Protected: Media & Political Hypocrisy

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Media & Political Hypocrisy

I liked Leunig’s contributions over the last two days –

The second one reflects some of the thinking or rather lack of thinking and self-censorship going on in the media, as does this item –

Rove cartoon blossomed out
By David Twiddy
Kansas City, Missouri
July 28, 2005

The Doonesbury cartoon that caused some newspapers to pull the strip.

It may be US President George Bush’s nickname for key political adviser Karl Rove, but some editors don’t think it belongs in their newspapers.

About a dozen papers objected to Tuesday’s and yesterday’s Doonesbury comic strips, and some either pulled or edited them.

The strips refer to Mr Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, as “Turd Blossom”.

Lee Salem, editor at Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes the strip to 1400 papers, said the complaints from 10 to 12 newspapers were not unexpected.

Unlike other times when editors have objected to Doonesbury content, the syndicate did not send out replacement strips.

“Given the coverage of Karl Rove, we thought it was appropriate, especially given the history of the strip,” Salem said.

Doonesbury’s creator, Garry Trudeau, has infuriated some editors with his language, images and political themes.

Salem said that since newspapers did not have to notify the syndicate when they choose to remove a strip, it was impossible to know how many papers ran Tuesday’s comic.

In the strip, Mr Bush and an aide are lamenting the problems the Administration has had over allegations that Mr Rove leaked the name of a CIA officer to reporters.

Mr Bush says, “Karl’s sure been earnin’ his nickname lately.”

The unnamed aide says, “Boy Genius? I’m not so sure, sir …”

Mr Bush then says, “Hey, Turd Blossom! Get in here!”

The term is said to be one of several nicknames Mr Bush uses for Mr Rove, one of his closest allies who is widely credited for getting Mr Bush elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004.

The mainstream US media have rarely mentioned the nickname but it has gained currency overseas and on the internet.

Among those with concerns was the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, whose editors removed the offensive word from the strip’s final panel.

“I didn’t think (taking out the word) hurt it,” executive editor Joel Rawson said.

“I would prefer to run the strip and if we can edit it, that’s fine.”

Other papers, such as The Kansas City Star, removed the strip. “We thought it was in bad taste and probably unclear to a lot of people why we would be using the term,” said managing editor of news Steve Shirk.

– AP

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Protected: Do I Look Good Naked? Noooo … not unless I lose some weight.

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Do I Look Good Naked? Noooo … not unless I lose some weight.

A traveller’s checklist: luggage, passport, visa, ticket. And now this: do I look good naked?

This is going way too far. I don’t want some dodgy security person at the airport seeing me naked.

Airport security could get a little more intimate
By Neil McMahon

Sydney Airport says it is keeping a close eye on overseas trials of a machine that can see through your clothes and show whether you are carrying a bomb or a gun. The drawback is that in answering the question “Is that a gun in your pocket?”, it removes the pocket – and the rest of your clothing, too, leaving security staff looking at an image of you naked on a screen.

The technology – millimetre-wave imaging, which detects radiation emitted by the body – is being trialled at airports in Britain and the United States. It is billed as an electronic strip search, but civil liberties groups have raised privacy concerns, as well as fears that images, particularly those of children, could be misused.

In a submission to a federal inquiry into aviation safety, Sydney Airport Corporation says the Australian industry is “making inquiries into millimetre-wave technology … however, it is understood that privacy may be an important issue.”

Kyile Whyte, the airport’s manager of security infrastructure and technology, said the intrusiveness of the scans would make it difficult to sell to the public in its current form. They were also slow.

“It’s a very tedious procedure, you have to stand in three different positions to get a clear image, so in terms of [processing] passengers it’s very time-consuming,” he said.

Greg Timms, a research scientist heading the CSIRO’s millimetre-wave project, said addressing privacy issues was vital. “You don’t want to develop something that has got no hope of regulatory approval.”

The CSIRO team is working on a millimetre-wave scanner that produces even sharper images than those developed overseas. Dr Timms said a prototype would be ready in about a month, but how it would be used had still to be decided. “From a commercial point of view, public security and airport security is the leading opportunity.”

The rays can also pass through smoke, clouds and fog, meaning the technology could be used by pilots and firefighters.

British immigration authorities are already using the scanners to detect illegal immigrants hiding in canvas-covered trucks.

Eventually, police may be able to scan large crowds, or carry mobile units that can show drugs or weapons on nightclub patrons. In Britain, there has been discussion about installing them at train stations and in schools.

That, Dr Timms said, is a little way off, because the image quality on hand-held units is “pretty poor”, and the technology extremely expensive.

I sure hope this doesn’t come in (anywhere in the world) before I go overseas next year.

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“The Shire”, Home of Homophobia in Sydney

Well this was hardly surprising as the southern suburbs and especially “The Shire” (as they call it – it’s really the Cronulla-Sutherland Shire, but the inhabitants of this part of Sydney regard it as God’s own.) They believe this literally as most are Baptists and of the Evangelical persuasion and so the homophobia is no great shock.

