21 Biblical Music without Words

Contemporary composer Bruce Adolphe shared the following thoughts on music and spirituality, which are relevant to this topic:

Sometimes a work will have program notes or other added text that is not part of the music and yet exists alongside it. Those explanatory words prompt listeners who read them to interpret what they hear in certain ways. Joseph Haydn composed a work for string quartet that explores the “Seven Last Words of Christ.” The composer had this to say in a letter he wrote to his publisher about the piece: “Each Sonata, or rather each setting of the text, is expressed only by instrumental music, but in such a way that it creates the most profound impression even on the most inexperienced listener.”^[2]

There can be connections not only through the title or appended explanatory comments but also through allusions to or use of one or more melodies from earlier works. An example that includes several of these framing and interpretive devices is Arthur Bliss’s “Meditation on a Theme by John Blow.” Andrew Clements writes of that work, “Bliss bases the piece on Blow’s setting of Psalm 23, not so much as a set of variations but as a series of commentaries, some untroubled and pastoral, others dark and threatening. It’s touchingly effective.” Guy Rickards opines, “If Sir Arthur Bliss wrote a finer work than the Meditations on a Theme of John Blow (1955), I would like to hear it. A beautifully balanced set of expanded variations on a theme from the Sinfonia to Blow’s setting of Psalm 23, Bliss’s score is a glowing exhibition of his compositional prowess. Its sequence of Introduction, five Meditations, Interlude and Finale bear superscriptions from the psalm—excepting the scherzando third meditation, ‘Lambs’—which colour the characters of each section.”

If you have never heard the piece before, listen to it once without reading Bliss’s notes, and then listen again while or after reading his program notes for the piece.^[3]

Ernst Toch explored the story of Jephthah and his daughter in a rhapsodic poem after reading a novel that explored their story beyond the small amount said about them in the book of Judges.^[4] He had planned to compose a work with words, but the librettist took too long, in his opinion. In addition to illustrating how music may engage with challenging biblical material (Jephthah kills his own daughter as a human sacrifice), this case also illustrates that composers of music, like authors who write words and others engaged in creative activity, do not completely control their own creative activity. Ideas emerge from the subconscious, at times unbidden, and one either makes a record of them and does something with them or risks losing them to forgetfulness. You can listen to Toch’s work, also categorized as his Symphony no. 5, performed here by the Louisville Orchestra.^[5]

Some music without words has other things that combine with it to convey meaning. A major example of this is in music for ballet. American composer William Schuman wrote ballet music based on the book of Judith (one of the apocryphal or deuterocanonical books).^[6]

Composer James Lee III drew inspiration from many texts for his work Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, including Leviticus 23 (where the festival of Sukkot, sometimes called the “Feast of Tabernacles” in English, is mentioned), Revelation, and Job.^[7]

Lee has this to say about the Bible in relation to his own musical creations and compositional process:

We have already mentioned Sungji Hong’s Nunc Dimittis. That is one work that is part of a larger project called “The Life of Christ.” Many of the works that are part of that project are instrumental explorations of the subject. Here we will provide a couple of examples, but there are many more on the composer’s website.

Hong studied and lived in Greece for several years, and thus a number of the pieces have Greek titles, typically using words that are found in the Greek text (i.e., the original language) of the Gospels. Hong mentions having a preference for verbs as titles and as the starting point for her exploration of the New Testament narratives. She has gravitated toward works for one or only a few instruments to explore the wide range of possibilities of expression each instrument is capable of. Her work for solo flute, “Vidimus Stellam,” means “We Have Seen His Star” and explores the infancy story in chapter 2 of the Gospel of Matthew. Here it is performed by flautist Jennie Oh Brown.^[9]

Hong’s work for solo bass clarinet, “Exevalen,” is inspired by a work of art depicting the story found in all four New Testament Gospels in which Jesus drives moneychangers and sellers of animals out of the precincts of the Jerusalem temple. Hong explains, “The inspiration for this piece is based on the painting La expulsión de los mercaderes del templo (The National Gallery in London, UK) by El Greco. Exevalen is a Greek word meaning ‘he drove out,’ which I thought of as a word that describes the painting. The title suggests impetuous and dashing gestures that underline the direction of the music.”^[10]

Many of the works in Hong’s ongoing project “The Life of Christ” were inspired by paintings of biblical scenes , illustrating how text, visual arts, and music can intersect and inspire. Hong has not been composing these works in the order of the biblical narrative, but they will ultimately be arranged in chronological sequence when the series is completed. Not all of Hong’s works that are part of the project are instrumental, as is already clear from her “Nunc Dimittis.” Listen as well to her “Postea Sciens Jesus,” with its title derived from the first three words of John 19:28 (“After this, Jesus knowing…”) in Latin. You can explore more music from this project on Hong’s website. Nor do the parts of her “The Life of Christ” project exhaust her engagement with the Bible. Listen, for example, to her setting of Psalm 57, “Awake Up, My Glory.”

The present era provides more opportunities than ever before for those who listen to music to hear the perspective of composers and performers on these works. That is especially useful in the case of instrumental works, the title and sound of which might not be enough on their own to convey to listeners the meaning they had for those who created them. Without that, we might miss so much. We would still enjoy the music and find it engaging, to be sure, but at least some of the biblical connections—and other connections, such as with painting or experiences in the life of the composer—would remain unknown to us without the composer’s commentary on their own work.