Religion (1984) 14,245-267

THE RELIGIOUS MUSIC OF THE

TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST
CENTURIES
c. John Sommerville
Textbooks in music history, like those in art or literary history, always
include short sections on the cultural background for each major period
covered. They can be counted on to describe the twentieth century as a time
of growing relativism, a questioning of traditions and accepted forms, of
confusion, despair, and violence. The artistic activity of the period is said to
be symptomatic of a dissolving culture. Against such a background, one
would hardly expect to find them treating religious music as a major thread
in the musical life of our time. And indeed they do not. The assumption is
that religious music belongs to the past and will probably never again serve
as an inspiration to many composers, or at least not to prominent ones. So
one is not surprised to have a reviewer for Stereo Review (in the April, 1981
issue) question Krzysztof Penderecki about 'the unusual (for this century)
prevalence of religious themes in his work.'
But if pressed, most music lovers could think of several prominent works
on religious themes written in this century. And when one begins to search,
the list of such works lengthens to include virtually all the major composers
of the century, including those musical prophets who are expected to
influence the future. These are the men, we suppose, who have written the
music of the next century, even if some of it seems beyond audiences today.
The case might even be made that there are more prominent composers in
this century who should be thought of as largely religious in their inspiration
than in the nineteenth century, which is often thought of as a religious age.
The main subjects of this article-Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern,
Messiaen, Poulenc, Vaughan Williams, Britten, and Penderecki-produced
quantities of religious music of great creative intensity. We might well ask
what this recent activity means for the cultural history of our time.
But first, a matter of terminology. The phrase 'religious music' might be
misleading if it were thought to refer to some aspect of musical structure or
harmonic language or mood which makes certain works intrinsically
spiritual. Indeed, some of the composers we will deal with explicitly rejected

0048-721 X/84/030245+23 502.000 ©1984 Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd.

246 C.]. Sommerville

the notion that music can embody or suggest a religious meaning, asserting
instead that music can only illuminate words which do so. So we are only
considering 'religious compositions'-works which the composer has asso-
ciated, as indicated by their titles, with themes from common religious
traditions. Likewise, in speaking of 'religious composers' we mean those who
are explicit in identifying much of their music with such themes. That is, we
will leave aside questions of their religious insight or sincerity, or of their skill
in conveying a religious sense. It is also necessary to state that this article is
more an overview of this activity than an analysis of why certain styles
succeed or fail in conveying a sense of the holy. This is not simply because
description necessarily precedes analysis. Beyond that, it will be one of our
conclusions that the twentieth century is not developing ' religious styles', but
that the most prominent of our composers have used the whole variety of
modern compositional techniques in their religious works. In fact, the most
surprising fact we shall notice is that they have, as musical pioneers, actually
developed their most advanced techniques in the context of their religious
works. It would appear that the musical and religious impulses have been
equal partners, without one being subordinated to the other.
Very few of the great names of the nineteenth century would ever be
identified as religious composers. Bruckner and Mendelssohn, and perhaps
Reger and Elgar, were notable for their religious music. Many others
produced some liturgical works but some of this activity seems more a
matter ofform and routine than ofinner compulsion. A few religious works of
the nineteenth century strike us as masterpieces: Beethoven's masses,
Verdi's and Brahms's requiems, Mendelssohn's oratorios, Berlioz's various
religious works, and operas of a dubiously religious character by Massenet
and Wagner. But in the main, the nineteenth century had other interests. For
one thing, composers aspired to produce a more profound absolute music,
which was to be taken as seriously as philosophy and enshrined in concert
halls especially designed for its contemplation. In the words of one scholar,
the century 'crea ted a canon of serious music to place alongside the canon of
Holy Scripture.'! The other great love of the nineteenth century was opera,
that dramatization of souls in the grip of the passions. Kenneth Clark, in his
series on Civilisation, has reminded us of the sense in which opera was at the
opposite pole from Christianity. Opera arose, as Clark notes, just as religion
was declining at eighteenth-century courts. Its rococo theatres were the
temples of the new profane religion of human heroism and love, and
performances were a ritual way of dealing with man's passions.f Perhaps by
the time of Berg these passions had burst out of the operatic medium , so that
twentieth-century composers have turned back to a religious humility out of
exhaustion or even revulsion. In Wilfred Meller's view, 'T he central theme of
[baroque] heroic opera is the failure of heroism: the ultimate impossibility of
 Religious Music 247

man "assuming the god." But the high point of this secular ego-assertion
was only reached in Beethoven's middle works; his 'triumph of the will is
humanism's supreme achievement'. Like many others, Mellers sees Wagner's
Tristan und Isolde (1865) as the end of that tradition and the beginning of
modern music, in that it proclaims the inversion of humanism. For it shows
the impossibility ofrealizing man's highest desires this side of death. 3
Not only was the turn of the century a time of crisis in musical structure
and in the humanistic impulse, it was also a time of religious flux. And the
most prominent compositions on religious themes exhibit the confusion of the
times, raising doubts as to their meaning if not their sincerity. Strauss's
Salome (1905), Florent Schmitt's The Tragedy oj Salome (1907), Debussy's
The Martyrdom oj St Sebastian (1911), and Puccini's Suor Angelica (1918)
indicate the difficulty, suggesting a sort of musical eroticism made piquant
by religious reference. But starting our consideration of the twentieth
century with 1918 will also eliminate such provocatively heterodox works as
Delius's settings of Nietzschean texts in Mass oj Life (1909) and Requiem
(1916), Holst's ventures into Eastern religions, the mystical texts in Mahler's
symphonies, and Scriabin's unfinished theosophical statement, Mysterium.
All of these flowers of late romanticism represent personal impulses which
have carried the composers well out of the Western religious tradition. But
having eliminated the years up to World War I, we still find a surprising
number of prominent twentieth-century composers who have produced
religious works." Even in America, a country which is almost untouched by
ecclesiastical tradition, composers have produced quantities of religious
music, though little of it for liturgical use. s Those who have left no religious
works are very few, on either side of the Atlantic. 6
The War does seem to have been something of a turning point in this
cultural sense. Composers seem to have begun disciplining themselves to
develop the common religious tradition. A number of major works resulted,
including Honegger's Roi David (1921) and Jeanne d'Arc au biicher (1935),
Hindemith's Marienleben (1922), Kodaly's Psalmus Hungaricus (1923) and
Missa Brevis (1951), Janacek's Slavonic Mass (1926), Szymanowski's Stabat
Mater (1928), Walton's Belshazzar's Feast (1931), Bloch's Sacred Service
(1933), and Tippett's A Child oJ Our Time (1941).7 These are not so likely to
be liturgical settings as would have been the case in the nineteenth century.
But that is hardly surprising in the light of a lack of church patronage. By the
same token, they seem to represent a more active imagination than was the
case earlier. The general contribution of 'history' to this revival of religious
music is obvious. For the suffering of the world in this century has been on
such a scale that only a cosmic, religious response would make a sound big
enough to fill the new world. It is surely no accident that the War forms a
divide between a period of somewhat frivolous religious reference, and one of
248 C.j. Sommerville

