La Musique

21 Nov 21 - Musique Mystique

Rev dear Rev: Is there any real sense in my own once-proposed but undefended Master's thesis that music can be a font of healing in the Church, that some pieces of music can be useful as a healing art for life's many ills and depressions and sullen moods?

When some of the students at my old college in Ireland would be tired and ground down by the sheer force and effort and essays of life in the studious and sonorous and seminary  quad, and pressed down and depressed by the sheer volume of work in a busy seminary, sometimes they would congregate in little groups of 2 or 3 and pray for healing and then put on some favourite pieces of church music or classical music or even some country and western or some popsong that was a favourite, thereby experiencing a gentle healing balm to their frayed and worried nerves at the time. This was the first instance of healing through music that we experienced as young trendy seminarians, and the principal healing fonts were the likes of:

The Allegri Miserere;

John Denver's "Almost Heaven";

Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene;

Panis Angelicus;

Adoro te Devote;

Ave Verum Corpus by Mozart;

Nessun Dorma with Pavarotti;

O Mio Babbino Caro with Cecilia Bartoli;

And so on.

For us, few of us, had to be convinced that music displayed certain notes and certain chords, and the writers of songs certain lyrics which could be a font of a healing balm to the mind and the soul, since we evidently quite literally experienced it, even if at that time the healing ministry of music was not articulated, and yet after some of the above music we would lapse into a deep sleep in the afternoons in the free time of the college day, or take ourselves down to the greenhouses and shelter under the drying tobacco leaves of our scripture professor who would also be snoozing in the warm climes of the greenhouse, music was in the air, and healing too.

The thesis that music is a font of healing began in the ancient world with the words of the emperor Nero - "If music be the food of love, play on kind Apollo", as he absent mindedly strummed his lyre and harp to his own tunes and his own lyrics, so he too experienced healing as men saw it. Choristers too in the Ancient Greek religions of the empire too make their appearance at this time as we know from public inscriptions in marble surviving unto our own timeframes as the CCC of the period. The Hebrews, it is argued by one of the great architects and composers of the history of plainchant to whom I apprenticed myself as a young seminarian travelling through France to my stages at Lourdes each summer for 7 years from 1978 to 1985, Pere Hulier of Solesmes, produced the early versions of synagogue chant that later became the Christian Gregorian Chant tradition also, and here too the delicate stromes and notes of that highly intricate ascending chime of notes produced healing, spiritual healing during the services of word and communion of those early Jewish and Christian communities. By the time of Gregory, plainchant or Gregorian Chant became popular with monks and nuns vying with each other to produce the finest tunes and chants, from the simple lyricism of the Jesu dulcis memoria to the complex notes of the Resurrexi or the Adore te Devote - all of these had some merit to them, because the music followed the meaning of the texts with various notes rising and descending according to the meaning, hence more complex pieces such as the Credo VIII and the Missa Orbis Factor or the Missa De Angelis too. In the medieval era, medieval polyphony made an introibo to the scene of church music and here we see the beginning of more complex pieces of music and accompaniment until in the Elizabethan era madrigals make their appearance. Monteverdi gave us the oratorio tradition, and thence we have the modern era proper of classical music and opera, in the 17th and 18th Centuries with lots of court composers vying for public attention through the giving of concerts and the like such as the young Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach inter alia. In the victorian and edwardian eras, composers such as Tchaikovsky begin to articulate what had now become a canon or a sacred furnishing of the classical music scene; that classical music pieces have the power of healing that in sum it RECONCILES, HEALS, RESTORES, in its higher dimensions, and lonely broken and beaten souls can find rest and harmony and inner peace in the folds of its many arms, like Aeneas in the arms of Dido queen of Carthage. And so on, und so weiter. In the modern pop era, though pop music was not thought initially to advance this strange strain of healing from the classical music era, still within a few years, certain songs had attained that quality and that classicalitas, such as the "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers, until the modern world sees the power of modern ballads making public the secret emotions of the heart such as "Driver's License" by Olivia Rodrigo, "All Too Well" and "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift, "Dangerous Woman" by Ariana Grande, "Frozen" by Madonna with the message "You're frozen when your heart's not open", and "La Isla Bonita" also by Madonna, "Lolita" by the French songster Alizee, "Teenage Dream" and "Dark Horse" and "Wide Awake" by Katy Perry, "All the Things She Said" and "Zachem Ya" and "Not Gonna Get Us" by the Russian girlband Ta.tu, "Stan" and "Lose Yourself" by Eminem, and "Yellow" by Coldplay, and "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran and Bocelli, with "Time To Say Goodbye" by Ariana and Bocelli too making a comeback for more classical style ballads of an individual nature, and so on and so on. Musicals such as Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Joseph" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita" - these were important permanent markers of the genre of musical healing fonts of the time. All of these tunes at the time produced new fonts of real and genuine sometimes positive religious healing and balms to the soul for we students, not just through their tunes but especially more and more through their popular lyrics, this was a decisive factor in the genre. The rise of huge and enormous international fandoms begins at this time, with followings of Blackpink and Twice and Somi and G-Friend and BTS and Taylor and Coldplay and Travis and Texas, when many young people find that their distant Hollywood and American and Korean and British popstars articulate the feelings they privately feel for a mysterious other in the secure solitude of their privacy wound rooms. Lyricism is the new font of healing, chiefly through emotionally intelligent lyrics - such are the fonts of musical healing in the modern world. So yes, music does indeed offer an RHR Ministry - that music can indeed RESTORE, HEAL, RECONCILE, after all, as per the early thesis of Tchaikovsky and a thesis that is confirmed by the new healing ministry clauses of the new catechism of the CCC. A very good question. And one that merits being turned into a DMus. Brava, as we say in the Italian Opera Grand Tours of Rome.