I’ve just downloaded from iTunes a recording of Marilyn Horne singing the Lord’s Prayer. Listening to it is enough to send shivers down your spine, and its beauty bears witness to what St. Augustine said: cantare amantis est — singing belongs to the lover.
My mother also liked to sing, but was not what you would call a Marilyn Horne. She barely opened her mouth in church, knowing that sometimes she wasn’t quite on pitch. In the bosom of the family, though, you never knew when she would burst into song.
On the highway in the family car—usually in the middle of nowhere and without any provocation that we could discern—there would issue from the front passenger seat the first words of “Dwelling in Beulah Land”:
“Far away the noise of strife upon my ears is falling.”
The volume would increase until she reached the chorus–by now joined by the rest of the family, my father, my brother, and me:
I’m living on the mountain,
underneath a cloudless sky.
I’m drinking at the fountain
that never shall run dry.
O yes! I’m feasting on the manna
from a bountiful supply,
For I am dwelling in Beulah Land!
(C. Austin Miles, 1911)
I don’t recall ever getting beyond the first verse. Indeed, I don’t think we knew the words beyond the first verse; and I don’t know where my mother learned even the first verse of a gospel-style song like “Dwelling in Beulah Land.” Our Presbyterian Church tended to stick to the more classical chorales and other “dignified” hymns (although at Sunday evening worship we could and did slip into more devotional songs); and the church of her childhood, in an effort to remain faithful to the tradition of the Bible, sang only psalms.
At home, too, Mama’s musical enthusiasms were irrepressible. She sometimes accompanied housework with operatic-style recitatives describing what was going on in the house at the moment. One day the mailman happened to step onto the front porch just as she launched into a melody delivered both fortissimo and appassionato. He managed to drop the mail in the slot before beating a hasty retreat down the steps as if pursued by who knows what unseen visitant.
Cantare amantis est, said Augustine. Singing belongs to the lover. My mother was a lover: of her family, of her God—and of laughter. She delighted in retelling the story of the startled postman stumbling from the porch.
Although I am not convinced that everyone who sings is filled with love, I do believe that when we sing, we tend to make ourselves vulnerable, taking a risk, as does anyone who loves. There is a kind of letting go in singing, whether we are divas like Marilyn Horne, or congregational singers, or those who sing only in the shower. Even the most staid adult becomes a bit childlike by opening his or her mouth in song.
But most people probably do not realize how powerful music is. I think that singing — or even just listening to music—can make us more reachable, for good or for ill. The Anti-Defamation League says that hate music:
“…is one of the most significant ways neo-Nazis attempt to attract young people into their movement; this source of recruitment is possibly the most important factor in the ability of neo-Nazi groups to expand or even maintain their membership.”
So even our musical letting go requires a bit of caution. Does the music we choose open us to goodness and love or to something less? The question is important because, after all, we are created for love. In this light I like to pray with St. Thomas Aquinas the beautiful prayer of the second verse of “Panis angelicus”:
Duc nos quo tendimus,
ad lucem quam inhabitas.
Lead us, we sing, where we are inclined to go anyhow, to the light wherein you dwell. Anything else would be such a serious violation of who we are and who we are made to be that an eagle might as well try to become a beetle.
We are made for love; and singing belongs to the lover.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.
And be thankful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly;
teach and admonish one another in all wisdom;
and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.(Colossians 3:14-16)