Is Sacred Music a Way to Find God?

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I have often thought that God wants to speak to the language of our hearts more than to the language of our brains. After I had left the Church for many years, I remember that my first movement back toward God was marked by listening in a darkened room one night to Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus.” It was only after getting someone to translate the words that I realized the music was Mozart’s great tribute to the Blessed Sacrament.

Has anybody had a similar experience? How can science explain this kind of movement of the heart played upon by musical instruments?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
I have often thought that God wants to speak to the language of our hearts more than to the language of our brains. After I had left the Church for many years, I remember that my first movement back toward God was marked by listening in a darkened room one night to Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus.” It was only after getting someone to translate the words that I realized the music was Mozart’s great tribute to the Blessed Sacrament.

Has anybody had a similar experience? How can science explain this kind of movement of the heart played upon by musical instruments?
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“I have often thought that God wants to speak to the language of our hearts more than to the language of our brains” - 👍👍👍​

Handel does it for me. As to why music has the power to move us: AFAIK (which is not very !), the short answer is: body chemistry. As a phenomenon, music can be thought of as an exptression of physics: & because the human body can be studied as a physico-chemical entity with certain properties, the interaction between the physics of music & its effects on the human organism can be investigated as a matter of physics & chemistry.

Besides, the body has a limited set of reactions to stimuli - so different stimuli can have the same physical effect: tears can be a result of sorrow, or joy, or anger. AFAICS, the question why some are moved by Handel, others by Mozart, others by other sounds, is not one of science: it’s an aesthetic, even a moral, question. These are values - & science has no access to values, but only to the phenomena which express them.

There was a programme about all this on BBC Radio - unfortunately I can’t find it 😦

I did find this:

Why does music move us to tears? Connie, Godmanchester

**We put this to Dr Ian Cross: **
**A whole variety of reasons but music does seem to have profound affective effects. That is, it works deeply on our emotions. Daniel Levitin was talking previously about some ways in which limbic centres in the brain are activated by experiencing music. A lot of this probably depends on prior experience. You probably wouldn’t be moved to tears by hearing either of those two previous clips [Ndroje balendro and Wonga]. **

Chris: I was! Ian: For thirty-six hours, perhaps. But you could be moved to tears simply on the basis of association between a piece of music and a particular episode of your life and a particular previous position or preference to use a particular type of music to do things like move yourself to tears. Chris: It’s stimulating a memory which is itself associated with some emotion and that’s why it’s making you feel happy or sad. Ian: Most likely.
I don’t find that answer quite convincing - for listening to Handel can be a very overwhelming experience, without stimulating any memories or associations.

Some quotations:
  • **Upon hearing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Messiah, Joseph Haydn is said to have “wept like a child” and exclaimed: **
"He is the master of us all."
  • Ludwig van Beethoven is said to have exclaimed,

"Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived… I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb."
  • [Handel’s] oratorios thrive abundantly – for my part, they give me an idea of heaven, where everybody is to sing whether they have voices or not.
Source: Horace Walpole, Letter (1743)

​
 
I personally would listen to religious music often as it is a form of prayer. My mum likes Gregorian Chant and I like Taize. It helps you to pray when you are doing your work and doesn’t absorb you like watching TV. So good luck.
 
I believe God wants to speak to us in many ways but music is one of the deepest. A friend of mine was lying in a coma shortly before she died of lung cancer which had metastized to the brain. Some one started playing a piano and she groaned even though she was unconscious and did not respond to anything else…

In our choir we sing beautiful Masses in Latin by Mozart, Gounod, Fauré and other classical composers. Many people have told us how uplifting they are. They don’t have to tell us! Drama is the greatest form of art because it encompasses all the arts. The High Mass is the drama of Jesus reenacted in our churches. One of the deepest emotions I have ever experienced has come from being part of that celebration of His love for us and communicating our joy and gratitude in a language that is universal. Not Latin, but music that is a foretaste of heaven! None of the marvels of science can take us so close to God.
 
YES!

