Tower and Town, February 2015

Editorial: Music And Faith

I have to come clean and pronounce myself a devout agnostic and even cleaner to say that the choice of theme for this edition, 'Music and Faith' is pure self indulgence. I need help!

If anything brings me close to a 'higher being' by which I mean incomprehensibly stirs my emotions and reduces me to tears, it is music. In particular it is music that was composed in association with faith, either as an expression of the faith of the composer, or as a contribution to liturgy that has the greatest impact.

I was a commoner at the Winchester Choir School and attended glorious services in that magnificent Cathedral which I consider to be my 'spiritual home' and which Kate and I visit for sung Eucharist most Christmas days; then a chorister at Marlborough College and Cambridge University. So Church music, and particularly choral music, whether it be plainsong, a Mass by William Byrd, Thou Knowest Lord the Secrets of our Hearts by Purcell, This is the Record ofJ ohn by Orlando Gibbons, In the Bleak Midwinter (Harold Darke version) or, of course, the St Matthew Passion by JS Bach which to my mind is the zenith of all musical compositions and which I first sang as a treble in Marlborough College Chapel with copious amounts of Kleenex to hand ?they all make up my 'soul' - Wikipedia definition 'the immortal essence of a living being'.

But I struggle with a differentiation between what is 'culture' and faith/belief.

In an attempt to get closer to solving that riddle I am grateful for wonderfully helpful contributions from Andrew Studdert-Kennedy; my cousin Reverend Canon Roger Symon, onetime chorister at King's School Canterbury and Cambridge; Simon Carrington was a founder member of the King's Singers, and Hilary his wife is a piano teacher; Shirley Burrow has sung with many amateur choirs and Alex Hodgkinson is Director of Choral Music at Marlborough College. Many thanks to them all.

Nick Maurice