a more austere and introspective tone. Light-hearted religious affirmations

can still be found in such works as Menotti's Amah! and the Night Visitors
(1951) and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts (1928).8 But most of
the works strike one as reactions to a challenged faith rather than the naive
response of an untested mind.
The list of important religious compositions becomes more impressive
when the works of our major subjects are added to it. Some of these men-
Poulenc, Vaughan Williams and Britten--enjoy a wide popularity. Others-
Webern, Messiaen and Penderecki-are musicians' musicians, the prophets
of new trends, who have yet to create a popular following for their music.
Stravinsky and Schoenberg are the two central figures in all histories of
twentieth-century music. The number of works these masters devoted to
religious themes is quite striking, and their undoubted significance for the
future of'music gives us reason to expect a high level of programming of
religious works in the concert life of coming generations.
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) over-
shadow the history of modern music as no other composers do. Attempts to
schematize the development of music in this century are commonly
organized around these two figures. Naturally, such treatments are more
interested in the technical analysis of their music than in its extra-musical
inspiration, but a more complete understanding of their general aesthetic
would require some awareness of the religious element which grew in
importance with each of them.
As a young man, Stravinsky's public image as a daring and exotic radical
corresponded with his view of himself. Raised by anticlerical parents who
were reluctant if conventional churchgoers, he gave up religious observance
in his teen years. The influence of a family of intellectual cousins encouraged
him to dismiss Russian Orthodoxy as a perspective on life. Thus he was
prepared for the swirl of the free-thinking literary and artistic society in
which he emerged as a precocious and self-sufficient talent. The pagan
subjects of his painter friend, Nicholas Roerich, helped inspire his greatest
early triumph, The Rite of Spring. 9
Stravinsky did, however, retain enough of a sense of the sacred to
recognize blasphemy when he saw it, and one place he saw it was in the
pseudo-religious atmosphere of Wagner's Bayreuth. He was offended by
'putting a work of art [Parsifal] on the same level as the sacred and symbolic
ritual which constitutes a religious service,' and to treating 'art as religion
and the theatre as a temple.t '" He was also shocked by Diaghilev's
suggestion of a Russian 'liturgical ballet' for Paris audiences, to show off the
vestments and icons that he owned. I I Stravinsky's religious indifference was
challenged by the serious Catholicism that he met on his holidays in Spain,
 ReligiousMusic 249

which recalled the 'mystic fervor' of the Russian Orthodoxy that he

remembered from childhood. 12
Stravinsky took a definite step towards religious faith in 1925 when he was
43. Living in Nice, he had become friends with a Russian Orthodox priest
and had begun reading the Gospels and other religious literature. A
biography of St. Francis reminded him of the saint's frequent use of
Provencal instead of Italian, and Stravinsky began thinking of composing a
'monumental' work in a 'sacred' language. This was in line with the desire,
during his 'neo-classical' period, to purge music of expressive elements.
Music, he thought, should be valued for itself and not for the sentiments or
passions that it might evoke. The result was Oedipus Rex, written in Latin to
give it a dignity beyond vernacular vulgarization. For Latin was not only
dead but had turned to stone, so that it could convey none of the story's
emotion. The music, therefore, was simply an illumination of the story
itself. 13
Mellers finds Stravinsky's choice in myths significant. As opposed to the
eighteenth century's favourite, Orpheus, with its celebration of the death-
defying power of man's art, Stravinsky picked a story of man's guilt and the
end of his pride. And Mellers thinks that the composer was, even then,
drawing out the Christian implications of the story. 14 There is evidence that
the months during which he worked on Oedipus saw a fundamental change in
Stravinsky's thought. For one thing, it struck him that in neutralizing the
expressive impulse in his composition he was following the practice of the old
church composers, who strove to elevate the words of the liturgy rather than
to express their feelings about it. 15 But there was also a more personal
transformation. While attending ceremonies honouring St. Anthony in
Padua he knelt and prayed at the saint's coffin, asking for a sign of
recognition. Later he said, 'As it was answered, and with the sign, I do not
hesitate to call that moment of recognition the most real of my life.' He also
recalled the healing of an abcessed finger at about this time. Whether or not
these constitute a single episode, Stravinsky interrupted his larger project to
compose his first religious work, the brief Pater Noster, for, having become a
communicant at the Russian Orthodox church in Nice, he was anxious to
improve the quality of the music there. 16 His devotion soon became integral
to his art. In 1931 he told an associate that 'When I was younger, and ideas
didn't come, I felt desperate, and thought everything was finished. But now I
have faith, and I know ideas will come .... First ideas are very important;
they come from GOd.'17
Stravinsky's religiosity is not easy to categorize. Despite his wide reading
in philosophy and theology (especially in Maritain at first), his disciple
Robert Craft says that he was not truly an intellectual. While Stravinsky
250 c.j. Sommerville

admired the structured thought of theology, he was the first to admit that he
was not argued into belief. Craft was often surprised by the concrete and
literal manner in which the composer approached religion. He once asked
Stravinsky whether one must be a believer to compose in the traditional
forms of church music, to which the latter replied: 'Certainly, and not merely
a believer in "symbolic figures," but in the Person of the Lord, the Person of
the Devil, and the Miracles of the Church.' 18
On the other hand, this faith was anything but emotional. Sentimentality
he saw as leading to individualism, which he thought was culturally
destructive. The attraction of the church for Stravinsky was that it offered a
structure for man's intellectual, emotional and spiritual life, a structure
which Europe had shown that it needed. He did not confuse the sense of
structure with religion itself, recognizing that theology 'is to religion no more
than counterpoint exercises are to music.' 'Christianity is a system, but
Christ is not a system,' as he once put it. 19 Culturally the church's
contribution was to offer the forms in which religion might take tangible
shape. He never thought of the religious impulse apart from the church's
structures. For example, he refused to consider Oedipus Rex a religious work,
since religion 'does not correspond in my mind to states of feeling or
sentiment, but to dogmatic beliefs' such as those he set to music in Pater
Noster, Credo (1932) and Ave Maria (1934).20
Stravinsky's views on music and on religion reinforced each other.
Sentiment, which the nineteenth century thought touched the deepest level of
man's nature, had no value or validity for him, either musically or
religiously. What did have value was religious truth-which he viewed as
wholly objective--and music-which he thought of as a self-contained play
of tone and rhythm without references outside of itself. He did not think of
music as the representation of some verbal expression or personal feeling or
transcendental idea. That is, it is not an intimation of reality, but a
discovery of reality, expressing only itself. Therefore, music is an ideal way to
celebrate objective truth. Religious music goes wrong when it tries instead to
describe man's feelings about the truth.i"
In 1930, the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned a symphony from
Stravinsky and, much to their surprise, received the Symphony of Psalms. The
composer, who always confronted the world from behind a barricade of
paradoxical and epigrammatic wit, took a certain pleasure in the puzzlement
caused by the religious character of the work. The public wondered whether
this famous iconoclast was using the Psalms for some neo-primitivist
purpose. But he professed simply to being inspired by the words and to have
written the work 'in a state of religious and musical ebullience.V'' Although
some critics consider it to be his masterpiece, it continues to puzzle listeners
who expect Psalm 150, at least, to be accompanied by rousing music.
 Religious Music 251

