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Music to accompany
The Theology of Paul in Three Dimensions
The subtitle of the book is Dogmatics, Experience, Relevance. Below is music to enrich the experiential dimension of the book and to give some emotional insight into the theological theme studied in each chapter.
Chapter 1: Pseudonymous literature
Adele, maid to Rosalinde, finds herself in a tricky situation at a party. She is only there because Dr Falke is playing an extremely elaborate practical joke on Rosalinde’s husband, Gabriel von Eisenstein. He has brought him to a party under a false name (Herr Marquis) but has also written a pseudonymous letter in the name of Adele’s sister, Ida, inviting her to the party. Arriving at the party she is told to assume the name “Olga” and pretend to be an “artiste.” This song follows her surprise encounter with Eisenstein who asks what his housemaid is doing at the party.
Chapter 2: From Pharisee to Apostle to the Gentiles
Paul’s mission was dangerous but also inspirational. This fourth movement of Mahler’s First Symphony is marked “Stürmisch bewegt” (“stormily moved”) and can be found at 00:36:20. The music can be said to sum up much of Paul’s psychological makeup. Mahler and Paul had a number of things in common. They were both deep thinkers, and just as Paul’s mission was a consuming passion, so music was for Mahler. Like Paul, Mahler could be a difficult person. And, like Paul, he was Jewish, and converted to Christianity.
Chapter 3: Christ the End of the Law
To get a sense of what freedom in the Spirit may mean I have chosen “With the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father, Amen” from the end of the Gloria of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. The Latin is: “cum Sancto Spiritu: in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.”
Chapter 4: The Need for Reconciliation I
The music I have chosen represents two very different portrayals of the day of judgement. The first is from the requiem of the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi who had little interest in organised religion but claimed to be “a very doubtful believer” rather than “an outright atheist.” He clearly had an interest in theology and his representation of the day of wrath is terrifying; but at the same time it is great to listen to it!
Chapter 4: The Need for Reconciliation II
The second representation of the day of wrath is from the Requiem by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. His portrayal of the day of wrath is mild; indeed “[h]e presents us with a Mass for the Dead without a real Last Judgement” and some performances offer even a tender interpretation as we find here. Fauré said: “It has been said that my Requiem does not express fear of death and some has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.” This movement is the Libera me.
Chapter 4: The Need for Reconciliation III
Here is another performance of the Libera me from Fauré's Requiem. Whereas the version above is tender, here we have a somewhat more austere performance.
Chapter 5: The Justification of the ungodly, sola gratia, sola fide
This is the close of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, often called a “Symphony of a Thousand” because it requires a vast orchestra and choir. Mahler sets to music the final scene of Goethe’s Faust Part II. He has presented famous sinners from the bible and they, together with Margareta and Faust himself, come to be saved. It can certainly be said that neither Faust nor Margareta deserve salvation, hence illustrating Paul’s view of the justification of the ungodly, by grace alone and by faith alone.
Chapter 6: Sacrifice of Christ
As a convinced Lutheran, Bach was naturally drawn to what is called the “passion” of Christ, the events leading to his redemptive death on the cross. His St John Passion is a musical setting of the passion narrative of John’s Gospel, John 18:1-19:42. But in addition to the text of John, he adds “chorales” and choruses and arias which comment on those events leading up to the crucifixion of Christ. I have chosen the opening chorus which captures the seriousness of the Christian enterprise. “Lord, our Ruler, whose fame is glorious through all the world, show us through your Passion that you, the true Son of God, have been glorified for all time, even when you were humbled and brought very low.”
Chapter 7: Word of God, faith, and grace
The redemption of the whole created order, the final theme considered in this chapter, is wonderfully portrayed in Wagner’s final stage work Parsifal. Kundry, a tormented woman, comes to faith and is baptised, and her death with Christ is expressed by the remarkable sound of muted cellos and basses. This is followed by the Good Friday music that expresses the consequent redemption of creation.
