In a society in which religion has ceased to occupy a central place, relevance is a central concern to contemporary theologians. That is not dancing to a (post-?) secular society's tune, but rather an ability to connect with a situation of complex pluralism. In this book we have a highly creative response, one which is not just a book, but a multimedia work. Just as Nicholas of Cusa, with his The Vision of God, had given the monks of Tegernsee a book and an image, Annunciations is a book and music. It is the fruit of a remarkable, indeed unique, collaboration between theologians of the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts (ITIA) at St. Andrews University, and composers. Of course, churches have been commissioning music for centuries, and theologians have theologised music. But music has tended to become the ‘icing on the cake’ rather than, along with the others arts, an element of theology. The emphasis (post-Enlightenment if not earlier) has come to be on logos as word and reason. Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, himself a musician, has done much to recover the musicality and indeed movement of the Logos. In this new book, theologian and composer are equal partners, and the resultant ‘alchemy’ (as one participant theologian called it) has produced some rather wonderful music as well as developing theological understanding, and raising sometimes awkward new questions.
Inspired in part by the ‘Theology Through the Arts’ programme of Jeremy Begbie, Annunciations makes a decisive shift from the now-common Historically Informed Performance model (e.g., how would Palestrina's music have sounded in its historical context?) to Theologically Informed Programming and Performance: ‘to show how an appreciation of the theological engagement or profound spirituality of composers can influence their music's performance and reception’ (p. 3). Six theologians were paired with six commissioned composers: actual Christian faith was not required of the composer, but theological ‘informedness’ was. Likewise, the theologians were required to inform rather than impose. The six-month programme started with a seminar led by Sir James MacMillan, one of Britain's most distinguished contemporary composers and also a Professor at St. Andrews. After that, the composer and theologian met monthly by Skype, and a final month consisted of draft recordings. Macmillan's vision, which he articulates in two chapters in the first part of the book, articulates a theologically-informed composing, and musically-informed theology. He represents a generation who deliberately turned away from cerebral ‘modern’ music that tended to delight in its own unpopularity, towards a more approachable ‘choral’ sound, drawing on the whole tradition and on extra-musical inspiration, but without just providing sunlit escapism (Macmillan's music never separates Good Friday and Easter). For him, the Annunciation to Mary brings together composers’ common experience of ‘hearing’ music that they then realise in freedom, with Mary's hearing of the Word in both receptivity and freedom.
The commissions were based on a solidly contextual theology: the Annunciation was not just a ‘one-off’, but rather anticipated by, and understood in the light of, Old Testament Annunciations: of God to Adam and Eve in the garden, to Samuel, of the Bridegroom to the Bride in the Song of Songs… So the essays in Part I lay the ground theologically for this collaboration, and practically: one composer, a Christian, reflects on the composer's ‘priesthood’, notably in uniting people in lament at a time when we might turn away from each other; another works on the practicality of composing for non-professional choirs.
In Part II, the six pieces are presented: first, a theological reflection, then the composer's reflection, and then the piece. The full musical score is given, and a link to a recording on the internet. This multimedia experience is of course very powerful, and not much less the testimony of the theologians and composers discovering new meanings and being challenged by each other and the compositional process. In some cases they became friends. Some theologians are musicians and one even a composer, and one composer has a theological background. Some composers are Christians; all are searching.
The fruits were remarkable: the ‘annunciation’ to Samuel had the composer raise the awkward question of God's punishment of Eli's family; Rebekah Dyer's and Kerensa Brigg's collaboration on God's ‘annunciation’ in the Burning Bush worked on the integration of experiential knowledge (a link to be made with Aquinas's insistence that all knowledge comes to us through the senses?). Mary Stevens's and Lisa Robertson's work on the ‘silent’ Annunciation to Elijah combines Scriptural and Carmelite texts and opens a compelling sound world, though the superimposition of texts does not make for audible comprehension and is perhaps more impressive visually.
Part III turns to the programming and performing of sacred music. In these final five essays the common questions of worship and music, listening and participation, and indeed of the possibility of natural theology, acquire a new sharpness in the light of the collaborations. The questions of people congregational participation in often low-resourced Roman Catholic Scottish parishes is juxtaposed with commissioning new music for Wells Anglican Cathedral – music to uplift, to challenge gladly, but not envisaged as sung along to. Composers on the borders of sacred, performance in secular spaces, and ‘the Listener's Share’ raise together the question of faith. Should the Church be glad to engage on their own terms with the ‘spiritual but not religious’ who flock to Choral Evensong, or should all church art be there to express doctrine solidly (but who determines the theology)? Is music a kind of natural theology, with all the theological conflicts existing around that concept?
The implicit question with which this book leaves me is actually the relationship between agnostic spirituality and mystical unknowing. Are the religious and non-religious just finding different things in the same musical/liturgical event – or meeting in a place for which theology has not yet found words?