Stravinsky, however, perversely wanted 'to counter the many composers who
had abused these magisterial verses as pegs for their own lyrico-sentimental
"feelings." ,23
In 1948 Stravinsky's Mass appeared, which he also admitted was a
conscious reaction, this time to Mozart's masses, with their 'rococo-operatic
sweets-of-sin' tone. He meant it for liturgical use in spite of the fact that it
was not commissioned by the church, and to that end he set the entire creed,
blandly remarking that 'there is much to believe.' Though his earlier
religious works used Slavonic texts (later re-set in Latin), he now chose to set
the Catholic Mass, so that he might include instruments forbidden in the
Russian Church. 24
Stravinsky's next important works, The Rake's Progress and Cantata,
contained unmistakeable religious associations, though he would not have
termed them religious works. But in the composer's favourite production of
the opera, Ingmar Bergman emphasized those meanings in a final set
dominated by three spires or crosses.P When Stravinsky next turned to
religious themes, it' was to set Latin texts for church performance: the
Canticum Sacrum (1956) and Threni: Id Est Lamentations Jeremiae Prophetae
(1958). They show him developing serial techniques, with the particular
difficulties which this represents for listeners. One difficulty was removed for
English-speaking audiences in A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (1961) and
The Flood (1962) by using English texts. In the latter, commissioned by CBS
television, he introduced ballet movement and thereby united his older
interest in dance with his growing concentration on religious music. Abraham
and Isaac (1963), in Hebrew, and the Requiem Canticles (1956) show that
there was no slackening of these interests even at the end of his creative life.
The Canticles have been choreographed and performed as a tribute to several
public figures. 26
Despite his contribution to the choosing and arranging of texts (especially
in the Canticum and Sermon), Stravinsky never made his religious works the
subjective expression of his ideas, but God was, apparently, never far from
his thoughts. Even the Symphony in C, composed just after his second
marriage, was dedicated 'to the glory of God.' In general, he thought,
'Music praises God. Music is as well or better able to praise Him than the
building of the church and all its decoration; it is the church's greatest
ornament. Glory, glory, glory; the music of Orlando Lasso's motet praises
God, and this particular "glory" does not exist in secular music. And not
only glory-though I think of it first because the glory of the Laudate, the joy
of the Doxology, are all but extinct-but prayer and penitence and many
others cannot be secularized. ,27
No one would have thought of Schoenberg as a religious composer before
his death in 1951, for he left his major religious works, Moses und Aron and
252 C.]. Sommeroille

Jakobsleiter, unfinished. This was not because of any loss of interest in these
large projects. Quite the contrary, he considered them to be his most
significant compositions. They had simply grown to such importance that he
could not find enough time in his sadly overburdened life to complete them.
During his Jewish childhood, Schoenberg's religious development was
troubled by disagreement between a pious mother and a free-thinking father.
By age 17 he was calling himself an unbeliever. But he had not lost all
interest in religion, and in 1898, at the age of24, he was baptized a Lutheran,
under the influence of a young friend. 28 Religious interests were not
immediately manifested in his music, although the cantata Friede auf Erden
(1907) was written to a Christmas text. In fact, Schoenberg was thought to
be blasphemous at several points in Pierrot Lunaire (1912), which would
have been consistent with his reputation as a musical iconoclast. It was a
charge which astonished and upset him. 29 Mellers is probably more accurate
in representing his intention as showing the two paths open before post-
humanist Western man: 'Man could throw off consciousness as completely
as is humanly possible, retreating to the Absurd, accepting the absurdity of
life as itself a positive; or he could attempt to achieve a new integration of the
splintered personality which could only be, at this stage in the checkered
history of Europe, in some sense "religious.',,3o
Toward the beginning of World War I, religious themes did begin to come
to the fore. The Four Orchestral Songs of 1913-16 were set to texts of a
religious character, by Rilke (who also furnished the poems for Hindemith's
Marienleben) and others. And in 1915, Schoenberg began writing his own
text for Jacob's Ladder. It is a mystic's statement of the necessity for spiritual
release from the bondage of the mundane. Therefore it seems to belong more
to the theosophical mood of pre-war Europe than to the harsher or more
sober post-war outlook. From 1917 to 1922 Schoenberg worked on it,
producing forty-three minutes of music but leaving it in outline. It is
nevertheless significant for his musical development, as the transitional work
between free atonality and serial and l2-tone methods.P!
By 1922 Schoenberg had begun thinking specifically in Jewish terms. For
despite his church affiliation he had been harassed by the anti-Semitic
Austrian government and denied a professorship in Germany. Being forced
to think of himself as a Jew, he began to record his thoughts on J ewishness.
The result was a play, The Biblical Way, and the text for one of his Four Pieces
(1925). In the latter he expressed a horror of images which might confine
one's idea of God. This was to become the kernel of his greatest work, Moses
und Aron.32
In a remarkable way, Schoenberg saw his own musical career paralleled in
religious history. The opposition he had faced for his single-minded pursuit
of musical development (which most had misinterpreted as a rejection of
 ReligiousMusic 253

