Dr Kania explores the power that music hath to soothe the human soul. What did St Augustine mean in Sermon 336 when he wrote: "to sing once is to pray twice"? Who else has written interesting observations on the power of music?

Sing Choirs of Angels…

In 1745, Flora Macdonald (1722-1790) would never have ever entertained the possibility that one day she would enter the annals of history by ferrying a royal passenger perilously "over the seas to Skye". In 1745 the Catholic armies were confidently amassing behind Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788) — "Bonnie Prince Charlie", eventually however to face a pyrrhic defeat at Culloden, then pleading to their Prince: "Will Ye no come back again?"

Illustrated picture book cover by David Christiana

In the same year, John Francis Wade (1711-1786), a Catholic layman, Jacobite, and talented music teacher, had decided to flee religious persecution in his English homeland, and had arrived on the shores of France, eventually settling in the French town of Douai. In short time Wade was to become one of the many intellectuals who gathered at Douai's English College in that bastion of exiled Catholicism. It was here, and in such circumstances as a refugee, that Wade is said to have sat down and penned one of the world's most loved Christmas Carols, a carol, deliberately written it seems, to have a dual meaning.

Ian Bradley in his article for History Today (Volume 48, Issue 12, 1998, p. 42), entitled, "Sing Choirs of Angels" notes how the original manuscript published by Wade, who was by then plainchant scribe at Douai, of Adestes Fideles, has the dedication, "'Regem nostrum Jacobum' and Stuart cyphers on the manuscript", indicating that the hymn, "O Come All Ye Faithful", may have been written not only as a Christmas carol, but as a powerful anthem, "intended to rally Jacobites in Britain on the eve of Bonnie Prince Charlie's rising". Now sung with gusto all over the world by Protestant and Catholic choirs each Christmas, Adestes Fideles, originally had a much narrower focus as to who were the 'faithful' that should come and adore the King of Angels. Thus from the heart and mind of one man devoted to his Church, and to a political cause that he saw as being so inextricably entwined with this Church, comes an 18th Century carol that today has the ability to stop even an atheist in the street when they hear it being played in a store, or to move a parishioner to tears when it is sung at Midnight Mass.

The universal power of music…

The power of music and the power of song is something universal within the human person, capturing our imagination from the very moment we enter the world. When a baby cries, the mother and father, turn to a lullaby to somehow miraculously soothe the child's anxieties and place the child into a peaceful slumber. Invariably this has success! So powerful is music to the human person that anthems such as the "La Marseillaise" and "L'Internationale" have powered revolutionary movements and armies. The authors of The Civil War, also detail how on hearing a band strike up Harriet Beecher Stowe's (1811-1896) The Battle Hymn of the Republic: "A southern major who listened to a northern officer sing some of them after the war admitted, "Gentleman, if we'd had your songs, we'd have licked you out of your boots". (Ward, Burns & Burns, 1990, p. 104) Most of us can also bear witness to the fact that each time a gold medal is won at an Olympic Games, the athlete on hearing their nation's anthem, invariably struggles to hold back the tide of emotion that swells within them — as if the entire twin sentiment they have for their achievement as well as their homeland has been encapsulated by the mere few bars of a song.

If the human spirit and music are inseparable; so to is the relationship between Divine Revelation and music. The Old Testament sets the foundation with its Psalms and Song of Songs of a tradition of putting into poetry and music the highest and innermost stirrings of the human spirit's thirst for God. We are even told in Psalm 137 of exiles fearing that their predicament of being in an adopted homeland is so painful that they may not be able to find voice to give adequate praise to God. St. Luke also shows us in the New Testament how the birth of Christ is not only ordained by a bright star over Bethlehem, but by choirs of Angels singing: "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace for those he favours". (Luke 2: 14, The New Jerusalem Bible) St. Paul then tells that we should: "Sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs among yourselves, singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts, always and everywhere giving thanks to God who is our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ". (Ephesians 5: 19 – 20, The New Jerusalem Bible) Again in Colossians he teaches his audience: "With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs to God". (Colossians 3: 16, The New Jerusalem Bible). Being such an integral part of Christian tradition it is little wonder that Metropolitan Andrii Sheptytsky (1865-1944), discouraged the celebrating of spoken Liturgies; emphasizing the importance of music in the giving of praise to God. (Pospishil, 1989, pp. 201-225)

Examples of the powerful effect that song and music have had in Christian tradition are innumerable. When the Ukrainian Catholic priest and martyr, Roman Lysko was being bricked alive by Soviet guards, we are told by witnesses to this horrific crime that "they heard him singing psalms at the top of his voice". (Church of the Martyrs, 2004, p. 25) Moreover long after the Ukrainian Church was forced underground and when its priests and bishops were imprisoned and murdered, what fed the spirituality of the faithful was neither the golden dome or the elaborate icons of the iconastasis, which had been taken from them; but the hymns of the Church; hymns such as those written by a Confessor of the Faith, Fr. Iosyf Kyšakevyc (1872-1953), which in their sincerity and simplicity challenged the strength of the bars and shackles of the concentration camp: "Flow out throughout the world, o song of love, Let your voice resound like a hundred thunders. Over us there streams a marvellous happiness, Christ, the Lord Himself, in glory is coming".

Music and Mysticism…

Dante Alighieri

The American philosopher William James (1842-1910), once wrote about the connection between music and Mysticism. To James: "music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions". (James, 1902, pp. 420 – 421) Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) also emphasized in Purgatorio of the importance of music taking precedence over other artistic forms in the attainment of mystical awareness: "This harmony of sounds made me recall just how it seems in church when we attend to people singing as the organ plays: sometimes the words are heard, and sometimes lost." (Dante, 1985: II, Canto IX, p. 100) For Dante, there comes a point with music, that the words and voice become so intertwined that you are lifted to a higher reality that transcends both forms of communication, if they are left left in isolation, one from the other. Perhaps this is the underlying logic behind St. Augustine's famous teaching in Sermon 336: "To sing once is to pray twice", that is,when music is added to the spoken word of praise for God, a marriage exists between two sublime spouses, between prose or poetry and the secret meaning locked within a melody. In such a union, the human voice is transformed — a new voice is then heard, a voice that all men and women, wherever they are in the world, and despite their native tongue, can sit back and understand that indeed there must be a God in Heaven to have willed that mere man be brought toward Him by something so rich, so pure, so ethereal, so Divine.

Image Credits: The headline background image has been borrowed from the blogsite ofKnox Gardner, Seattle, Washington who writes as Bike Nerd – Biking the World in Small Increments. See: http://bikenerd.blogspot.com/2007/10/off-season-on-orcas-island.html. Click the other images for the original sources.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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