This week a new work was released after collaboration between Birmingham Cathedral and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. The Dean of Birmingham selected the words (based on Psalm 133) and the choral arrangement was by Paul Leddington Wright; but it is Iommi’s name that is attached to this work.
We might wonder why. After all, fans of Black Sabbath are unlikely to be interested in Christian-themed choral music, whilst regular attenders at Birmingham Cathedral are - hopefully - even less likely to be fans of Black Sabbath, with their occult and horror themes.
Such a collaboration is not only acceptable today, but it is immune to criticism. In Music Mania, we discover the roots of this modern attitude through events that took place in 1875.
Read more“After the funeral service for Diana, Princess of Wales, choir singers from all over the world hurried to find copies of Song for Athene, which was sung at that service, so that they too could enter that ethereal, comforting, deeply personal and uniquely imagined sound world.”
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/15/sir-john-tavener-appreciation-bob-chilcott
John Tavener certainly did invent his own world, one in which it was possible to reconcile contradictions of belief. The man who struggled to express “universalism” in his music was born into a Presbyterian family. Those beliefs could have shaped him into a great Christian composer. Instead, he abandoned them to ride the waves of Catholicism, then the Orthodox church, and latterly to invoke Hindu and Muslim ideas within his pseudo-Christian framework.
Read moreProgramme: The Prince and the Composer
Aired: Friday 10th February 2012
Hubert Parry is best known for two works: "Jerusalem" and "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind". A religious man, we might think. But no. His father's heart was made to ache by his son's rejection of Christianity.
He reminds me of Samuel Wesley, son of Charles Wesley, who left Methodism and became a Roman Catholic (while the work was there). And he in turn reminds me of so many men who have composed grand music "for the Church" from outside the Church.
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