tradition) made him think of himself as a Moses, a law-giver and rejected

leader. He believed that he had, literally, a divine mission in pursuing the
German musical tradition.f" Unfortunately, it was leading into what most
people thought was a wilderness. There was a further affinity in the life of
Jesus. The play mentioned above had expressed his view that 'all those who
are impelled to live out an idea become martyrs to it,' and in his last,
unfinished work, the Modem Psalms, he was to write of Jesus as 'the most
pure, most innocent, most disinterested and most idealistic being who has
ever lived on this earth; his will, all his thoughts, all his aspirations were fixed
solely on the single aim of saving mankind by leading them to true faith in
the One Almighty and Eternal God.'34 Schoenberg declared that he himself
had 'risked his life for an idea,'35 and although it did not come to martyrdom,
his identification with Moses surely made Moses und Aron as personal to him
as Christ on the Mount oj Olives was to the suffering Beethoven.
Between 1930 and 1932 Schoenberg composed the music to the first two
acts of the opera and finished the libretto for a third act. The work is about
the struggle to keep the inexpressible essence of religious truth free of the
distortions inevitable in any social or aesthetic expression of that truth. As
one commentator has put it, it is about 'the refusal of the Word to become
ftesh.'36 This is not just an internal struggle within the individual
consciousness: 'The crisis within the inner life is now seen as an historical
crisis also'-within Western civilization, within Judaism, within music.V
Naturally, this has allowed critics to interpret the opera variously, as a
parable of thought versus action, freedom versus bondage, truth versus love,
truth versus beauty, idea versus realization, thinker versus communicator.
Schoenberg himself warned against attempts to translate the work into
purely aesthetic categories if it meant ignoring the more ordinary level of
religious meaning. 38
Many now agree that it is fortunate that Schoenberg did not find the time
to compose the music for the short final act. For as drama it would be static,
as action gives way to discussion which simply underscores the judgment on
Aaron's glib and compromising attitudes. It seems truer to end as it does,
with Moses' despairing recognition of the ineffable character of the message:
'0 word, thou word that I lack!'-his denial of the human possibility of
Incarnation. Until the year of his death, Schoenberg did not give up hope of
completing the music. One of the famous stories about his unfortunate life is
how the Guggenheim Foundation turned down his application for a grant to
finish it. But the result might have been an embarrassment. As it stands, it is
a powerful work, dramatically and spiritually, and has been well received
since its first performances in 1954. The libretto sometimes approaches a
realistically primitive religious mentality, even while making a profound
point, and the musical style is admirably suited to the scene, being both
254 C.). Sommerville

brutally direct and the last word in musical sophistication. Audiences which
are learning to like Berg's Lulu are not far from discovering Moses.
In 1933, Schoenberg was fired from his teaching position and fled the Nazi
regime. In Paris he took a long-considered step in rejoining the Jewish
community. He was fifty-eight years old, but saw still another job before him
in aiding the cause ofaJewish homeland. With his work on Moses ringing in
his ears, he wrote to other Jewish composers to offer himself as a leader in
this movement. Characteristically, and a bit quixotically, he found that he
could not agree to enlist in the Zionist ranks.i'"
Schoenberg did not reach the Promised Land. Instead he found refuge in
California. But his music continued to serve the Jewish cause. In 1938 he
composed a setting for the Kol Nidre and it is obvious that he took some
thought toward making it accessible, for it is a tonal composition with some
'atmospheric' treatment of the creation. There is no reason to believe that
Schoenberg would have thought any the less of it for all that. He valued his
early works as much as the later, since they all grew out of the great tradition.
And he lavished some of his best orchestration on this work. In 1945 he
composed a section of the Genesis Suite, a composite work commissioned by
the conductor Nathaniel Shilkret. Schoenberg's responsibility was a Prelude,
while Stravinsky's was Babel. Several other composers finished their parts,
but Bartok, Hindemith, and Prokofiev failed to do so, leaving the project
incomplete. Despite that, it is sometimes performed as a curiosity.t"
At the end of his life, Schoenberg was thinking more exclusively in
religious terms. A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) is a religious reaction to the
Holocaust. Dreimal tausand Jahre (1949) and an unfinished 'Israel exists
again' were inspired by the founding of the state of Israel. A setting of the
Hebrew of Psalm 130, De Profundus, was his last finished work. When he
died he was working on the Modern Psalms, which were fifteen German
poems he had written on religious themes. To show how seriously he took
them, the first was numbered Psalm 151.
After Schoenberg's death, Stravinsky began to speak of his music with
more respect and affection. As the first among several similarities which he
now admitted between them, he mentioned the 'common belief of Divine
Authority, the Hebrew God and Biblical mythology, Catholic culture.' He
also observed wryly that they were both 'deeply superstitious', perhaps
thinking of the fact that Schoenberg had misspelled Moses und Aron so as not
to have thirteen letters in the title."!
After Stravinsky and Schoenberg, the two composers of this century who
have been most influential with their fellow musicians, if not with the public,
have been Anton Webern (1883-1945) and Olivier Messiaen (b. 1908). In
fact, Webern's experiments with tone series and the forms appropriate to
serial composition, and Messiaen's experiments with series governing
 Religious Music 255

intensity, timbre and duration as well as tone, have been more readily
appropriated than anything which Stravinsky or Schoenberg tried. These
are, then, the theoreticians of the avant-garde, and widely presumed to be
the prophets of our musical future.
Webern, a student of Schoenberg's, had written no religious music before
his military service in 1915-16. He then composed a couple of songs to
religious texts, which were collected in Opus 12 and IS. After a visit to his
parents' graves in 1921 his Catholicism was deepened, and for several years
between 1921 and 1924 almost all of his compositions were settings of
German or Latin religious texts. These appear in Five Sacred Songs (Op. 15),
Five Canons on Latin Texts (Op. 16), and Three Sacred Folksongs (Op. 17).
They are crucial in Webern's development since they include his first
ventures into 12-tone music. 42 The whole of these works comes to only ten
minutes of music, but the conductor Robert Craft thinks that they include
Webern's greatest masterpieces.P
To the uninitiated these are forbidding works. Webern did permit himself
some of his rare attempts at 'word-painting,' like the arches at the mention of
heaven in Opus 15.4 4 This is largely lost on the listener, who hears only
the spikey soprano coping with the wide intervals. There are various ways of
explaining our difficulty here. Stravinsky, who came under the spell of
Webern's music late in his life, identified the problem as the lack of any
thematic development. For Webern's music does not comment on itself;
'Instead, each opus offers itself only as a whole, a unity to be contemplated.'
So they must be listened to repeatedly until they can be grasped as a whole.
One might hope that more concerts would repeat such compositions, as
Stravinsky's Mass and Schoenberg's Survivor From Warsaw were repeated at
their premiers.P There is also, of course, the problem of performance.
Webern himself complained of uncomprehending musicians who performed
the works in a pointillist manner: 'A high note, a low note, a note in the
middle--like the music of a madman.' But in reference to the religious songs,
some have claimed that 'this music has on occasion been sung convincingly,
even memorably,' with these 'intense, tangled, austere' lines being delivered
as 'rapt and convincing melodies.t''"
Others explain the difficulty in terms of Webern's spirituality, claiming
that his music had left behind all corporeal elements with their accompany-
ing harmonic tensions. The respect for both flesh and spirit, which is a
feature of the Western religious tradition, is finally broken as Webern's
mysticism replaced tension with suspension. In the place of growth or
development, we are encouraged to contemplate the moment: 'The isolated
sound or tone-color has become an event, without antecedence or conse-
quence.t''" Even his silences are meant to be expressive. For the unspoken
word can be eloquent at a time when our civilization has exhausted itself in
256 C. J. Sommerville