Sydney’s deep south shows strongest anti-gay feelings
By Linda Morris
July 27, 2005

Baptists and evangelical Christians, men more than women, the elderly more than the young, and residents of Sydney’s southern suburbs are among the groups most likely to view homosexuality as immoral, according to an Australia Institute survey of homophobia.

The study declares Queensland and Tasmania the most homophobic states, with the Northern Territory joining them if the attitudes of men only are taken into account. Victoria is found to be the least homophobic state.

While inner-city Sydney, host of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, was most tolerant of same-sex relationships, the city’s southern suburbs were more morally hardline than Newcastle and Sydney’s west and south-west.

Mapping Homophobia in Australia is based on a survey of 24,718 respondents aged 14 and over carried out by Roy Morgan Research.

Faith – or the lack of it – was a pointer to people’s acceptance of homosexuality, as was education and age, with the exception of males between 14 and 17, who were more inclined to hold anti-gay views than young and middle-aged adults. This suggested high school was a “toxic environment promoting anti-gay beliefs”, which dissipated once students left school, the report says.

Despite the Vatican’s steadfast opposition to gay marriage and homosexual clergy, Catholics were least likely of the faithful to harbour fear and hatred of homosexuals, said the institute’s founder, Clive Hamilton. Only about one third believed same-sex relationships were immoral, suggesting Catholics had become adept at “interweaving their own moral instincts with the various proscriptions in their church”.

Anglicans and Uniting Church members were also far more accepting than Baptists, of whom 68 per cent believed homosexuality to be immoral, and evangelical Christians (62 per cent). People who professed no religion were the most tolerant, with only 19 per cent saying homosexuality was morally wrong.

Overall, 35 per cent of respondents were intolerant of homosexuality. Four in 10 people surveyed in southern Sydney – almost half of men – described gay relationships as immoral. This compared with 27 per cent in the northern suburbs, 34.5 per cent in the west and 37.5 per cent in the south-west.

Dr Hamilton said the findings for southern suburbs were surprising given that researchers might have expected more conservative attitudes in poorer areas. He speculated it might in part reflect the values of migrant communities and the influence of evangelical churches.

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“The Shire”, Home of Homophobia in Sydney

Well this was hardly surprising as the southern suburbs and especially “The Shire” (as they call it – it’s really the Cronulla-Sutherland Shire, but the inhabitants of this part of Sydney regard it as God’s own.) They believe this literally as most are Baptists and of the Evangelical persuasion and so the homophobia is no great shock.

Sydney’s deep south shows strongest anti-gay feelings
By Linda Morris
July 27, 2005

Baptists and evangelical Christians, men more than women, the elderly more than the young, and residents of Sydney’s southern suburbs are among the groups most likely to view homosexuality as immoral, according to an Australia Institute survey of homophobia.

The study declares Queensland and Tasmania the most homophobic states, with the Northern Territory joining them if the attitudes of men only are taken into account. Victoria is found to be the least homophobic state.

While inner-city Sydney, host of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, was most tolerant of same-sex relationships, the city’s southern suburbs were more morally hardline than Newcastle and Sydney’s west and south-west.

Mapping Homophobia in Australia is based on a survey of 24,718 respondents aged 14 and over carried out by Roy Morgan Research.

Faith – or the lack of it – was a pointer to people’s acceptance of homosexuality, as was education and age, with the exception of males between 14 and 17, who were more inclined to hold anti-gay views than young and middle-aged adults. This suggested high school was a “toxic environment promoting anti-gay beliefs”, which dissipated once students left school, the report says.

Despite the Vatican’s steadfast opposition to gay marriage and homosexual clergy, Catholics were least likely of the faithful to harbour fear and hatred of homosexuals, said the institute’s founder, Clive Hamilton. Only about one third believed same-sex relationships were immoral, suggesting Catholics had become adept at “interweaving their own moral instincts with the various proscriptions in their church”.

Anglicans and Uniting Church members were also far more accepting than Baptists, of whom 68 per cent believed homosexuality to be immoral, and evangelical Christians (62 per cent). People who professed no religion were the most tolerant, with only 19 per cent saying homosexuality was morally wrong.

Overall, 35 per cent of respondents were intolerant of homosexuality. Four in 10 people surveyed in southern Sydney – almost half of men – described gay relationships as immoral. This compared with 27 per cent in the northern suburbs, 34.5 per cent in the west and 37.5 per cent in the south-west.

Dr Hamilton said the findings for southern suburbs were surprising given that researchers might have expected more conservative attitudes in poorer areas. He speculated it might in part reflect the values of migrant communities and the influence of evangelical churches.

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The Women’s Movement 30 years On

Listened to this last night on Late Night Live, 30 years on in the Women’s Movement in Australia. It seems unfortunately that we’re going backward at the moment

The Women’s Movement 30 years on – audio link

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The Women’s Movement 30 years On

Listened to this last night on Late Night Live, 30 years on in the Women’s Movement in Australia. It seems unfortunately that we’re going backward at the moment

The Women’s Movement 30 years on – audio link

The Womens Movement 30 years on
Summary
A generational assessment of feminism and the womens movement, 30 years after International Women’s Year. What and who does the womens movement represent now, and where is it going?

