Tune In
W. Bradford Wilcox
January 1, 1995
Listen to the music: "Chant," an album featuring Gregorian chants sung for more than a millennium rises up the pop charts; hundreds of young Seattleites turn out Sunday nights to hear the Psalms sung in the city's Episcopal Cathedral; the Tallis Scholars, a vocal group specializing in Renaissance sacred music, attract thousands of young men and women at concerts across the Eastern seaboard. As the resurgence of sacred music suggests, members of our generation are looking for an alternative to the contemporary musical spectrum, ranging from the desiccated ennui of Seattle grunge to the domesticated spirituality of sickly sweet Christian praise music. Plato believed that music both reflects and affects the spiritual life of a people. If the recent resurgence in sacred music is any indication, aimless self-pity and comfortable spiritualism may be losing their holding power among perceptive members of the rising generation of Christians. Alternately ethereal and melancholic, ecstatic and desperate, the melodies and polyphonies of sacred music beckon us, inchoately for some, toward a realm that lies—at least in this world—beyond our reach. With intimations of the mystery and majesty of God that, by comparison, reveal our utter inadequacy, the music of Palestrina, Tallis, and Victoria points us toward the paradox of existence: God's revelatory self-disclosure in the person of Jesus Christ shows us just how wretched we are even while offering us the hope of a glory beyond our wildest imaginings. This music of transcendence—here one thinks of Bach's passion music—calls forth a mystical spirit of faith characterized by awe and reverent passion, a spirit that suggests that human reason and relationships aren't enough. And finally, the ...
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