Music Glorifies Christ

A Reflection by our Director of Music

Our new Director of Music, Creed Miller, participated in the Church Musicians Workshop at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin from June 12th-18th. He reflects on his experiences below.

My time at Nashotah House for the 2022 Church Musicians Workshop was a positively indulgent week, filled with good food, good beer, good fellowship, and most importantly, good instruction and good worship. We began every day at 7:45am with Morning Prayer and Mass (except Thursday, which began with Matins). Worship was followed by a hearty breakfast, a plenary session given by a different lecturer each day, and then a choral rehearsal in the magnificent St. Mary’s Chapel. Lunch kicked off every afternoon, to be followed by classes on particular tracks; the track in which I participated was “Liturgy and Music”. Another choral rehearsal followed the afternoon instruction, and then a service of Choral Evensong (except Thursday, which instead held Mass on the Feast Day of Corpus Christi). Dinner rounded off each day.

I went to the workshop as a sponge goes to water, absorbing as much as I could. For the sake of relative brevity, I will share with you some of what I learned that made the largest imprint in my mind and on my heart.

We have all heard the story of the "two of them" (KJV) who went along the road together en route to the village of Emmaus, after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus himself found these two, and walked with them, though they did not recognize him, as they believed him to be dead. The passage then tells us the following:

"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, 'Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.' And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight." Luke 24: 27-31 (KJV)

This passage perhaps best articulates why we worship the way we do. In a broad sense, our liturgy can be divided into two halves, the Liturgy of the Word, and the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Our liturgy is built around these two pillars because we believe the Gospel writer’s account of the Road to Emmaus to be true, that the combination of the study of Scripture preceding the blessing and sharing of the meal demonstrated by Jesus at the Last Supper is how the resurrected Jesus is made known to the two Jesus met on the road, and to Christians around the world today.

As we are familiar with it today, the Mass is a much more detailed ritual than simply reading Scripture and breaking bread. Certainly, the early Christians were not conducting Mass in exactly the same way we do. But one distinctive element of Christian worship is the utilization of music, and music does go back to the early Christians (a strong case can be made that our Christian usage of music in the Mass evolved from Old Testament era Jewish worship). The Roman philosopher Gaius Plinius Secundus, also known as Pliny the Elder, observed of the early Christians that they used music in stark contrast to their secular neighbors, who often used music as a means of frivolity. To Pliny the Elder, then, music (singing in particular at that time) was indicative of Christian worship to outsiders. For the early Christians, whose faith and practice was a fulfillment of the Old Testament, they knew their Old Testament and would have been familiar with the permeation of music in the Jewish bible. There are roughly two hundred and sixty-five references to singing within the Old Testament, and references to at least some sixteen different instruments. Many of these references are in the Book of Psalms. The psalms, as a rule, would have been sung, and we still sing the psalms to this very day in our liturgy. For the early Christians, the Psalter was their prayerbook.

The New Testament offers to Christians evidence of additional areas of musical praise. In the Gospels, there are what come to be known as canticles. Two of the most famous are the "Magnificat," Blessed Mary’s response to the knowledge of her holy pregnancy, and the "Nunc dimittis," Simeon’s response when he beholds the child Jesus in the temple. The letters of the apostle Paul additionally offer evidence of evolving musical praise. In his letter to the Colossians (Col. 3:16, KJV), Paul exhorts them to "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." Very similarly in his letter to the church in Ephesus (Eph. 5:18-19, KJV), St Paul instructs them saying, "And do not be drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord..." St Paul uses these three terms, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, in both those letters, and in Greek, he uses the same words. "Psalms" is perhaps the most self explanatory, referring to the inherited Psalter from the Old Testament, which we still use today. "Hymns" were likely, and certainly are today, songs of praise that expressed and were guided by Christian doctrine. Of course, doctrine takes time to develop, and as doctrine develops, so do our hymns. As the doctrine of the Holy Trinity solidified over time, that doctrine allowed for Reginald Heber to pen the glorious text of the hymn "Holy, holy, holy!" in which we have the recurring line "God in three persons, blessed Trinity!" St Paul’s final musical term, "spiritual songs," likely referred to more spontaneous or inspired songs of praise. More specifically, Paul is speaking of song that is inspired by the Holy Spirit. An recent example of an anthem I sang at Nashotah House comes to mind. The composer-in-residence, Andrew Smith, composed an ethereal setting of a text penned by St. Francis of Assisi:

"What wonderful majesty! What stupendous condescension! O sublime humility! That the Lord of the whole universe, God and the Son of God, should humble himself like this under the form of a morsel of bread, for our salvation."

All of these various musical facets of the early Christian worship have matured over the centuries and have been retained in our liturgy. We sing our psalms and our hymns. We sing many moments of collective praise and prayer to God, such as the “Kyrie eleison” and the “Gloria in excelsis”. Our choir often sings an anthem at the Offertory. Mark offers wonderful organ music to begin and close our worship. Even portions of our liturgy that are often spoken in other churches are sung at St Alban’s, such as the reading of the Gospel. In short, music infuses a great deal of our liturgy, particularly singing, and the important question is, "Why?" Why do we, as centuries of Christians who have gone before us in a liturgical tradition, choose to sing so much of our liturgy instead of merely speaking? I’ll offer an answer.

Because language expresses a shared reality, our worshipful expression of the reality in which Christ is made known through the study of Scripture and the breaking of the bread ought to be worthily reflective of that reality. Where there are words to express God’s gift to mankind, and to praise God for that gift, those words must be true and substantive. Those words ought to also be artful, as we are made in the image of God and imbued with a glimpse of the creativity through which God created all things. Spoken liturgy, I would argue, goes as far as the first two requirements, truth and substance. Certainly, there exists artful prose, but spoken prose only goes as far as it does. Thus, the infusion of music throughout our worship. Our worship of God requires the best of us; it requires language that communicates substantive truth in a creatively artful manner. Music, then, is not merely an aesthetic draped over the liturgy. Rather, it is a foundational element to our highest possible praise to God that we as human beings can offer. Music has the capacity to give expression to the overflow of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ, and as the saying goes, "expression deepens impression;" singing solidifies in our hearts the tenets of our faith.

The vast majority of the sung portions of our liturgy are sung by all: by the altar party, the choir, and the congregation. The congregation is the vast majority of the singing worshipping body. Every one of us, then, who enters into the beauty of the liturgy in our parish, can sing, and should sing, because we are all one Body in Christ. As members of that Body, we are blessed with a rich linguistic liturgical tradition in which our true, substantive, and artful worship of God is the means by which we offer our highest and most earnest praise.

Creed Miller
Director of Music
St Alban’s Anglican Church