Guests on this program
Elizabeth Evatt
Semi-retired; formerly the first woman Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia; President of the Law Reform Commission; Advisor on Women to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
Anne Summers
Journalist and author; formerly Head of the Office for the Status of Women and advisor to Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
Elizabeth Meryment
Columnist and reviewer; Deputy Editor of the Review section at at the Australian newspaper

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Protected: Music and Fashion : Program two : Heaven on Earth

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Music and Fashion : Program two : Heaven on Earth

Here is the second part of Music and Fashion

Music and Fashion : Program two : Heaven on Earth
Sunday 24 July 2005

Summary
Throughout history the church has inspired and probably paid for more music than any other establishment. But what sort of music is appropriate for God? Even if we believe God to be unchanging, religious music has been as subject to fashion as any other sort of music. Andrew Ford considers these changes, from mediaeval times to the present.

Why have certain types of music been fashionable at certain moments in history, and what might this tell us about the way in which human beings hear, appreciate and use music? Beginning with the most visible of musical fashions – dance crazes – Ford moves on to the role of religion in both inspiring and denying novelty in music, to musical entrepreneurs, to the transitory (and often non-musical) nature of fame, to the rise and decline of the recording industry, and finally to nostalgia – the fashion that keeps on renewing itself.

Music and Fashion is a six-part series commissioned by ABC radio, written and presented by Andrew Ford.
Music and Fashion : Program two : Heaven on Earth – audio link

Introductory Music: Kumbaya The Seekers
Godspell: Australian Original Cast
Youth of the Nation: Pod
Abide with Me: St Pauls London Choir

Andrew Ford: Some religions disapprove of music. Others believe that it’s all right in its place, just not their place. But mostly, throughout history, music’s been a vital part of the way that people worship their gods. In particular, Christianity has produced some of the greatest music ever heard.

There’s more than one sort of religious music. First, there’s unapologetic ecclesiastical hucksterism – advertising jingles for God. Another sort – usually rather gentle – sets out to concentrate the believer’s mind in contemplation. Some music attempts to represent the very doctrines that have inspired it. Some seeks to inspire us, to make us want to go out and do great deeds. And some seeks to create transcendence – a musical equivalent of the ultimate bliss on offer from the religion itself – a sort of heaven on earth.

Christianity’s embraced all these musical types. As theological priorities shifted – as a particular branch of a particular church became more or less evangelical or mystical or fundamentalist – so its soundtrack shifted too.

Whether or not you believe in an unchanging God, religions themselves are made by human beings. And we’re all susceptible to fashion.

I’m Andrew Ford. And in this second program in the series, Music and Fashion, we’ll look at how religion has influenced music down the centuries, and how, just possibly, musical fashions have affected religion.

Music: Hymn to St Magnus

This rather strange – and, I always think, slightly creepy – bit of music ought to have landed its composer in hot water. It’s a Christian hymn to Magnus the Martyr, and it dates from some time in the early 12th century; perhaps a little later. But it doesn’t sound like other mediaeval hymns. It was composed in the Orkneys, that group of islands off the north coast of Scotland, on the way to Scandinavia. At the time, the Orkneys belonged to the Kings of Norway and they were governed by two Earls, Magnus Erlendsson, the martyr in question, and his cousin Hakon. Magnus was that rare bird, a Viking pacifist, and Hakon found him quite annoying, partly because, understandably, Magnus was quite popular with the average Orcadian compared to his more violently disposed cousin. So Hakon had Magnus murdered on or about 16th April 1117, whereupon miracles began to occur. It took only two decades for a cathedral to be built in Magnus’s honour in Kirkwall, the Orkneys’ main town. Perhaps that’s when the hymn was composed.

Well Magnus’s story is certainly an odd one and the hymn that celebrates him would have seemed equally odd to most mediaeval ears. But composing odd religious music in the Middle Ages, going against the prevailing ecclesiastical fashion, could be bad for your health. Looked at in a certain light, it was tantamount to heresy, and if the church authorities in Rome got wind of it, you might be in trouble. So who was this brave or foolhardy composer? And why does the music sound the way it does? Why is it so odd?

In the Middle Ages Western music was reaching a watershed. Polyphony was breaking out. Very simply, this meant that when people sang songs in a group, they no longer all sang the same notes as each other. The word “polyphony” just means “many sounds” or “many voices”. It’s music in several parts. Though in the 12th century there were usually just two or three voices at a time.

How did polyphony begin? We don’t really know, but I’m happy to have a guess. I’d say it probably came down to human frailty.

For centuries, again we don’t know exactly how long, Christian hymns were chanted in unison. Everyone sang the same notes.

