God's iPod - Mozart in the absence of Bach

My original selection included Bach's Double Concerto in dMinor for two violins. There is something sublime about Bach; I cannot imagine supplying music for God and not including Bach. However, it became apparent that Bach is not available on iTunes. Should God become involved in the great iPod experiment, I feel sure that he would do something about this. However, once I arrived at Greenbelt and found that Bach was off the menu, I did, happily, have with me a CD of Kiri Te Kanawa singing Mozart's vespers, so that is what GOd was offered next.

Kiri is one of those voices of a generation. Perfect tuning, immaculate delivery,  almost miraculous control. To hear her deliver hugely lengthy lines, perfectly and smoothly produced, would seem to require four lungs-ful of breath, not two.

Mozart's Vespers is a beautiful piece, and the 60 seconds I isolated for God's iPod was the opening of Laudate Dominum, a setting of Psalm 116. "Praise God, all the nations of the world. For he has shown us his mercy" is an approximate summary of the translation.

Martin Wroe was my interviewer on God's iPod, and he asked me whether you need to know what the words mean in order to gain spiritual benefit from the music. I think that knowing what it means certainly adds a level of possibility to the music. But music where you can't hear the words (no, not just loud young people's music, but opera and vast tracts of ecclesiastical choral music too) has its own value, as does music without any words at all, and can open up the human heart to spiritual understanding at least as much as the words can, perhaps more. It technically stretches the categories to say that music is a sacrament, but I do think that music has the capacity to penetrate the soul in a way that intellectual reason can not.

Go find Kiri singing the Vespers. It will do your heart good.

Comments

[paul]

sincerely sorry i missed your seminar, Gb can be too busy!

for a long time your blog has been a voice of salt and light in a tasteless and dark world...

[Andrea]

Maybe the uk itunes is different, but there are 680 albums of J.S.Bach on the canadian site.

I feel relieved. When I read that there was NO Bach I felt that pinch of wondering if I'd have to boycott itunes. :)

Thankfully, this is not the case.

Relieved, and hoping that maybe God can have some Bach too...

[Hugh A]

The Bach Double Concerto is sublime and always in my top three choices. Not only is wonderful but it has some lovely associations for me. Not only was it played in the car as brain music taking my son to his grammar school tests but it is the piece that made it impossible to imagine my daughter studying anything but music. When she was about 7 we were away at a church conference and the adults were going to be entertained during the Saturday evening by two talented violinists at the church playing this piece. The plan was that they would start playing and the children, who were on the floor in the middle of the room, would quietly leave for some alternative fun and games. All the children left except one small girl who remained absolutely still, lying down, head propped up on her hands and with eyes like saucers. Her face was lit up as if a bit of heaven had just appeared in the room and the rest, as they say, is history.

[Michele U]

J.S. Bach's B minor Mass, especially the recording by American Bach Soloists, led by Jeffrey Thomas, has to be the most heavenly Bach I've ever heard.

(found your fabulous website when I googled "parsnip soup". Led me to another passion of mine...J. S. Bach. Who ever would have thought parsnip soup had anything in common with Bach? Oh, and by the way, American Bach Soloists has an album on which Catherine Bott is featured soloists...she is, as you probably know, very BRITISH)