a 'clamour of verbal inflation.P'' Aaron Copland has spoken for many in

observing that 'Something of the asceticism of a saint hangs over the
music.t''" Late in his life Webern set to music a number of poems by his
friend Hildegard Jone, which seem to leave Christian mysticism for pantheism.
Messiaen was one of a number of young French composers who, in the
1930s, called tor a more serious music than that being written by Satie's
disciples. Like Webern, he was a life-long Catholic: 'I have the good fortune
to be a Catholic; I was born a believer and it so happens that the sacred texts
have struck me even from my earliest childhood. A certain number of my
works are destined therefore to highlight the theological truths of the
Catholic faith. This is the main aspect of my work, the most noble, without
doubt the most useful, the most valid, the sole aspect which 1 will not
perhaps regret at the hour of my death.P" Most of his compositions bear
religious titles, from his organ'" and piano works,52 to his instrumental'f and
choral compositions.P" All this was not simply a whimsey of Messiaen's. He
claims to be strict in his symbolic vocabulary, insisting that it is doctrinal.
That is, he is describing Christian redemption rather than a.mystical ecstacy
which would annihilate human personality. He is a man of wide sympathies,
drawing on elements of Hindu and American Indian music as well as on
birdsong. All of this finds its place within his religious framework; the Hindu
god Shiva is celebrated in some of his music, as a prefiguration of Christ.P''
Only one of Messiaen's compositions was written for liturgical use, the
gen tle offertory motet 0 Sacrum Convivium (1937), though some of his organ
works could be performed during a low mass, with an appropriate effect. The
choral works are contemplative, with a tone colouration that is immediately
interesting. Messiaen has said of them, 'I wished to accomplish a liturgical
act-that is to say, to transfer a kind of divine office, a kind of communal
praise to the concert hall.'56 But even these works need the kind of 'program'
of Biblical citations which Messiaen has written to accompany all his works.
It could be that such notes will allow even his keyboard works to convey
religious meanings more successfully than many choral works, for there will
never be a language barrier. The solidity and insistence of many of his
compositions distinguishes him from other post-Webern composers. This can
become nearly hypnotic in the manner of mystical writers.V but in works like
the oft-recorded Quartet for the End of Time it is moving in an almost
Romantic sense.
Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen are only two of the leading
figures in modern music who count themselves students of Messiaen (as well
as of Webern). They have carried his principles into the realm of electronic
music, and even in that rarified atmosphere one finds the religious impulse at
play. Stockhausen produced a setting of the Benedicite, the song of the
 Religious Music 257

children in the fiery furnace, in Gesang der jiingling (1956). It was his first
attempt to combine electronic music with sung notes, the plan being that
'whenever the music's audible signals momentarily become human speech, it
is always in the praise of God.'58 The effect has been likened to the sounds of
the gestation of the generation to come after the fiery furnace of a nuclear
apocalypse. 59 In the same year, Ernst Krenek produced his Spiritus
lntelligentiae Sanetus, a Whitsun cantata which also combines electronic and
vocal means. So this approach, which gives electronic music a needed
humanizing touch, owes something to religious expression. Nor have the jazz
and rock idioms proved incompatible with religious sensibilities. One would
expect, however, that John Dankworth's jaa Mass, Duke Ellington's In the
Beginning God, Dave Brubeck's The Voice in the Wilderness, and the
oratorios Godspell and jesus Christ Superstar will fade fast just because of their
success in expressing the spontaneity of their particular moment in history.P"
It may be that the world will never be ready for Webern or Messiaen, or
even the later Stravinsky or Schoenberg. But even if the division between the
audiences for classical and experimental music becomes permanent, one
would expect that Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), Ralph Vaughan Williams
(1872-1958) and Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) will continue to be
programmed and performed. None of them was self-consciously experi-
mental, but all are respected as masters of their means and all are notable for
an extensive production of religious music.
Poulenc had already made his reputation before it occurred to him to write
any religious music. Though a Catholic 'by deepest instinct and heredity', as
he once said, the years after his father's death had led to 'a long fit of
forgetfulness of religion.' In 1936, however, upon hearing of the accidental
death of a friend, he awakened very suddenly to that heritage and
immediately wrote the Litanies a la Vierge Noire, inspired by a shrine near his
boyhood home. He had been one of those dandies to whom Messiaen had
objected, but this experience deepened all his later art."!
From that year on, Poulenc produced a steady stream of religious works.
Most adhere to the Church's liturgy, like the Mass (1937), Four Penitential
Motets (1938-39), Exultate Deo and Salve Regina (1941), Four Christmas
Motets and Ave Verum Corpus (1952), and Sept repons des tinebres (1961).
Even some of the liturgical settings were written for concert performance: the
Stabat Mater (1950) with its somewhat perfumed devotion, and the robust,
almost operatic Gloria (1959). Other works were set to less official texts, such
as the Quatre Petites Prieres de St. Francois d'Assise (1948) and the Laudes de
St. Antoine de Padoue (1959). Perhaps most remarkable is his opera,
Dialogues des Carmelites (1956), to a libretto by George Bernanos.I ts
ostensible subject is the threat which the French Revolution posed to the
258 C.J. Sommeruille

religious orders, although it has been interpreted as a parable of various

psychological themes. The work is one of very few twentieth-century operas
to secure a place in the repertory of the larger companies.
Ralph Vaughan Williams is an interesting case, as one who wrote close to
a hundred religious works, as well as arranging numerous carols and hymn
tunes, and yet cheerfully acknowledged himself to be an agnostic. His wife
reports that while composing his Mass he protested that 'There is no reason
why an atheist could not write a good Mass.' Whether he was referring to
himself or hypothesizing an even more extreme case is not clear, but if one
goes back to the Renaissance it would surely be possible to bear him out,
with examples of composers who were glad to hide their doubts in order to
receive the Church's commissions. Vaughan Williams did not wait for
commissions, but turned spontaneously to religious themes as his most
natural inspiration. His many religious compositions tend to be dramatic
rather than contemplative.P'' Mention should be made of the Mass (1922),
the oratorio Sancta Civitas (1925) which his wife thought best epitomized his
vision of a world beyond struggle, and the obviously heartfelt cantata, Dona
Nobis Pacem (1936). Also notable are his Job (1930), which is not quite
unique as a religious ballet,63 and Pilgrim's Progress (1951), an opera about
which Vaughan Williams felt especially deeply.I'"
It is often said that these ostensibly religious works were actually inspired
more by a 'democratic idealism' or pastoral mysticism, but it is possible that
the composer felt that this was the kernel of religious faith. One scholar has
called him 'a first generation atheist with a profound, not to say visionary,
sense of the past, which means a disappointed theist.' His 'feeling for
genuinely popular traditions amounted to a reverence that was almost
religious.P" These democratic sympathies no doubt led him to use popular or
at least accessible styles. In this respect he resembles Bartok, who never
produced a religious work but whose devotion to folk traditions must have
been part of what Stravinsky termed his 'religiosity.'66 Vaughan Williams is
also accused of being a musical reactionary, the Mass being an important
event in the rediscovery of Elizabethan music. His evocation of past styles
served him well, though, as the musical world as a whole has become more
eclectic. The works done under the inspiration of earlier styles sometimes
seem less dated than his more contemporary pieces. They have a point of
contact with audiences even while challenging them musically.
Alban Berg's case might be seen as the inverse of the Vaughan Williams
phenomenon. Berg was apparently indifferent to the religious impulse until
the very end of his career, when he received a commission to produce a violin
concerto. The commission lay neglected while he waited for inspiration, but
suddenly the death of a young friend suggested that the work become, in
effect , a requiem. His quotation of Bach's chorale, 'It is enough, Lord, when
 Religious Music 259

