Cantus Firmus: Christ as our strong song, our steady song
Sermon for Installation of Choral Scholars, Organ Scholar and Head Choristers.
Evening Eucharist: Sunday 12th September | Canon Jo Spreadbury
Gospel: Mark 8.27-end
In October 1559, the clergy of Exeter Cathedral brought a complaint to the cathedral’s official royal visitors. A group of lay people from London, visiting to attend a fair, had marched into the Cathedral and insisted on singing psalms every day. The clergy were furious that their own worship was being disrupted. They were scandalised that women were singing along with men, and even occupying the stalls of the vicars choral!
But the Cathedral’s complaint about this enthusiastic outburst of lay psalm singing was dismissed. Bishop John Jewell, who chaired the enquiry, instead of condemning the singers praised them for their desire, as he put it, ‘to sing a psalm for their greater comfort and better stirring up of their hearts to devotion… according to the use and manner of the primitive church’ John Jewel even persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury to write a letter giving the visitors his blessing.
That was 1559 in Exeter. Here in 2021 in Portsmouth we know about that urge to sing together. We missed it when we could not sing. We understand instinctively that singing hymns warms us up, physically, emotionally and spiritually and that singing hymns works ‘for the better stirring up of our hearts to devotion’. In recent weeks instead of marching into the cathedral to sing, we’ve marched out to sing a final hymn outside –and there’s been a wonderful sense of relief and enthusiasm at having music restored to us.
Bishop John Jewell was right in his remark that singing serves ‘for the better stirring up of our hearts’. This is true physically and medically as well as symbolically and spiritually. Singing and chanting is indeed good for us: it increases oxygenation in the bloodstream and makes us mentally more alert. There’s a phenomenon called entrainment which means that a group singing or chanting together finds their biochemistry is improved and their sense of purpose and perception is enhanced.
Singing is a psychological boost too: it makes us feel good, as it releases those uplifting hormones called endorphins. You could see this so clearly watching the audience sing Jerusalem at last night’s Last Night of the Proms.
Singing with others generates togetherness, community. I think that is why heaven is said to be occupied by a heavenly choir and angels sing around God’s throne. But the music of heaven, like music on earth, is something that has to be learnt and practised. We have to discover how to hold our notes, follow a beat, listen to one another. The Christian life is not a solitary walk with a solitary God, it is an ever deepening pilgrimage in company with others. And this is why, I think, Jesus spent so much time teaching and encouraging his disciples and the crowds that followed him together. When Jesus asked his disciples ‘Who do you say that I am?’ and Peter made his famous answer: ‘You are the Messiah’ he said it in the hearing of the rest of the disciples. He had been walking along with Jesus, he had picked up the rhythm of his speaking and his walking, the question and the answer, and it all fitted into place.
But when Jesus went on, as the Gospel says, ‘quite openly’ talking about the suffering and rejection that he would suffer as Messiah, Peter actually broke the rhythm of the walk and the conversation, and as we hear, ‘took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him’. He wanted his own private Jesus, his own little solo, he didn’t want to share in the suffering that lay ahead. Singing is one way in which we face up to the demands of life and the realities of Christian discipleship in which we are conformed to Christ. We learn to lay our little part in a greater whole, to find our unique voice and to discover how it blends with others.
Here in the cathedral the choir sing a lot of polyphony, that style of singing in which individual voices singing individual parts are blended into a whole. Much polyphonic music is structured around what is called a Cantus Firmus, the ‘steady song’ which is held at the heart of the harmony. And each individual part is orientated to the Cantus Firmus.
So we can think of Christ as that steady song, the one who speaks of life as pilgrimage, as thankfulness, yes, but also of loneliness, temptation, suffering and death. The song, the steady song has its passages of anguish and desolation which touch the wounded places in our hearts and in our experience. But then the song also takes us to victory, vindication, resurrection, heaven.
And all the time the Gospel speaks to this. ‘Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their live for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel will save it.’ Peter wanted to save his life – he had to learn that there is no short cut to heaven, no private route out of this suffering world. We are all in it together. In the weekend when we are remembering twenty years since 9/11 we should let our prayers and our singing align us to the suffering of our world, and its hopes, opening our hearts to compassion and the search for justice, to the Christ who calls us ever deeper into his sorrows, ever higher into his purposes of love.
So - and I say this especially to our new Choral scholars, organ scholar and our new choristers - this commitment of yours is not only to singing for your own pleasure and gain, or for the enjoyment and edification of others: it is the beginning of a deeper immersion into Christian life and faith. As you share your talent with all of us, so we welcome you to share our journey with Christ. So let your ears be open to hear the song of Christ, the strong song, the steady song, and let your lips be always open, morning by morning, evening by evening, to sing his praise.