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Church music by atheists [1]

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Date: 2023-09-03  

There’s no contradiction in being an atheist composer who writes music based on religious texts. Just like no one thinks that Tchaikovsky believed that nutcrackers could really magically turn into princes, or that the Romeo and Juliet story is something that happened in Italy exactly as Shakespeare described it.

Havergal Brian’s famous Symphony No. 1 ends with a setting of the Te Deum in which the words are hard to make out. How can we praise God if the words telling us how to praise Him are unintelligible? Plus maybe it doesn’t help that the words are in Latin.

If I have cued this up correctly, it starts at 33:57 with Part II, a setting of the Te Deum. I understand if you don’t have the time or inclination to listen to an entire symphony lasting almost two hours. But I do want you to take a look and a listen at how already with the first words of the Te Deum text Brian blurs them to incomprehensibility.

For the sake of comparison, here’s a Te Deum by Kodály Zoltán, who, from what I can tell, was a believer.

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I thought about using the Te Deum by Anton Bruckner, but there’ll be plenty other opportunities for that.

There are much subtler ways to set a religious text while casting doubt on its veracity. Michael Haydn used quite a few of those in his St. Francis Mass. For a more detailed study than I care to post here, please look up “Michael Haydn the atheist” and choose either the first or the second result that comes up.

The main bullet point from that essay is that the St. Francis Mass expresses the belief that even though God is a creation of the human mind, He can still dona nobis pacem.

I couldn’t find a video of the St. Francis Mass that I liked, so instead here’s another mass by Michael Haydn.

x YouTube Video

I’m listening to this for the first time as I write these words, this is kind of like live-tweeting, if that’s still a thing that we can do. Right off the bat, the key: B-flat major for Kyrie eleison? The whole thing is too cheery. And even worse in the Gloria: “Qui tollis peccata mundi, 😊 miserere nobis 😊!”

And then in the Credo, he sets the Incarnatus in a minor key!? Don’t give me the excuse that he didn’t give himself enough time to go from Incarnatus to Passus, because as the corresponding moment in the St. Francis Mass shows, Haydn could manage that transition masterfully in less time.

At the end, for the Dona nobis pacem, Haydn is essentially just going through the motions. Yeah, God will grant us the peace, but don’t hold your breath.

Haydn had to be subtle with his atheism. Leoš Janáček, on the other hand, was quite openly annoyed when people thought him a true believer for his Mša glagolskaja. However, that mass setting, written decades before Vatican II allowed the mass to be said in the congregants’ language instead of Latin, was quite subversive just for the mere fact of being in the old Glagolitic language.

Structurally also the Glagolitic Mass is transgressive on its texts. It opens and closes with an Intrada that is played differently in the beginning than at the end only because human players and singers are incapable of absolutely exact repetition.

x YouTube Video

After the Agnus Dei (Agneče Božij), there is a stressful organ solo, which essentially invalidates the Dona nobis pacem… wait, did Janáček omit Dona nobis pacem? Yeah, I guess he did. Oh well. Ite, misse est.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/3/2191193/-Church-music-by-atheists

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