As the confusion and fear surrounding this pandemic virus continues to take captive our thoughts and emotions, much has already been said about the “healing” power of music. Performing and teaching musicians from all musical genres have commendably stepped up and shared their gifts as a way of bringing comfort and hope to troubled minds. Communities of people across the world have called upon the connecting power of music to remain close to one another. After this disease has taken its course, who will forget the videos of the inhabitants of quarantined Italian villages, neighbours and friends, who cannot physically stand together, but nonetheless turn to song to stand together in spirit?

            But as compelling as these sentiments are, and as much as we can affirm this use of song to carry fearful people through a trying time, the “healing” descriptor alone falls something short of what we as Christians understand about the greater purpose of music. Music doesn't merely heal in an earthly sense, by easing our fears and by distracting us from an uncertain future. Saint Augustine wrote, “Music [is] given by God’s generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things.”1. As the body of Christ, we've been given the gift of music not only for its earthly beauties and powers, but for its essential ability to draw our hearts and minds to more lasting things. I am speaking specifically of sung music, of sung words offered to God in worship, though instrumental music can have this capacity as well. When we sing together, or when we lift our voices in spirit with others who are singing, we are allowed a shadowy taste of what will be our everlasting, heavenly duty, to worship as the angels do, in the very presence of the Creator of music.

            I write this at the beginning of the final two weeks of Lent, and I am struck, as others have been, by how terrible and appropriate it is for us to grapple with a destructive disease during a season that began with the admonition,“Remember O man that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.” During Lent, we often seek a memento mori to focus our minds on the brevity of our lives and on the work of repentance, but if given the choice, who would truly choose for it to manifest itself this way, with lingering fear, uncertainty, and for some, a painful death? I struggle to cultivate this sober state of mind while also craving comfort in the midst of a very real and tangible trial. It has been my experience, however, that music is able to reconcile the two dispositions, bringing together a penitential awareness of mortality with a steady hope of Heaven.

            This pairing of penitent sorrow with Christ-centered hope is rarely embodied better or more fully than in song. When we sing hymns and sacred songs, we take up for ourselves the heritage of countless other faithful men and women who have sung the same words and notes we are singing, decades and even centuries ago. (How's that for true connectedness!) We can allow our act of singing, no matter how halting, to become our offering of worship. Words that lament of sin and plead for absolution become our sung prayers of repentance. All the while, the beauty of ancient notes and voices woven together in harmony carry our song from Earth to Heaven, and our minds and hearts likewise ascend. Here is true healing and consolation--to realize as we sing, both the earthly goodness and loveliness of music, and its place in our eternal future, beyond the limits of our mortality.

            With this in mind, as we near the end of a season that has been particularly burdened by the reality of a disordered Creation, I commend to you the following musical offerings for your meditation. Some of these pieces are set to funeral texts; others are more overtly cheering. I've included translations for the Latin and German works below. These are pieces that have enriched my Lenten thinking and devotions, and my hope is that they might do the same for you. If you listen, I hope you will find to be true what J.S. Bach believed, that, “where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence."2.

- Abigail Castor is the music and choir teacher at St. Mark’s Classical Academy

Click here for the Spotify Playlist:

1.     John Rutter, The Lord is My Shepherd, 1978

2.     Anonymous, Invocabit me, c. 11th century

He shall cry to me, and I will hear him:
I will deliver him, and I will glorify him:
I will fill him with length of days.

He that dwelleth in the aid of the Most High: shall abide under the protection of the God of Heaven.

3.     Thomas Tallis, Salvator mundi, 1575

O Saviour of the world, save us,
Who by thy cross and blood hast redeemed us,
Help us, we pray thee, O Lord our God.

4.     Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor, Part 3: IV. Adagietto, 1901

5.     Henry Purcell, In the midst of life from Funeral Music for Queen Mary, 1724

6.     Orlando Gibbons, Almighty and Everlasting God, 1641

7.     Arvo Pärt, Agnus Dei from Berliner Messe, 1990

O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace.

8.     Anonymous, Angelis suis, c. 11th century

God shall give his angels charge over thee: to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee in their hands: that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone.

9.     Pelham Humphrey, A Hymn to God the Father, 1688 (Text by John Donne)

10. Johann Sebastian Bach, Erbarme dich from Matthäus-Passion, 1727

            Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears!
            Look here, heart and eyes weep bitterly before you.
            Have mercy, have mercy!

11. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Two Hymn-Tune Preludes: No. 2, Dominus Regit Me, 1936

12. Herbert Howells, Like as the Hart, 1943

13. Howard Goodall, The Lord is My Shepherd, 2000

14. Arvo Pärt, Da pacem, 2004 

Grant peace, Lord, in our time; for there is none else who would fight for us if not you, our God.

15. Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Call from Five Mystical Songs, 1911 (Text by George Herbert)

1. Saint Augustine of Hippo. (n.d.) Epis. 161. De origine animae hominis, 1, 2; PL XXXIII, 725.

2. Bach, J.S., (n.d.). Marginalia on the pages of the Calov Bible. Calov, Abraham, ed. Die Heilige Bibel, 1681-82, Wittenburg.