Five great composers and I: sharing a worldview
Last weekend I participated in two performances of Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. (I sing alto in Chorus Niagara, a regional symphony chorus led by one of Canada’s best choral conductors, Robert Cooper.) I was privileged to write the program notes for The Creation and to also present, in tandem with the conductor of our St. Catharines-based symphony chorus, what he jokingly referred to as a “dog and pony show” before each concert. He and I gave our audiences background about the work, its times, and Haydn himself, to allow listeners to more fully enjoy that great oratorio. Haydn wrote it near the end of his career (1798) after being thrilled when hearing Handel oratorios in London
I listen to classical music almost every day, often for many hours, while I work in my home office; and Ed and I listen further after supper if we are spending an evening reading. Naturally, I listen to a preponderance of music by the composers I love the best: Bach, Handel, Telemann, Mozart, Haydn. (That is not to say there isn’t much other music I thoroughly enjoy.)
Thinking about that music, along with preparing my part of the pre-concert talk and rehearsing The Creation, has caused me to conjure an interesting (no, an important) fact: all of my favorite composers were Christians. (Admittedly, “favorites” is a lame word here, applicable as it is to everything from tastes in ice cream flavors to choices in listening to civilization’s greatest music that deeply stirs one’s heart and spirit.)
Each of these men had a life-encompassing faith, consciously lived, and in each one’s music the Spirit of God seems quite evident to me. The first three were Lutherans, the latter two Roman Catholics. Yet their having stood in two quite different streams of Christianity (sometimes fiercely opposed streams) did not obscure the fact that they fundamentally shared a common faith and a common worldview. In Christ there is neither Lutheran nor Catholic (nor Calvinist)….
Not serious enough
Haydn (1732-1809), a biblically literate, daily-Mass attending Catholic, said when a critic frowned about his church music not being serious enough, “At the thought of God my heart leaps for joy and I cannot help my music doing the same.” Indeed, of all composers in the history of Western music, Haydn is known for his ebullience. Some modern critics have also taken him to task for it. Despite his music’s sophistication it is also almost naïvely good humored. That has been deemed incompatible with the supposed Sturm und Drang required for true greatness. And that is primarily why, in the 20th century, Haydn’s ability as a great innovator was undervalued, despite his having been the “father” of both the string quartet and the symphony. (That disparaging view is now being corrected.)
It is obvious to me that those critics, in his own time and ours, did not understand how faith can – and should – inhabit the fabric of one’s heart and soul, and thus, what comes out of that heart and soul. Haydn was not good-humored because he was “shallow” or problem-free. His long marriage was thoroughly unhappy, but his reliance on God surely helped him endure. (There’s no evidence he had extramarital affairs, though some modern historians have assumed it because women – except his musically dismissive wife, it seems – tended to find him charming. Of course adultery would have been antithetical to his faith.)
The praise that brings us together
I have no doubt at all that the five composers I’ve mentioned as my favorites are so precisely because they and I share a Christian worldview, and because they were able to profoundly meld that worldview with the prodigious musical talent God lavished on them. That common worldview/faith is not to be underestimated. If it is essential to a good marriage (“Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers,” says Paul in the King James English I grew up hearing – you both need to be on the same fundamental spiritual wavelength), it is also fundamental to the daily, soul-touching activity of imbibing (I use the word deliberately) the music that adds so deeply to my very person and experience of God’s good creation.
Which brings me back to Creation. In Haydn’s musical Creation (based on Genesis, the Psalms and pre-Fall parts of Milton’s Paradise Lost), descriptions of the six creation days naturally erupt in great choruses of praise, the most famous being “The heavens are telling the glory of God,” from Psalm 19. But the final chorus aptly sums up our response to God’s magnificent creative work, his power and glory. It encapsulates Haydn’s own response to God. May such praise also characterize our lives:
Sing the Lord, ye voices all!
Utter thanks all ye his works.
Celebrate his pow’r and glory.
Let his name resound on high.
The Lord is great,
His praise shall last for aye.
Amen!
A version of this post will appear in Christian Courier, Nov. 23, 2009
Reformed Revelry 
Really good, thank you.
I have always wanted a way into understanding classical music better and your book on Handel and this article and others has helped me to start somewhere and yet I am sure all this work from your pen will have appeal to an even wider audience than to someone like myself. I can be deeply moved by music but know so little about it, nothwithstanding that my wife grew up in a very musical family and knows such a lot. At least she has ensured that I have listened to it and enjoyed it over the years.