it pleases Thee' (from Cantata 60), becomes a fitting part of the concerto's
almost magical conclusion. As it turned out, this was Berg's last completed
work.
While it is curious to see an agnostic like Vaughan Williams producing
such a quantity of religious music, the twentieth century offers a contrary
example of a composer who could not safely admit the spiritual inspiration
that he did feel. Dimitri Shostakovich, who lived in terror of Stalin, was
commonly thought to have been a whole-hearted supporter of Soviet
ideology. And yet the recently-published memoir states that his 'Leningrad'
symphony, regarded earlier as his most successful propaganda piece, was
actually written under the 'impetus' of the Psalms. Shostakovich was without
any belief in a life after death, but he found that the Psalms best expressed his
feelings about the destruction and human sorrow involved in war and anti-
Semitism. He admired Stravinsky's treatment of the psalms in the Symphony
of Psalms, and considered the latter's Mass one of his favourite works. 6 7
Soviet composers, understandably, have not produced any religious music.
On the other hand, they have been encouraged to contribute to an
inspirational music of a secular character. To some extent, this tradition has
been in competition with the religious music we have been discussing. It has
not fared as well. Of course, the musical celebration of humanistic values did
not begin in the twentieth century. In fact, Beethoven might be called the
spiritual ancestor of this genre, with Fidelio'« paean to freedom and the Ode
toJoy in his last symphony. Among twentieth-century composers such music
has often taken the form of protest against man's inhumanity, as in Luigi
DalIapicolIa's opera The Prisoner (1947), his Canti di Liberazione (1955), and
Luigi Nono's choral works. Sometimes religious and secular texts are mixed
in such works, and several of the composers we are treating as religious also
contributed one or two works of this type. 611
The 1930s saw a number of Western composers setting texts ofa 'left-wing'
character, as a contribution to the struggle against fascism.f" They
commonly adopted a simple musical style in an effort to make an immediate
impact. The Americans who contributed to this genre, mostly during World
War II, characteristically took a more up-beat approach, glorifying
democracy rather than attacking fascism. Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait
(1942) and Fanfare Jor the Common Man (1944), Randall Thompson's
Testament oj Freedom (1942), and William Schuman's A Free Song (1942) are
the most prominent examples.
Some of these efforts were later an embarrassment to the composers
involved, particularly where the inspiration was of a definitely communist
character. For the record of the Soviet Union in its protection of human
freedoms has been exceptionally bad, and not least in its harrassment and
exploitation of composers. One can hardly imagine the Medieval Church, in
260 C.). Sommerville

its worst days, being so insistent on ideological and aesthetic orthodoxy in its
composers.I'' As a result, there will always be some question about the
sincerity of their patriotic cantatas. Even though Prokofiev and Shostakovich
have contributed to this genre, such works have not been given much credit
for musical inspiration or depth of feeling. Only those communists living
outside the Soviet Bloc, like Nono, have been free to use modern
compositional styles to express these humanitarian sentiments or political
concerns. At the moment, it does not seem that Humanity (or Nationalism)
is inspiring as high levels of music creativity as more transcendent and
traditional themes.
Benjamin Britten's interest in religious composition was a life-long
characteristic. As a teenage prodigy he produced religious songs and
anthems which seemed worth revising later in his life, including A Hymn to
the Virgin (1930) and the Christmas choral cycle A Boy was Born (1933). But
in the late 1930s he and W. H. Auden struck up a friendship which turned
him in the direction of socialism or at least pacifism. They collaborated on
some political compositions which have 'not outlived the political events that
inspired them.'71 Without rejecting these concerns, Britten rediscovered
religious themes during World War II, with the popular Ceremony of Carols
(1942), the eccentric and lovable Rejoice in the Lamb (1943), a Festival Te
Deum and The Holy Sonnets ofJohn Donne (1945) being the major works.
After the War Britten turned more toward opera, but also began to
experiment with forms of music drama suitable to church performance. The
cantata St Nicolas (1948), the second of his Canticles (1952) (drawing on the
Chester Miracle Play of Abraham and Isaac), and his setting of the Chester
version of Noye's Fludde (1957) explored these possibilities. There were other
occasional and liturgical pieces, like the Hymn to St Peter (1955), Antiphon
(1956), Jubilate Deo (1961), and Hymn of St Columba (1962). The Missa
Brevis (1959), his only setting of a Latin text besides the later Cantata
Misericordium, is remarkable for using only a boy's choir, and for the eerie
atmosphere which that evokes.
But these works were all overshadowed by the appearance of the War
Requiem in 1962. Whatever its stature in 'purely musical terms,' the first
performances of this work must stand as the most notable religious event in
the twentieth-century musical world. The War Requiem was such a
shattering aesthetic and spiritual experience that music critics became
slightly embarrassed by their own early enthusiasm. For when it was clear
that the work had a deep and immediate appeal for the public at large,
sophisticates backed off slightly. That may be a good thing ifit prevents over-
exposure by too frequent scheduling. The size of the forces needed to produce
the work should also insure that its production will always be a major
musical occasion. 72
 Religious Music 261