Music reminded me of God even when I was deeply unsure of everything else. Although I love Handel and Mozart, Beethoven is the one that does it to me the most. Much of the sacred music was as inspired as the Bible IMHO. And not just sacred or classical music. My youngest son used to play Native American flute (as do several others in his group of Boy Scouts) and in some of that music (which is almost all extemporanious) I would swear I can hear God talking to me.

So maybe it is also a way for God to find me, not just me finding God?

Patrick
 
tonyrey

None of the marvels of science can take us so close to God.

Einstein said that atheists could not hear the music of the spheres. Not sure what that refers to, but have heard the expression used by scientists before.

Does science have its own music that can bring us close to God if we just open up our ears?

An interesting treatment of the “music of the spheres” can be found here: skyscript.co.uk/kepler.html
 
Why, if evolution is simply a chain of chance events, does music exist as a pointer for many not only to God as in sacred music, but also to Hell as in acid rock? If music is an accidental product of evolution, then what evolutionary function does it serve? For that matter, what purpose do any of the arts serve if not to affirm the existence of harmony in God’s creation and the existence of disharmony in Satan’s attempt to muck up the beauty of that creation?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
I have often thought that God wants to speak to the language of our hearts more than to the language of our brains. After I had left the Church for many years, I remember that my first movement back toward God was marked by listening in a darkened room one night to Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus.” It was only after getting someone to translate the words that I realized the music was Mozart’s great tribute to the Blessed Sacrament.

Has anybody had a similar experience? How can science explain this kind of movement of the heart played upon by musical instruments?
Click to expand...
I could not possibly agree more!

Bach, Handel, Palestrina, Beethoven, etc., etc., etc.

Bach wrote “To the Glory of God”.

A story is told about how Handel’s servant interrupted the Master at work and found him in tears over the text “He Was Despised and Rejected”, and again at “Hallelujah” where Handel was reported to have said “I have seen heaven opened”. Handel suffered a heart attack while conducting “Messiah” during Holy Week of 1759 and died on Holy Saturday.

Hayden, as an elderly man, was reportedly in the audience during a performance of his oratorio “Creation” when the audience broke into applause for the composer – which horrified him, exclaiming that “To God goes the Glory”. If the creation of light sequence from “Creation” doesn’t send chills up and down your spine – you’re probably deaf! 🙂

***When in our music God is glorified,
and adoration leaves no room for pride,
it is as though the whole creation cried
Alleluia!

How often, making music, we have found
a new dimension in the world of sound,
as worship moved us to a more profound
Alleluia!

So has the Church, in liturgy and song,
in faith and love, through centuries of wrong,
borne witness to the truth in every tongue,
Alleluia!

And did not Jesus sing a psalm that night
when utmost evil strove against the Light?
Then let us sing, for whom he won the fight,
Alleluia!

Let every instrument be tuned for praise!
Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise!
And may God give us faith to sing always
Alleluia! Amen. ***
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Why, if evolution is simply a chain of chance events, does music exist as a pointer for many not only to God as in sacred music, but also to Hell as in acid rock? If music is an accidental product of evolution, then what evolutionary function does it serve? For that matter, what purpose do any of the arts serve if not to affirm the existence of harmony in God’s creation and the existence of disharmony in Satan’s attempt to muck up the beauty of that creation?
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I suspect that both CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien would have agreed with you! (And so do I!) In the fiction of both men, the creation sequences were products of music. And in the fiction of both men, evil was often characterized by cacophony and noise.
 
David

*And in the fiction of both men, evil was often characterized by cacophony and noise. *

Where do you think Stravinsky’s music falls in the continuum between good and evil?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
David

*And in the fiction of both men, evil was often characterized by cacophony and noise. *

Where do you think Stravinsky’s music falls in the continuum between good and evil?
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An interesting question. I’ll have to think about that. As I understand it, Stravinsky was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church. I’ve found some quotes by him on the subject of music:

*I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God. *

*The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church’s greatest ornament. *

Perhaps one could say that his music was on a continuum . . .

Shostakovich on the other hand . . . 😦

As an aside, one of the best “good vs. evil” musical examples I’ve ever seen was in the original version of Disney’s “Fantasia”. The final movement was a juxtaposition of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” with Schubert’s “Ave Maria”.