Music: Gregorian Chant

This is popularly called Gregorian chant after the sixth century pope Gregory I. It’s not a very accurate name. For one thing it has nothing to do with Gregory at all. This sort of chant was only standardised three hundred years after his death. And for another, it is only the most common form of Christian chant, there were plenty of other styles in the first thousand years of the church. So let’s call it by its generic name: plainsong or plainchant. What all types of plainchant had in common was that they were sung in unison. Well at least they were meant to be.

You see plainchant wasn’t always sung by trained singers, any more than hymns are today. It was chanted, usually, by groups of monks or nuns. Some of them would have been good singers; others might not have been so vocally gifted; some would have had higher or lower voices than others. So the starting note for a particular chant wouldn’t have suited everyone. Those singers with a strong sense of pitch might have tried hard to get the notes that were difficult to reach, but those with less good, or perhaps more original, ears would probably have given up reaching for the notes that were too high or too low and sung the tune at a different pitch, ideally to the same notes but an octave lower or higher. Sometimes, though, jumping an octave would make the chant too low or too high in the other direction and so, and this is where I’m guessing, the nun in question would settle for half way, singing the plainsong where it felt more comfortable, a fifth higher or, which is basically the same thing, a fourth lower.

Why the interval of the fifth or fourth? Why not the third or sixth? It’s what comes naturally. When nature vibrates, it makes a noise, and the noise will consist of overtones or harmonics. The simplest of these, the easiest to hear, are first the octave, and then the fifth. So these notes are the ones that blend best. If you like they’re the most consonant. Which is why monks and nuns ended up singing in parallel octaves, fifths and fourths. This style of singing was called “organum”.

We’ve no idea when the practice began. It was probably quite early on in the piece, maybe the 9th century, and doubtless at first it was simply tolerated by the other monks or nuns: there’s old sister Agnes singing a fourth too low again. At some point, though, composers must either have decided they really liked the effect, or they simply came to take it for granted that plainchant would occur in more than one part. Either way, chanting in parallel fifths or fourths became standard.

But the Hymn to St Magnus doesn’t use fifths and fourths. It uses thirds, and thirds were anything but standard in a 12th-century church. You can hear how much narrower these intervals are, how the voices are closer together.

The musical interval of the third comes in two forms, major and minor, and in the Middle Ages both were considered “imperfect”. They weren’t exactly banned from music, but you would look through a lot of manuscripts before you stumbled upon a piece in which the interval occurred anywhere at all prominent. You’d seldom find a third on a strong beat, for instance, and never in a final cadence. But this Hymn to St Magnus not only uses thirds, it uses nothing but thirds.

Well Kirkwall’s a long way from Rome. Whoever composed the Hymn to St Magnus probably didn’t know what was happening in Edinburgh, let alone on the Continent. What sounded imperfect to European ears, sounded very nice indeed, maybe even very natural, to the average Orcadian.

But back on the Continent itself, they were composing some very sophisticated stuff. In and around Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, at the end of the 12th century, the history of western music was taking one of its strangest and most beguiling turns.

Music by Pertoin

This elaborate organum was composed by Perotin, or to give him his Latin name, Perotinus, and it still knocks me sideways. As you can hear, this is much more advanced than two voices singing in parallel. The voices move at different speeds and sometimes in different directions. The sheer energy that bursts out of this music is undiminished after more than 800 years. Listen to those rhythms! In their vividness, in their intricacy, in their palpable air of celebration, they’re the perfect aural equivalent of an illuminated manuscript.

Just like a manuscript, with gorgeous coloured inks and gold leaf, the organum of the Notre Dame composers is meant to impress us.

This music is one of the earliest examples of what modern commentators like to call “site specific art”. Now it surely never crossed Perotin’s mind that he was composing art. But he knew all about site specificity. This music wasn’t just composed at Notre Dame, it was meant to be heard in the cavernous space of the cathedral itself. And the proportions of the music matched those of the architecture. Perotin believed they matched the proportions of the cosmos.

Dr Carol Williams is Senior Lecturer in the School of Historical Studies at Melbourne’s Monash University, and she has a special interest in the proportions of the mediaeval world.

Carol Williams: There’s this overriding concept that the world is built on principles of harmony, and the principle of the harmony is numeric, it’s of an idea that these numbers, 1, 2, 3 and 4, are the principal numbers of shaping the universe. And it was a very real idea for mediaeval scholars; it was a real idea of mediaeval theologians as well, and of course, architects. So I think we can see that very clearly in the Notre Dame composers, when we look at the harmonies, the specific harmonies that they’re using. They’re using octaves, that’s a harmonic proportion or a proportion of 2 is to 1. They’re using fifths, perfect fifths, that’s a proportion of 3 is to 2; they’re using perfect fourths, and this is a proportion 3 is to 4, 4 is to 3. So these are the magical numbers again, the repetition of this 1, 2, 3 and 4. So we have the octave, the fifth and the fourth, these are the pillars, the sound pillars if you like, of the compositions of these Notre Dame composers. Now it doesn’t take a very big step to imagine how resonant that music will be in an architectural space which is designed on exactly the same proportions.

