SPOTIFY SUNDAY: Salvation Song

This week’s Spotify Sunday playlist has been selected by Archbishop Cranmer, whose blog on religion and politics is no doubt familiar to many readers of this website. We’re grateful to him for contributing to the Spectator Arts Blog.

There is nothing which invigorates His Grace’s ashes more than the old battles of Church and State; the interminable clash of the sacred with the profane; the divine disapproval of all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil. And so his mind and spirit (and blog) are perpetually preoccupied with that place where religion meets politics and politics becomes secular religion. Or, as Sir Humphrey might say, where the bishop’s religio-political agendas fuse with the politician’s politico-religious objectives.

This Playlist is unashamedly catholic and (chronologically) representative of His Grace’s favourite music on the theme of Salvation, both temporal and spiritual: pieces that give a taste of heaven and occasionally a glimpse of hell. They speak to his mind, excite his body and feed his soul. He hopes very much that they feeds yours, too.
 
Tallis: Spem In Alium
(Mark Brown, 1986, Pro Cantione Antiqua)

This 40-part motet from His Grace’s contemporary has never been surpassed in its magisterial angelic polyphony. The text is taken from a response in the Sarum Rite which so influenced Anglican Liturgy and His Grace’s Book of Common Prayer: Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te Deus Israel – ‘I have never put my hope in any other but in You, O God of Israel’. It is like a great choral Shema, beginning with one solitary voice, building gradually through the other voices as each choir in turn echoes the original cry to the Almighty, reaching a climactic crescendo as all 40 voices enter simultaneously, and then reverse the process. It is a magnificent liturgy of call and response: God is in the silences as well as the sound.

Bach: ‘Sanctus’ from Mass in B minor
(Karl Richter, 1961, The Munich Bach Orchestra & Choir)
 
O, the colossal glory of this great cry of ‘Holy, Holy, Holy!’ If you have never been fortunate to witness the angelic host singing their praises to God, this is a close as it gets. Some prissy people don’t like ‘big Bach’, but Richter was a master at evoking the Baroque drama of power and profundity. Here is no space for mediocrity: he conducts with forensic precision, such that you can hear the angels swirling around the heavens to the rapture of Bach’s ecstasy. The violins are splendid in their divine majesty; the trumpets are as crystal as springs of living water; and the timpani are thunderous in their praise. Please do not die before you have given ear to this sacred glimpse of paradise.

Handel: ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ from Messiah
(soloist Elly Ameling; Sir Neville Marriner, 1976, The Academy & Chorus of St Martin-in-the-Field)

If one were forced to choose one moment from Handel’s interpretation of God’s plan of salvation, you might expect the glorious ‘For Unto Us’ or the incomparable ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. But this sublime air for soprano is salvation in a whisper. The text derives from the Book of Job, which is where Scripture meets Shakespeare. Abandoned in trauma, alone with his suffering and bereavement, Job had the faith to believe and declare that God was still in control. He did not understand how or why, but he knew that his Redeemer lived. Life is replete with tragedy and sorrow, and this music offers hope; our only hope.

Mozart: Adagio from Serenade No10 in B Flat “Gran Partita” K.361
(Sir Neville Marriner, 1984, The Academy of St Martin-in-the-Field)

In the (fictional) words of Salieri: “On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse – bassoons and basset horns – like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly – high above it – an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing the very voice of God.” It is indeed unbearably beautiful, and cannot but persuade one of the existence of God.

Beethoven: ‘Credo’ from Missa Solemnis in D major, Op. 123
(Sir Georg Solti, 1978, Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Choir)

From the tortured and tormented soul of nature’s greatest comes the superlative and almost unperformable sacred masterpiece of all. Cut off from the world by his deafness, Beethoven pushes the limits of human endurance to grapple with the meaning of earthly and divine existence. This Credo begins with Chalcedon the opera: we race through an allegro of hypostatic union, consubstantiation and homoousion; pause in adagio and andante for the Incarnation; move to a sublime adagio espressivo for the crucifixion; and just when the world ends, in a silence that seems to last an eternity, we have an earth-shattering allegro declaring ‘Et resurrexit tertia die secundum Scripturas’ with a voice that could break the cedars of Lebanon: the angelic host joins with the heavenly spheres and even the stones cry out ‘He is Risen!’ Hallelujah! The Ascension is a dizzying allegro molto, through the Last Trumpet and the Day of Judgment. And then we return to an allegro ma non troppo for a bit more theology: the filioque clause and the life of the world to come, set to some of the most exalted themes. Beethoven may have been deaf to earthly sounds, but in this magnum opus he heard the Voice of God.