Blessings,
 
I see what you mean about Shostakovich. As to the composing of his String Quartet # 8, he said that it was “an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs… It is a pseudo-tragic quartet, so much so that while I was composing it I shed the same amount of tears as I would have to pee after half-a-dozen beers.”

No doubt there was a devil in that music.
 
There are so many great examples of music in the previous posts that uplifts the soul to the heights of the sacred. What made a deep impression on me as a child was the cascading flow of Gregorian chant in the Kyrie (does anyone else recall the Mass of the Angels and the Mass of the Blessed Virgin?), the lilting music of the Gloria, powerful, polyphonic Credo, inspiring, reverent Sanctus and Agnus Dei. It was truly heavenly.

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt coeli et terra, gloria tua. Hosannah in excelsis

:angel1::gopray::gopray2:
 
4Horsemen said:
There are so many great examples of music in the previous posts that uplifts the soul to the heights of the sacred. What made a deep impression on me as a child was the cascading flow of Gregorian chant in the Kyrie (does anyone else recall the Mass of the Angels and the Mass of the Blessed Virgin?), the lilting music of the Gloria, powerful, polyphonic Credo, inspiring, reverent Sanctus and Agnus Dei. It was truly heavenly.

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt coeli et terra, gloria tua. Hosannah in excelsis

:angel1::gopray::gopray2:
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Still does it for me as an adult. Chant puts me in the presence of God faster than anything.
 
I fly often and when I do, I listen to the Byzantine Divine Liturgy on my ipod at 30,000 feet while looking out at the clouds and the mountains. I find myself singing in my heart and realizing what God has given us.
 
tonyrey said:
I believe God wants to speak to us in many ways but music is one of the deepest. A friend of mine was lying in a coma shortly before she died of lung cancer which had metastized to the brain. Some one started playing a piano and she groaned even though she was unconscious and did not respond to anything else…

In our choir we sing beautiful Masses in Latin by Mozart, Gounod, Fauré and other classical composers. Many people have told us how uplifting they are. They don’t have to tell us! Drama is the greatest form of art because it encompasses all the arts. The High Mass is the drama of Jesus reenacted in our churches. One of the deepest emotions I have ever experienced has come from being part of that celebration of His love for us and communicating our joy and gratitude in a language that is universal. Not Latin, but music that is a foretaste of heaven! None of the marvels of science can take us so close to God.
Click to expand...

About that first sentence - might this be because music is bodily, & not purely intellectual ? If so, maybe that makes music a more completely human experience than thinking. The universality of music may be more effective as a means of revelation to many atheists than the most brilliant apologetic: because music is more immediate, less intrusively coloured by the individuality of the artist: the music of Bach, Handel, Palestrina & the rest can be enjoyed by those who know nothing of them, of librettists, arrangers, composers, conductors, or any such thing. (Samuel Butler (1834-1902) was not a Christian: but he was a great lover of Bach.)​

As for “a foretaste of heaven” - music (or something about it 🤷) has the power to rapture us out of ourselves (well, Handel does :o) The “song of Moses” here:
must surely be Baroque. Strange that a century poor in great poets should be so rich in musicians.

This will knock anyone’s socks off:
  • [
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Would you enlarge on that comment about drama ? Thanks. 🙂
 
If there’s a musical proof for God (the reason of the heart, as Pascal would say), It would be the Gregorian Chant CD I have as sung by the Monastic Choir of the Abbey of Notre Dame de Fontgombault.

:signofcross::harp::angel1: :bowdown::highprayer:
 
I remember a passage from Mozart regarding the nature of genius, which i think must be applied to his music, sacred and secular.

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”

Mozart must have been a great lover. There is hardly anyone to match his genius.
 
If you love the Gregorean Chant, try Chanticleer. I have a friend who refers to the group as Chanting Queers, and from the interviews is seems so but whatever you think of their life style, the music is absolutly heaveanly.
 
Two questions for atheists:

If there is no God, why is sacred music so uplifting? Why is it the most uplifting music in the world?

If there is no God, what type of music would be most uplifting to atheists other than sacred music? :harp:
 
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