Andrew Ford: So Notre Dame cathedral was made to resonate with the sound of Perotin’s music, but it was also filled with coloured light from those famous stained glass windows. This great Gothic building regularly offered one of the first and best sound and light shows in Christendom. And when you think about it, it’s not so far removed from a modern Pentecostal gathering in a giant entertainment centre. Except the music was more interesting in the 12th century.

There’s one more aspect to Notre Dame, and it’s entirely theological. I said before that we’re meant to be impressed by Perotin’s music. That’s a bit of an understatement. Walk into Notre Dame – or any other great Gothic cathedral – and you find yourself looking upwards. You’ve no choice in the matter. The lines of the building lead your eyes up those columns, the arches point upwards, your head tilts slowly back and you stare at the vault – and to heaven beyond. A Gothic cathedral, like the light streaming down through the stained glass and the sheer grandeur of the music doesn’t just impress us, it dwarfs us. We are made to feel small, literally and metaphorically; we are all miserable sinners and there is no health in us.

What an astonishing difference on walking into a Renaissance building!

MUSIC: Nuper Rosarum Flores by Dufay

Where Gothic architects took our eyes up to heaven, late 15th century churches are all rounded arches and horizontal lines. We don’t look up, we look about us. We see a building constructed on a human scale, and we see other people. And something has happened to the music too. Where in a mediaeval church the scripture was chanted in one, then two voices, growing ever more imposing and elaborate, yet always somehow implacable, by the late 15th century, the elaboration has transcended itself. Renaissance polyphony is musical democracy: four, five, six parts or more, each with an equal say, each contributing its own thread to the weft of the music. And there’s depth too. Renaissance music, like Renaissance painting, has perspective.

So what’s happening theologically? As ever, it seems, artistic trends keep pace with theological trends. Reformation is in the air. And Reformation theology, puts the human figure of Christ at the centre of things. All that Gothic God-fearing is swept away on a tide of optimism. Suddenly, it’s ‘what a friend we have in Jesus’!

But which came first? The new version of god or the new versions of art? Is the humanity at the heart of the humanist Renaissance a reflection of a version of Christianity with Christ as the focus? Or is it the other way round? It wouldn’t be the first time in history that theology tried to be fashionably relevant. And it wouldn’t be the last.

And speaking of fashion, let’s not forget a musical conceit that began in the Middle Ages but, like much else, flowered in the early Renaissance. This was the wholesale importing of popular songs into liturgical and other religious music. Carol Williams again.

Carol Williams: In the motet in the late 12th , early 13th century, we see a wonderful collection of ideas all bound together. On the bottom line, we’ve got a very slow-moving plainchant, in the motetus or the second line, you have perhaps a song in Latin that talks about the qualities of the Virgin Mary, and in the third part, you’ll have a jaunty little love-song, that talks about rather more earthy forms of the expression of love. And the top line is, more often than not, a popular song, possibly even a street song.

Andrew Ford: Pop songs in church? You might think this sounds like an unseemly grab for more parishioners, the mediaeval equivalent of that 1970s phenomenon, the bearded vicar with a guitar. But don’t forget the mediaeval church didn’t really need to advertise itself; in 13th-century Europe there wasn’t much alternative to being a Christian, at least not in public. Anyway the use of popular songs is more interesting than that. It’s all about putting together related texts and so throwing the religious words into a starker context. In the middle of the motet Carol Williams is describing, there’s a hymn in praise of the Virgin Mary. But on top of it is a rather more down-to-earth song about the good-looker down the street.

Music: Western Wind Anon.

Like many Parisian fashions, the use of popular songs in church music took a while to catch on in England. But by the time John Taverner came to compose one of his most celebrated masses early in Henry VIII’s reign, he was a master of the technique. Unlike that 13th century motet about the Virgin, there’s no obvious connection this time between the pop song and the Mass. But it could be something to do with straying from the path of righteousness before returning to the safety of the “bosom” of the church, because The Western Wind is a song about being out in the cold wind but wishing you were in bed with your lover.

Music: The Western Wind Mass by John Taverner

Translated to the context of the Taverner’s Mass, what’s so striking about this song is that it can be plainly heard. The standard Continental practice was to slow down the notes of the familiar tune until the rhythm disappeared and the tune itself was barely recognisable. Next the composer would take the tune and bury it in the tenor voice, right in the middle of the texture where it would be further disguised by the voices above and below it. But the Tudor composer Taverner retains the original rhythm and tempo of the tune and puts it at the very top where no one can miss it.

Martin Luther approved of popular music in church. But he wasn’t so happy about a congregation that just sat and listened to a choir, however democratic the polyphony might have been. Just as he was opposed to the idea of a congregation observing the back of a priest mumbling to God in Latin, so he thought that congregations should sing their own songs of praise.