Fauré: ‘In Paradisum’ from Requiem
(Sir David Willcocks, King’s College Cambridge)

If this is playing in heaven when His Grace approaches St Peter, all will be well forever and ever. Fauré said: “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death, and somebody called it a lullaby of death. But that is how I see death – as a happy deliverance, an aspiration to happiness above rather than as a painful experience.” In its serenity is the peace that passes understanding. Here we find the very heart of God the Comforter, the Wonderful Counsellor, the Prince of Peace: ‘May angels lead you into Paradise … may you have eternal rest.’

Mahler: ‘Aufersteh’n’ (‘Rise Again’) from Symphony No2 “Resurrection”
(Leonard Bernstein, 1988, New York Philharmonic & Westminster Choir)

This epic symphony is more than music: it is primordial cosmology fused with ethereal nebulae condensed into a myriad of infinitely-dense extragalactic black dots woven into the fabric of five endless horizontal lines separated by four infinite spaces. The Resurrection emerges out of the Primeval light, yet it is lighter than light. The orchestra is more glorious than the morning sun and the choir’s whispered entrance more wonderful the dews of peace. It cannot be contained by sounding brass and tinkling cymbal: it has an epic climax that seems to go on for an eternity of overwhelming grandeur. If one were to condense all the emotions of life into a nutshell, and then ask the Seraphim to carry it to the Throne of Grace, you would reach the ecstasy of salvation. It is an Event.
 
Genesis: Supper’s Ready
(from the album ‘Seconds Out’, Live, Paris 1976)
 
A leap, but this is not just ‘rock’ music: it is the Last Days, the End of Time, from the Lord’s Supper to the Parousia. It is pure musical impressionism. From a couple watching television to a man carrying a cross, this mini-oratorio seems to run from Genesis and surges to Revelation; from acoustic to electric, from major to minor; from serenity to apocalypse. It is a reminder that even the eternally damned in the fires of hell cannot escape the presence of God. The struggle is between good and evil, the tension lies between damnation and salvation, and ‘666 is no longer alone, // He’s getting out the marrow in your back bone’. The trauma is intense, but we move with melodic glory through lyrical complexity from Seven Trumpets to the Second Coming and then on to the New Jerusalem. Inspired genius, appropriately written and composed by Gabriel.

Jon & Vangelis: ‘Horizon’ from Private Collection

With a voice of audible silk, Jon Anderson sings of the rings of confusion, to sacrifice, to enlighten like a Shakespearean play. Our earthly flesh is folly: our pushing, pulling, twisting and turning are devoid of reason. But there is a guiding light which transcends everything: a jewel of life that heralds a new dawn. Divine Nature brings peace, and that peace will surely come (we are told 17 times). An unbearable suspended chord of tension builds to an orgasm of the everlasting dream:

I just can’t help but believe in life,
All in all I just can’t help but believe there is a way
For us to give, A way for us to live
A way for us, A way for us.

If salvation is about light, love, reason and grace, they meet in the secret heart of this sweet music.

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Morricone: ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’ from The Mission
(London Philharmonic Orchestra, 1986)
 
In The Mission, a film with priest-and-king themes as old as recorded history, Morricone goes to the Holy Mountain. He begins with sacred choral harmonies, segues into the hypnotic rhythm of the Guarani drums, and then infuses Gabriel’s oboe which soars above the hypnotic basso profundo like a Mozartian strain. The three elements compete for supremacy in a perfect fusion of mesmeric earthy rhythm and spiritual harmony. It is one of the most sublime moments in the history of cinematic scores, and perhaps the greatest Academy Award travesty of all time that they failed to award it an Oscar. But that would be an earthly desire: Morricone’s martyrdom is his timeless mission between the valley of conviction and the mountain of conversion – to make the music which saves us from ourselves.

You can listen to the rest of the playlist HERE