After the triumph of the Requiem, Britten was soon perfecting his form of
religious drama, the 'parable for church performance,' which resembled
medieval morality or mystery plays. Curlew River (1964) was the first of
these and the most remarkable. Despite the spare story, it has been said that
this tragic masterpiece does produce a miracle in the music if not on the
stage. 73 The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968) do
not show any decline in invention. Like so many of Britten's works, these
defy stylistic categorization but manage unique solutions to the problems of
form and purpose which he has addressed.
Psalm 150 (1962) and The Building of the House (Psalm 127) (1967),
Canticles IV (1971) and V (1974) on texts by T. S. Eliot, and the Sacred and
Profane songs (1975) completes the list of Britten's religious works. But, as
audiences sometimes complained, he worked religion into all his works.
When the British government offered his wordless Sinfonia da Requiem
(1940) to Japan in honour of a dynastic anniversary, it was rejected as too
Christian. English audiences objected to Christian overtones in his opera The
Rape of Lucretia (1946). So in 1948 the Congress of Soviet Composers
thought it was in good company in criticizing Britten, along with Stravinsky,
Messiaen, and Menotti, for being subjective and mystical. 74 Commissions
from the Red Cross (which produced Cantata Misericordium, 1963), the
United Nations (Voicesfor Today, 1965), and the Save the Children Fund (a
setting of Brecht's Children's Crusade, 1969), all found Britten in a religious
mood. Apparently this came naturally to a practising Anglican with deep
pacifist and religious convictions. 75
If musicians still wonder how Britten can be unique and yet accessible,
Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933) would seem to be beyond any suspicion of
conventionality. For his compositions are uncompromisingly avant-garde, in
the directions pointed out by Boulez and Stockhausen. In his case, frequent
reference to religious themes may help to justify the extremes of violence and
delicacy to which he is drawn. On the other hand, part of the reason that
there is such a large audience for his difficult and sometimes painful music
may be the promise of religious meaning in the works. In any event, a large
proportion of his compositions are religious, which is unusual in a prominent
East European (Polish) composer.
The series began in 1958 with Psalms of David for chorus and percussion,
continued with Strophes (1959) which included a reciter, and Psalm (1961),
an electronic composition. Obviously, Penderecki was not avoiding experi-
mental means in expressing his religious interest. Stabat Mater (1962) was
incorporated into his most ambitious composition, the Passion According to St
Luke (1966), a work of almost terrifying impact. Penderecki continued to
develop his polyphonic style through Dies Irae (1967), Utrenia (1971),
Canticum Canticorum Salomonis (1972), and Magnificat (1974), which
262 C.]. Sommerville

brought it to a level of complexity which would permit no further advance.

Starting with The Awakening ojJacob (1974), the opera Paradise Lost (1978),
and Te Deum (1979), he has moved towards a greater lyricism. All of his
experiments, whether in giving up fixed note values or more recently in a
greater attention to traditional structural principles, have been carried out
within religious works. By way of explaining the religious references he states
that 'First of all, I was raised in a very religious family and this influenced my
life, in living with the Bible which was for me the most important book at
that time. Then living in Poland where the religious [expression] was
forbidden, of course, I wanted to do something for religion. I was raised a
Catholic, I wanted to fight against the regime, to make religion important. I
became more and more interested in religion after so many years where it
was forbidden. I believe in God, of course; I couldn't do without it.'76
Few of the works mentioned above would qualify as church music. Many
of them require orchestral accompaniment which will limit their perfor-
mance, are in a vernacular which will limit their impact, or are so
experimental as to be distracting in a service of worship. But that is not
sufficient reason to deny it the label of religious music. Only those who felt
that all valid religious faith had found its full expression in the church's
medieval or Renaissance formulations would object to such a description.
And they would be open to the charge of idolizing a particular expression of
the truth, making the musical and liturgical form the focus of devotion,
rather than the truth which should transcend all forms. Ideally, the music
should illuminate the words and give them emphasis, but not restrain the
expression for the sake of form. Twentieth-century composers seem
unusually aware of the necessity for finding new forms of expression, and not
least in the area of religious composition. The songs, oratorios, operas,
ballets and cantatas I have listed are religious at least in the sense that the
Biblical Psalms, in all of their variety, are 'religious.'
There are still estimable musicians who are typed as church composers,
such as Howells and Rubbra in England, the American Sowerby, Langlais
and Durufle in France, Distler, David, and Pepping in Germany, and Peeters
in Belgium. The high level of musicianship among cathedral organists and
choirs gives scope for their talents. Some of these church composers have
adopted very 'advanced' musical styles. Erik Routley thinks that this has had
a good effect on the 'sincerity' of twentieth-century church music (always
remembering, as Stravinsky used to say, that 'Sincerity is no excuse'). For
the essential feature of experimentalism is that 'they regard it as beyond their
proper business to estimate effects .... They are miles away from the danger
of "creating atmosphere." ... Never at any point do these musicians "write
down" to the church.... In the reason for this there is no particular virtue; it
simply happens that you cannot do such things with this music. You can only
 ReligiousMusic 263

write it. You cannot write it in this way or that. There is excellent reason for
guessing that this music may turn out to be the best conversation that the
musicians have yet had with the church, just because there is a certain kind
of bad manners which, by definition, its composers cannot affect, and which,
by convention, has been the greatest temptation to church musicians of the
conventional sort.' 77
The most obvious observation about our major subjects is that their
religious compositions cannot be explained as expressions of a general or
popular religiosity. We must assume that these men went farther out of their
way in deciding to compose religious works than would have been the case in
earlier times. Also, it is clear that this activity was not part of any trend,
school, or movement within music. All of these men were leaders, and their
reputations and secure personal identities put them above the fashions that
attracted less figures. So the musicologists are right to ignore any school or
style of religious composition in this century. The various composers' works
do not seem to have fertilized the others' efforts. Perhaps there was both gain
and loss in this fact.
It is also notable that a turn toward religious compositions was not
necessarily marked by a musical conservatism. One could claim that
Stravinsky's return to classicism roughly corresponded to his discovery of
religion. But with Schoenberg and Webern it was associated with the
breakthrough to new forms. Messiaen and Penderecki have carried out all
their experiments in the context of their religious works. None of the eight
adopted a conventional style for the sake of effect, in their religious works.
And as a group, they have been harbingers of change. Stravinsky's stature
was such that even his neo-classicism started a trend. And when he was
finally to turn to serial composition, it was in the context of religious works.
Variety is another obvious feature of our story. It would be hard to
generalize about these men or the experiences which led them towards
religious expression. Half were Catholic, while others were Protestant,
Jewish, and Orthodox. A religious interest did not necessarily come in
response to any particular events or ideological trends. With Schoenberg and
Britten, political circumstances probably did contribute towards stimulating
a dormant religious faith. With Poulenc, Stravinsky, and Webern, the
awakening seems to have been a personal matter, coming in mid-life.
Sometimes there was a lifelong commitment, as in the cases of Messiaen and
Penderecki. Vaughan Williams apparently retained the form of an inherited
faith (his father being an Anglican clergyman) even though he could not
recognize its substance within himself. The virtual absence of religious works
by Spanish or Latin American composers comes as something of a surprise.
It would be tempting to account for this by the military character of the
church's triumph in Spain's Civil War. And yet the devout de Falla, whose
264 C. J. Sommerville