Music: Chorale aus der Lutherzeit words by Martin Luther music by JS Bach

That the singing of spiritual songs is a good thing and one pleasing to God is, I believe, not hidden from Any Christian . . . Accordingly, I and several others have brought together certain spiritual songs with a view to spreading abroad and setting in motion the holy Gospel . . . These, further, are set for four voices for no other reason than that I wished that the young might have something to rid them of their love ditties and wanton songs and might, instead of these, learn wholesome things; also, because I am not of the opinion that all the arts shall be crushed to earth and perish through the Gospel, as some bigoted persons pretend, but would willingly see them all, and especially music, as servants of Him who gave and created them.

Andrew Ford: At which point, one imagines, John Calvin’s ears would have been burning. In seeking to abolish music, and painting and sculpture, from church, Calvin’s version of the Reformation took a very hard line, one that’s still shared today by some Christian sects. But Luther’s view of Christendom was celebratory, rather than punitive. He wanted fewer rules, not more of them. Martin Luther’s desire to reform the church was driven by his theological views, which were boldly at odds with Rome. According to Luther, religion was an individual matter. You made your own peace with God. You didn’t have to do good works, you didn’t have to give money to the church. You didn’t even really need priests. Now you could read the Bible for yourself in your own language. And all you had to do was have faith and the gates of Heaven would swing open. Not surprisingly, these views were popular. And not surprisingly Rome was horrified at what it saw as a fashion for sacrilege.

Well of course, it fought back. The Catholic Church’s response was to hold absolutely firm on matters of doctrine, but to repackage everything. Imagine a modern political party suddenly on the outer after years in power. What does it do? How does it make itself attractive again to the voters? Well, first it needs unity, everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, so to speak. So it needs discipline and if necessary head kickers to insist on the party line. The 16th- century church’s equivalent of this was the Inquisition.
But it also needs to seem relevant and up to date. Political parties often try to woo voters with celebrity candidates: sporting heroes, actors, pop stars, you know the drill. The Catholic church went looking for some spanking new saints and the roll-call of names canonised at the beginning of the 17th century is still pretty impressive: St Francis Xavier, St Ignatius Loyola, St Charles Boromeo and St Theresa of Avila are still high on the list of most popular Catholic saints. But most importantly the church in Rome had to sell its message, clearly and simply. And so at the Council of Trent, really a 20-year-long party conference, the church set out to convince the waverers, and part of this involved changing the nature of music. With polyphony, with all those voices singing different parts, the sense of the text got lost. So it was back to simple chant where you could actually hear the words.

Music: Missa Brevis Gloria by Palestrina

Carol Williams: The Council of Trent actually wanted to see polyphony in church services completely wiped away; they wanted to return to the pure days of plainchant, where the line of music that had been fed into Pope Gregory’s ear by the Holy Spirit would be rolled out again, in all its majesty and power, and we would wipe away all the distractions of polyphony and explicative texts, which had clogged up the meaning. Palestrina was able to demonstrate that you can have clarity of text, you can have text serving declamatory purposes and you can retain the best nature of polyphony at the same time. In the Missa Brevis there’s very little repetition of text. Now you can understand that if you’re presenting a point of imitation, you present that point of imitation with the melody attached to the words, so that when you hear the same melody you hear the same set of words. So that was the very worst of polyphony as far as the church was concerned, because you kept on having this repetition of words, and every time it was repeated it was less and less clear. So what the Missa Brevis does is it reduces all of that repetition so you can actually listen to the text and understand it as a kind of narrative. The other thing in the Missa Brevis is that the moments of real statements of belief are presented in a uniform, homophonic, chordal style, so declamation to the fore.

Andrew Ford: The very idea of a Missa Brevis,a short mass, suggests a no-frills approach to the liturgy. But the counter reformation wasn’t just about getting the message across as directly as possible, it was also about making the message memorable – and, remember, attractive. So when Palestrina no longer has doctrine to convey, when the words of the mass themselves lapse into repetition, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus , Holy, Holy, Holy, out comes the polyphony again.

This is frankly dramatic music. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is Hollywood! We’re not just being told words here, we’re experiencing the full force of the sentiments behind them. This is more than illustration, more than illumination, it is action, emotion and special effects. This is the baroque!

Music: Vespers for the Blessed Virgin by Monteverdi (opening)

If you visit the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in the heart of Rome, you will be first overwhelmed by the glitz of the place. It’s full of gold. But make your way into the Cornaro chapel and you’ll find a remarkable figure in marble by the great baroque sculptor, Gianlorenzo Bernini. It’s one of those new saints, St Theresa of Avila. And she’s in ecstasy!

Music: Nulla In Mundo Pax Sincera – Alleluia by Vivaldi

You can see the saint’s body writhing with religious pleasure, her eyes cast heavenwards, her flowing habit a turmoil of swirling folds and billows. This is the Catholic Church giving Luther’s Reformation both barrels! And what a contrast with the bare, white-washed walls of a Protestant church in northern Europe.

