Unlike you, we were exposed to classical music from an early age. I remember enduring many choir concerts at church (my father sang bass in the choir) as a child. The words were often in Latin, and the program provided a translation. I could understand neither the spiritual meaning (why anyone would want to sing those words) nor why every line had to be repeated so many times. It seemed to me that once a line had been sung once that should be good enough. When the concert was finally over, my mother and I would clap enthusiastically – because it meant we could finally leave. (I don’t know what my sister thought of it.)

I played violin starting in fifth grade, which exposed me to a lot more classical music (classical in the broad sense, not the Classical period of Beethoven and Mozart). I also loved the Christmas carols in different languages in a book that my father got out at Advent every year. To this day I would rather sing Adeste Fideles and Stille Nacht than O Come All Ye Faithful and Silent Night.

But what you post most reminded me of was the appreciation for church music that I gained in ninth grade, when I was finally in the adult choir with my father (my older sister had also been in it but had by then graduated and gone off to college). I remember singing “Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming” that year, but it wasn’t the one that really got to me. The haunting melody and words that made spiritual things seem real was “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.” In large part through the music we sang in choir that year, that through repetition seeped deep into me, I went from being an agnostic (yes, I joined the church choir not sure if I believed in God) to faith in Christ.

Ah, Chaplain Mike. You speak my language. And yes, Kings College is some of the best out there. Those Wilcox descants for “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful” are magnificent.

I highly recommend to everyone a DVD called “Carols from King’s” put out by BBC. The performance was from December 2000, but the set also has a service from 1954. And the extra material talks about the traditions behind the Service of Lessons and Carols and its performance at King’s.

but one year for the annual christmas cantata (usually a typical SB fiasco), we did a production compiled by, among others, Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant. David Hamilton, the arranger for the whole work, did a chillingly good job with a few of the pieces – namely, a brief use of Lo How a Rose. That, and a piece called “This is Love” which simply compiled several scriptures set to lush orchestration, left a permanent impression on me as what modern church music COULD be. Praetorius’ setting of this text, like you said, iMonk, is gorgeous, haunting, and leaves a permanent mark.

While I love things like the Indelible Grace movement and Red Mountain Church, I hope we can also somehow maintain the integrity of the choral/orchestral music which has been kept safely in the church for centuries. It, like the old churches of the mainline denominations and Roman Catholicism, seem to evoke a sense of God’s majesty and man’s humility like few other things. And their beauty seems to evoke a shadow what our corporate worship in the New Jerusalem will be like.

I’d like to hear from the Orthodox on this. I recall that Orthodoxy came to Russia because the Czar, wanting to establish a religion to bind the nation together, sent out men to search for and bring back the most beautiful religion they could find. What they discovered and brought back was Orthodoxy.

A fascinating, and deep study of the theology of beauty by an Orthodox theologian is “The Beauty of the Infinite” by David Bentley Hart.

I’m not Orthodox, though I am drawn to its appreciation of the beauty of God and creation.

On of my first memorable listening experiences was on a school trip from NY to VA.

A friend let me use listen to his walkman which had Van Halen’s 1984 albumn in it. I remember starting at the first song and rewinding it (remember cassettes?) a number of times thinking that nothing coming afterwards could be as good. Eventually, after a bunch of listens I would let it play through the next song. I kept going that way through the whole albumn.

I don’t know if I really “got” what David Lee Roth was singing about, but the music and the way it gave sound to emotions was a religious experience of sorts for me.

Not exactly fine art and certainly not puposely pointing to the divine, but I think creativity cannot help, but point to the Creator even if only in shadows.

When I told my wife this story, she asked if he felt the same way about his wedding. In other words, did he want to have an ugly ceremony? And if he did, did his wife? She doubted that he did. I haven’t asked him.

To counter the Cult of Ugliness all around us — in books, on TV, in Media, even in the racks of Christian Bookstore kitsch.

(A friend of mine coined the term “Cult of Ugliness” several years ago; since then I have heard it from others, including Pope Benedict. Google the phrase sometime.)

I’m a veteran SF litfan. And I noticed that around 1968 there was a paradigm shift in SF lit, similar to that in the culture around it. To show SF had now Become Serious Literature, you had to celebrate ugliness and nihilism; it showed what a Serious Author you were. Continued over forty years it chipped away at the sense of beauty and wonder; bright futures abandoned for crapsack-Dark Futures, which were in turn abandoned for No Future, until all that’s left is the weary ennui with Appropriate Ironic Quip of the Seinfeld Sneer.

I am reminded of Screwtape’s dissertation to Wormwood regarding Music and Noise. Today, the Noise is what’s trendy.

Thanks, Michael for this post.

One of the most distinguishing features of culture here is the lack of any degree of appreciation for beauty and aesthetics. This is deep rooted, and can be seen as well in the predominant expressions of faith that took root in this area.

I can only assume that the poverty that was part of common life left little room for the development and appreciation of beauty. But there’s more to it than this, for there are other regions on earth with impoverished peoples that seem to have developed a deep love of beauty. Indeed, beauty is an attribute of the nature of God and not dependent on wealth, nor control by an elite.

There is here even a degree of anti-beauty sentiment. I assume it is the same where you live. If beauty is celebrated all, it is of the cheapest, most commercial sort. You know; the kind the Christian book stores are filled with. I find it hard to stomach. These are sweet and good people, and I’ve had to work at not being a snob about these things. But I long for beauty.

Any thoughts?