Chapter 8: The Person of Christ
Mozart composed his Mass in C Minor as a thank offering for his marriage to Constanza, who sang the solo soprano part in the first performance in Salzburg (26 October 1783). The words are very simple but point to the profound truth that God became a human being: Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est (“And was incarnate of the Holhy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made a human being”). The phrases of this confession are repeated in “a sinuous dialogue with wind instruments.”
Chapter 9: The Church and Israel I
West Side Story is the creation of a Jewish composer (Leonard Bernstein) and a Jewish librettist (Stephen Sondheim). The Story is an updated version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet but rather than having Montagues and Capulets it is about these two gangs, the white gang of Jets and the gang from Puerto Rico, the Sharks. And it was at a dance that across the crowded room Tony and Maria fall in love. This first clip is from the “balcony scene” where Maria and Tony express their love and their hopes that they will be able to come together despite the warfare between their respective gangs.
Chapter 9: The Church and Israel II
In the second clip Bernstein himself is rehearsing for a recording of West Side Story using the voices one hears in musicals; but for the main parts, Tony and Maria, he uses operatic voices. The video is not available on YouTube but the DVD can be purchased (DG DVD 073 017-9).
Chapter 10: Anthropology I
To illustrate the mystery of the human person I present two opera extracts, both sung in Italian, one from the 18th century and one from the 20th. Handel’s Aria from his opera Ariodante presents remarkable pathos. Ariodante, although sung by a soprano, is actually a man. He believes himself to be betrayed by Ginevra. Happily this is not true and he finally marries her.
Chapter 10: Anthropology II
The second extract is the love duet at the end of Act I of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (from 00.:41:45). Here everything moves in the opposite direction to what we find in Ariodante. The vulnerable Japanese Butterfly, very much in love with the American Pinkerton, is later cruelly abandoned by him. In experiencing this duet one is transported into a world of the enchantment of romantic love. Sadly though, their love does not work out and Butterfly in her despair takes her own life.
Chapter 11: Eschatology I
The first piece to illustrate the "last things" (here death) is the last of Richard Strauss’s four last songs which were composed in 1947 just two years before the composer’s death at the age of 85. Strauss had a long and productive life and at 85 he felt that he was ready to leave this world. I find the music of this song to be beautiful but painful at the same time. In the last of Four Last Songs, At Sunset (Im Abendrot) he sets words by Joseph von Eichendorf (1788-1857).
Chapter 11: Eschatology II
The second piece is from the close of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. The work was completed in 1859 and it was first performed in 1865 under Hans von Bülow. Later Richard Strauss himself conducted the work with his wife, Pauline, singing the part of Isolde. Here the young lovers, Tristan and Isolde, die in their prime. The music is strangely optimistic as we hear Isolde reflect on the death of her lover, believing that he lives on in another realm, a realm she herself will shortly enter. The soprano is again Jesse Norman and the conductor is Herbert von Karajan. This extract is taken from a documentary about his life. The performance was given on the feast of the assumption of Mary. This is appropriate since Wagner saw the dying Isolde in terms of Mary's ascent to heaven.
Chapter 12: Critical Reflections
Although this chapter is entitled critical reflections I have chosen J.S. Bach’s Cantata 18 “Just as the rain and snow from heaven falls”, which stresses the preciousness of the word of God. J.S. Bach Cantata 18 “Just as the rain and snow from heaven falls”. By “word of God” I mean not so much the “things that you’re liable to read in the Bible” but rather the transcendent word that comes to us and is witnessed to in the bible! This is the word that issues from the mouth of God. The cantata is in five movements, the first being purely orchestral (Sinfonia). The key text for the second movement (a Bass recitative) is Isa 55:10-11 and the parable of the sower is central for the third (my catholic friends will have to excuse the three anti-Pope sentiments), involving tenor and bass soloists and the choir. The fourth movement (soprano aria) focuses on the word of God as a true treasure and the final chorale is a prayer that God’s word not be taken away.