We could continue this history of European church music. We could talk about Bach. We could talk about the great English hymn composers of 18th and 19th centuries, or the Gothic revival, or the second Vatican council. But having reached the 17th century we’re at a point where, theologically, Christendom is a series of almost unbridgeable chasms, and music, or in some cases the absence of music, is more than ever tied to doctrine. Let’s look at one or two extremes.

The greatest musical extreme of all, of course, is silence. Calvin’s insistence that the sound of music was little short of blasphemy lives on, not only in various brands of Christianity, but in much of Islam. It’s not hard to see why. Music, as the playwright Congreve noted, has powers to soothe the savage breast. It can soothe the mind, too. If we swap the church aisle for the supermarket aisle, there’s all the evidence we need that music can numb our sensibilities and turn us into trolley-pushing automata. So when the Amish, for instance, disapprove of music, I take their point. Some Amish communities reject everything except the singing of simple melody lines, taking us back, of course, to the idea of chant, and something similar goes for the Orthodox church, which discourages both harmony and counterpoint. It’s the same with those branches of Islam that permit music. Think of the various forms of Sufi chant. And think of the sound of the chanting Jewish cantor. In each case, the music is there simply to reinforce the word.

Igor Stravinsky maintained that writing religious music was good for composers. “We commit fewer musical sins in church,” he said. Another 20th century composer, the Frenchman Olivier Messiaen regarded his commitment to musical modernism as an act of faith.

Music: Messiaen: Birdsong for Eastertide (organ)

Messiaen’s God, and it was a Catholic God, would have been disappointed in anything less than complete commitment to pushing forward the boundaries of music, drawing inspiration from the complex sounds of the natural world, specifically birdsong.

But in his commitment to modernism, Messiaen was unusual. More typically, composers faced with religious commissions have looked backwards, not forwards. Bach, in his B minor Mass, employs techniques used by Palestrina 150 years earlier. Mozart, in his C minor mass, looks back to the oratorios of Handel. And at the start of the 21st century, both Arvo Pärt and John Tavener, apparently a distant descendant of the Tudor composer, John Taverner, cheerfully drew on archaic forms and sounds to furnish their religious music. Well maybe not cheerfully; but still both composers must have been gladdened by their bulging royalty cheques. Tavener even made it into the pop charts.

But today most of Christendom has very little interest in notated music, modernist, postmodernist, forward-thinking or backward-looking.

Music: This Little Girl of Mine by Ray Charles

Since Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin took African-American gospel music, left out the word God and turned it into hard-hitting commercial soul, the traffic between pop music and the church has travelled in two directions. If it was all right for Ray Charles to turn This Little Light of Mine into This Little Girl of Mine, then surely it was similarly all right for churches to stake a claim in pop music. After all, they’d been doing something similar since the Middle Ages.

But what sort of pop music? There’s Christian country & western, Christian heavy metal, Christian rap and hip hop, even Christian blues, yes, the Devil’s music reclaimed: it all exists. And what one Church embraces, the next will heartily disapprove of. Pope Benedict XVI is on record as calling rock music “a vehicle of anti-religion”. When it comes to the vehemence of opinions about music and religion, you see, nothing much has changed since the 17th century. Nothing except the music itself.

Music: Lift by Christian City Church

In most major Western cities, on any given Sunday, you still can probably track down a Palestrina mass, a Lutheran chorale, a hymn by Charles Wesley or Isaac Watts and, if you’re lucky some plainchant or maybe even an organ piece by Messiaen. But it will be far easier to find something like this.

Jeff Crabtree: In this contemporary style of church we react against the kind of teaching mode of the old hymns where there’s a doctrinal process that’s going on, and people are hearing doctrine and they’re getting taught really good stuff, really good theology. I think we react against that because we’re finding other ways for theology and doctrine to be transmitted, and because the music of contemporary church is meant to be about encounter, it’s not meant to be about edification.

Andrew Ford: That’s Jeff Crabtree. He’s the principal of the School of Creative Arts at the Christian City Church at Oxford Falls in Sydney’s northern suburbs, and his attitude is quite simple. First, music itself is morally neutral – there isn’t one sort that is inherently holier than another. And second, as many a successful entrepreneur has reasoned, you have to give the people what they want.

Jeff Crabtree: So that if you want to speak to a contemporary audience then you have to speak in a contemporary language, and it’s a cultural thing. So we use pop music forms because pop music is what people listen to. So they come to our church and feel comfortable, we are hoping, because they’re hearing popular music forms.

Andrew Ford: Some of the music played and sung at the Christian City Church and other similar ministries, and recorded, and marketed by them, is surprisingly vague. Sometimes God isn’t even mentioned and the words might just as well be those of a secular love song.

There is no clear message in songs like that, no hint of doctrine. As you listen, you might apply the words to God. But there’s nothing to stop you thinking about the attractive girl sitting in front of you.

Music: One Desire from No Long 1 Christian City Church

But if songs like this are ambiguous, there are others that send no message at all. In some modern Pentecostal churches, the idea of glossolalia, of speaking in tongues, has found a musical counterpart.

