musical expression, however painful some of us may find Maunder or, for that matter, Messiaen. They teach us that God can overcome all obstacles, even prejudice, to communicate with us.
But one of the jobs of this church is to make it easier for those who come here to hear that voice of God. Through our music; they may get a glimpse of God which they would not normally be looking for. This is one of the main tasks of the Christian, to show God forth to the world, despite the world=s disinclination to look. If we can seduce them with a sly motet, it seems to me that we can rejoice that God has been using us to find a way to speak to them. They may not stick to us simply because they get a free concert every Sunday evening, or nearly free, depending on their generosity. We might in the end encourage them to think about God, too, whatever methods he may use to appeal to them.
In the end, of course, the music will bring us all closer to God. It is not just for visitors; it is for the regulars to enjoy as well. I must remind you of my text, from that extraordinarily self-indulgent passage from Paul: >And they glorified God because of me.= Despite Pfitzner=s equally indulgent self-portrait as Palestrina in his opera of that name, I do not think the historic musician would have spoken in such terms, though Richard Wagner would have had no difficulty in doing so. Nevertheless, it would be true of both. We are grateful to all those who make our music here, whether in composition or in performance, and to those who raise money to support them, and we acknowledge how much they induce us to glorify God. It is so easy to think of God as somebody who is merely there to be asked for favours. The consequence can be that when people don=t get what they want, they give up on God. There may be many reasons why the favours don=t come, but the reason is never that God doesn=t care. Sometimes I find in music another satisfactory answer. There is no doubt that music can offer cadences which provide closures for our problems, closures that we could not have imagined for ourselves. Again, music can put forward melodies capable of consoling us for wounds to which nothing else in life could reconcile us. If we can make such condolences available to others smitten by the troubles of this world, we are indeed doing God=s work on earth. Amen
Alan Goodison