Rolling in Foaming Billows...

As many of you may be aware, my family enjoys and seeks out the uplifting influence of the Fine Arts for their highly cultivated ability to carry and effectively communicate weighty themes. Musically, this means that we favor what is referred to as “Classical Music.”

Last week, I featured a collection from our favorite choir: Dresdner Keuzchor: Legendary recordings. Most of the recordings in that collection are from the Late Renaissance and Early Baroque periods, and fall in the Sacred genre. More importantly, seven of the ten disks in this collection were filled with recordings of music that was composed for use in the context of Lutheran Worship, and were recorded by a choir that regularly sings them in the context of worship. I also posted definitions of the various periods in Classical Music. If you are unfamiliar with these periods, a review may be helpful.

Anyway, this week, I am featuring a Sacred Choral piece from the Classical period: The Creation, by Franz Josef Haydn. Though his name sounds German, Haydn was an Austrian, a Roman Catholic, and a prolific composer in the era of the Enlightenment. Not known principally as a composer of the Sacred genre, he composed this work late in life – as if, it strikes me, he was trying to do something good for God before he died (perhaps he thought he could earn his way into heaven...). It is quite good. While this work was originally composed by Haydn in German, the late Robert Shaw, a highly respected conductor of seminal importance in the revival of choral repertoire in America, translated the work into English. This recording is considered to be a definitive English-language performance.

Perhaps you've noticed that I made use of the term “performance” in reference to a Sacred work. Why the word "performance" and not "worship?" This is a troubling fact that I wanted to point out. Its use is necessary because, even though the majority of works in the Sacred genre were intended for use in the context of the Divine Service, worshipers no longer sing them; rather, performers, obsessed with the genuine artistic quality and musical integrity of these Sacred choral works, are the ones who continue to sing them and to keep them alive – and even these secular performers are quick to admit how well these musical compositions complement their lyrical content. It is a sad fact, in my opinion, that we Christians need to take our lessons in this regard from such performers, many of whom may likely be unbelievers, rather than have the privilege of realizing it for ourselves in our own worship. Where has the excellence gone?

In relation to this, I mentioned above that this particular work was from the Classical period. Last week, I defined this period as that "which roughly corresponds with the period of the Enlightenment, and like the Enlightenment is a reaction against religious and emotional themes, and tends to be expressive of an intellectually inspired utopianism, particularly of human dominance over nature." So what is a "Sacred work" in a period that exists partially in reaction against religion?

First, unlike nearly all Sacred works of the Baroque and Renaissance periods, many sacred works of the Classical period were meant to present religious texts to secular audiences in the context of the concert hall, not the Divine Service. Many settings of the Mass were composed during this period for this purpose, and such is true in the case of Haydn's The Creation. This doesn't mean, however, that all such works were stripped of religious value and presented merely as art or entertainment – and this is certainly not the case in Haydn's work. The manuscript of this work is littered with notes to the musicians, ascribing all praise and glory to God and reminding them of Whom they represent as this piece is "performed"; and throughout the remainder of his life, Haydn was quick to point to this work as his testimony of God's work as he publicly gave credit to God on many occasions and endeavored to direct the attention of his audiences heavenward.

Second, while the texts of this work come directly from Genesis and Psalms, following the order of their presentation in the account of Creation from Book VII of Milton's Paradise Lost, the composition is measured in a way that does not deliberately excite religious sentiments. This is typical of Enlightenment perspectives which sought to divorce human sentiment from matters of truth – to wisely avoid subjective criteria in the assessment of the objective. Instead, the composition serves to accentuate the coherence of revealed religious truth with objective observations of Natural Law. The product of human emotion it generates results from the affirmation this manifest coherence produces.

Indeed, as an example of this, during the pre-concert lecture of a recent performance of this piece that Mrs. Finkelstein and I attended, the lecturer – a Roman Catholic priest and Professor of Music at a local Catholic University – emphasized Haydn's regard for and use of Natural Law in his composition of The Creation. In the Aria, Rolling in Foaming Billows, Haydn makes use one of the most powerful images of God conceived in the Enlightenment mind: that of an Intelligent Designer, of a "divine clockmaker," whose pendulum is the certain rhythms of the massive and mysterious ocean. Haydn found great comfort in this image – the testimony of God and of His creative dominion found in Nature – and creates the musical image of the surf rhythmically building and crashing against the shore.

Though we are divided on several vitally important points of doctrine (such as the Doctrine of Justification by Faith alone, and the authority of Scripture), we Lutherans do share with the Romans a recognition of the validity of Natural Law (derived from General Revelation). Though it is distinct from Divine Law (spoken in Special Revelation), Natural Law is cited in Scripture as that which leaves mankind without excuse regarding the existence of God and of His power and dominion over all creation:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things... (Rom. 1:18-23).

General Revelation, while sufficient to show the existence, power, and perfection of God, while sufficient to suggest that humans are sinners and are thus indebted to God, is insufficient to show the true depth of man's depravity and helplessness before a perfectly righteous Judge, and does not even begin to suggest the only certain remedy of our terminal condition before God: the Gospel of Jesus Christ – that Jesus Christ, as True Man and True God, lived perfectly under God's Law, and while deserving no punishment, yet took upon Himself the sin of mankind, paid the penalty of man's sin on the Cross, and by His resurrection now promises that through faith our sins are forgiven and that we bear His perfect righteousness before God. General Revelation does not communicate this. Rather, only Special Revelation, the revelation of God's full message to Man in the Holy Scriptures, communicates to us the reality of our desperate condition and the Good News of the Gospel.

While some would be quick (and quite correct) to point out that, true to Enlightenment ideals, the use of Natural Law can be used to affirm Christianity merely on the strength of human intellect (which makes Scripture the servant of human reason, rather than reason that of Scripture), I would suggest that works such as this can be, and ought to be, appreciated by true Christians not only on the basis of it's texts, not only on the superb artistic quality of its composition and performance, but specifically in the fact that it reverently affirms for those who hear it what the Scriptures say: that the God of Creation is real, that His Creation testifies of this fact, and that the Creation account found in Special Revelation is the account of this Creator, Whose Creation testifies of Him.