Music: True from Prayerworks Christian City Church

Jeff Crabtree: Christian City Church developed a style of music called ‘Prayerworks’ which was its initial name. We’ve re-badged it ‘Sante’ which is a French word meaning ‘Health’, or an Italian word meaning ‘Holy’, or a Portuguese word with absolutely no meaning at all. And we don’t quite know what it is, we market the music, we perform it. It’s either music to live your life by, like a soundtrack to your life, or it’s music that accompanies certain kinds of ministry in our church, healing ministry, prayer ministry, or it’s kind of Christian chill-out music, and it’s unusual in that it defies all the things that I’ve been talking about to do with popular music, and audience, because it’s completely not popular music; the songs sometimes go for ten or twelve minutes, sometimes there’s no English in the lyrics, sometimes there’s no lyrics, sometimes there’s just the singer singing with an inarticulate cry of the heart. And we’ve discovered from feedback from our audience, that the music heals, that people contact God through it, that it’s a means of spiritual refreshment, rejuvenation, and they have it on playing all the time, in fact actually it’s flying on a major world airline, it’s part of their arrival guides, it’s finished up in all sorts of places, dental surgeries, doctors’ surgeries, taxicabs. It’s probably more widespread than mainstream church praise and worship in that sense, it actually has probably had more penetration outside the church community. I find that my contact with God occurs in a still, quiet place, and the Prayerworks music takes me to that quiet place, the journey takes me there, it takes me on a journey away from my stuff into a place where I can feel, I suppose, spiritually centred and feel like I’m actually – I feel like I have contact with God at that place.

Andrew Ford: This is about as far from plainchant as you can get. Music in the mediaeval church was a way of presenting scripture and liturgy as clearly and memorably as possible. In the beginning was the word. A lot of modern Christian music is far more concerned with establishing mood. But in terms of musical fashions, the question remains the same as ever. Is music responding to theology, or is it the other way round?

Music: Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield

Next time on Music and Fashion we’re concerned not so much with God as with mammon. A lot of the great classical music that we think of as art was intended by its composers to be money-making entertainment. In today’s opera houses the cognoscenti regard Handel’s operas as the height of sophistication. But in 18th-century London they were fashionable in the way Andrew Lloyd Webber was once fashionable. Were Handel’s audiences missing something? Or are we? “Showtime” – next on Music and Fashion.

CD: The Ultimate Collection
Title: Kumbaya
Perf. The Seekers
Label: EMI 7243 594491 2 8

CD: Youth of the Nation
Title: Youth of the Nation
Comp. P.O.D.
Perf. P.O.D.
Label: Atlantic 7567852492

CD: Remembrance
Title: Abide with me
Hymn
Perf. St Paul’s Cathedral Choir
Label: Hyperion CDA67398
Dur. 4:36

CD: 1000: A Mass for the End of Time
Title: Agnus Dei: Omnipotens Eterne
Perf. Anonymus 4
Label: HMU 907224
Dur. 2:59

CD: 1000: A Mass for the End of Time
Title: Lection: Apocalypse 21:1-5
Perf. Anonymus 4
Label: HMU 907224
Dur. 2:39

CD: The Virgin and the Temple
Title: Nuper Rosarum Flores
Comp.Guillaume du Fay
Perf.Pomerium
Label:Archiv 447 773-2
Dur.6:27

CD: Taverner
Title: Mass ‘The Western Wynde’
Comp. John Taverner
Perf. The Sixteen
Label: CDA 66507

CD:Chorale aus der Lutherzeit
Title: Ein feste Bug ist unser Gott
Perf.Dresdner Kreuzchor
Label:0002132CCC
Dur. 1:13

CD: Palestrina
Title: Gloria
Comp. Missa Brevis
Perf. Westminster Cathedral Choir
Label:CDA 66266
Dur. 3:27

CD: Vespro della Beata Vergine
Title: Deus in Adjutorium
Comp. Monteverdi
Perf. La Chapelle Royal
Label: HMC 901247.48
Dur. 2:13

CD: 2 Cantatas
Title: Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera
Comp. Vivaldi
Perf. Christopher Hogwood
Label:L’oiseau-Lyre 421 655-2
Dur. 13:39

CD: Messiaen
Title: Chants d’oiseaux
Perf. Oliver Latry
Label: 471 480-2
Dur. 7:41

CD:Wilson & Ray
Title:This Little Girl of Mine
Comp. Ray Charles
Perf.Ray Charles & Wilson Pickett
Label: Warner 0927498512
Dur.2:30

CD: LIFT
Title: Lift Prelude
Perf. Christian City Church Oxford Falls
Label: SGCD036

CD: Youth
Title: One Desire
Perf. Christian City
Label:Christian City Church

CD: Prayerworks
Title: Journey
Perf. True
Label: SGCD037

CD: Dusty in Memphis
Title: Son of a Preacher Man
Comp. John Hurley & Ronnie Wilkins
Perf. Dusty Springfield
Label: Atlantic 75580
Dur. 2:19

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