career was virtually over by that time, also left no religious compositions.Z''
Variety even describes the composers' different understandings of religion.
Schoenberg's interest might be called philosophical, at least at first, while
Stravinsky's was liturgical. Messiaen's and Webern's approach would best
be termed mystical. Britten's religious emphasis was ethical, while Penderecki's
was dramatic. Poulenc seems to have been most concerned to encourage his
audience in the traditional religious forms, while Vaughan Williams used
religion as an element in a humanizing culture.
But there are also common features to their religious activity. None of
them can be accused of writing 'religious entertainments.' They were too
serious about music to do anything of that sort. On the whole, their religious
works made fewer concessions to their audience than did their other works.
This would suggest that the audience was not foremost in their thinking
when it came to religious composition. By the same token, they can hardly be
thought of as inspirational. Rather, their works seem more purely expressive
and celebratory. It seems a reasonable guess that their works will escape the
suspicion which now surrounds some nineteenth-century religious com-
positions, of being conventionally and ostentatiously pious. For the mark of
conventionality is the invoking offamiliar associations, and for the most part
these works are so stylistically advanced that they evoke no associations at
all. Indeed, this is probably the reason why they are so frequently dismissed
as 'really secular.' It just does not strike commentators that the works
conform to any of the familiar notions of a sacred or ecclesiastical music.
Time will tell whether that is a weakness or a strength.
Only about half of the works mentioned in this article are available on
record in the United States, for instance, at the present time. Some of these
compositions may for ever be beyond the general public. But that would not
necessarily mean that this music will die, if it continues to stimulate other
composers. Whether Messiaen and Penderecki will continue to occupy
leading roles remains to be seen, as does whether their public will grow. But
in any event, it is surprising to find such vigorous shoots still coming out of
what seems an arid landscape. Clearly the impulse to make music, to praise
and celebrate, suggests a religious mode of expression even today. At the
higher levels of culture it still leads composers beyond a celebration of
profane loves to a glorification of that which transcends humanity itself.
Perhaps music will prove the most enduring form of religious expression. For
many could probably echo the poet George Herbert's comment, that the
times when he felt closest to heaven were during prayer and while hearing
the music in Salisbury Cathedral. 79
 Religious Music 265

NOTES
1 David Martin, 'The Sound of England,' PN Review (formerly Poetry Nation), 5:4
(1978), pp. 7-10.
2 Kenneth Clark, Civilisation, London, B.B.C. 1969, pp. 241-243.
3 Wilfrid Mellers, Caliban Reborn; Renewal in Twentieth-Century Music, New
York, DaCapo, 1979, pp. 28-33, 38.
4 Some who will not otherwise be mentioned in this article are Berio, Berkeley,
Birtwistle, Bliss, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dupre, Finzi, Fortner, LaMontaine,
Lutoslawski, Malipiero, Martin, Martinu, Maxwell Davies, Milhaud, Pizzetti,
Respighi, Sibelius, Toch, Villa-Lobos, and Wernick.
5 American composers who have used religious themes include Amram, Aschaffen-
burg, Avshalomov, Barber, Bassett, Bernstein, Binkert, Chihara, Copland,
Cowell, Creston, DelIo Joio, Erb, Feliciano, Finney, Foss, Gaburo, Hanson,
Harris, Harrison, Hovhaness, Ives, Johnston, Korte, London, Martino,
Martirano, Mizelle, Moevs, Persichetti, Pinkham, Rhodes, Riegger, Rochberg,
Salemi, Sessions, Shapey, Shifrin, Ussachevsky, Walker, Weinberg.
6 The most prominent of those who have written nothing on religious themes are
Bartok, Berg, Boulez, Chavez, de Falla, Ravel, Varese, and Soviet composers in
general. Americans in this category include Babbitt, Cage, Carter, Gershwin,
Oliveros, Partch, Reynolds, Schuller, and Wuorinen.
7 Other important religious compositions by these composers include Honegger's
Judith (1925) and Christmas Cantata (1953), Kodaly's Jesus and the Traders
(1936) and Te Deum (1936), Walton's Te Deum (1953) and Gloria(1961).
8 Thomson asserts that his work, though nonsensical, is religious in theme-about
'peace between the sexes, community offaith, the production of miracles.' Virgil
Thomson, Virgil Thomson, New York, Knopf 1966, p. 105.
9 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments, Garden City,
Doubleday 1962, p. 60; Igor Stravinsky, Autobiography, New York, Norton 1962,
originally 1936), pp. 28-36.
10 Ibid., p. 39.
II Eric Walter White, Stravinsky; The Composer and his Works, Berkeley, University
of California 1969, p. 65; Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with
Igor Stravinsky, Garden City, Doubleday 1959, p. 48.
12 Stravinsky, Autobiography, pp. 63, 94.
13 Stravinsky, Expositions, p. 64; Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues and A
Diary, Garden City, Doubleday 1963, p. 4; Stravinsky, Autobiography, pp. 12S--
131.
14 Mellers, Caliban Reborn, pp. 152(
15 White, Stravinsky, p. 69; Stravinsky, Dialogues, p. 9.
16 Igor Stravinsky, Themes and Conclusions, London, Faber and Faber 1972, pp.
40-41.
17 White, Stravinsky, p. 80.
18 Robert Craft, Stravinsky, Chronicle of a Friendship 1948-1971, New York, Knopf
1972, pp. 8-13, 63, 379; Stravinsky, Expositions, pp. 63--Q4; Stravinsky,
Conversations, p. 143.
19 Stravinsky, Expositions, p. 63; Craft, Stravinsky, p. 341.
20 Stravinsky, Dialogues, p. 9.
21 Stravinsky, Expositions, pp. 114-115; Stravinsky, Autobiography, pp. 523f;
Stravinsky, Conversations, p. 142.
22 Craft, Stravinsky, p. 10; Stravinsky, Autobiography, pp. 16lf.
266 C. J. Sommeroille

23 Stravinsky, Dialogues, pp. 76f.

24 White, Stravinsky, pp. 102,407; Stravinsky, Expositions, p. 65.
25 Craft, Stra vinsky, p. 117.
26 The catalogue of Stravinsky's religious works also includes Babel (1944), Anthem
(1962), and Introitus (1965).
27 Stravinsky, Conversations, p. 141.
28 H. H. Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, His Life, World and Work, London, John
Calder 1977, p. 34. He was never a Catholic, as is sometimes assumed.
29 Ibid ., p. 286.
30 Mellcrs, Caliban Reborn, pp . 45-47.
31 Stuckcnschrnidt, Schoenberg, pp . 233-248,461,277.
32 Ibid ., pp . 144,274,291,313.
33 Ibid., p. 342.
34 Both quotations are from Harry Halbreich's album notes for the Columbia
recording of Moses und Aron, M2-33594.
35 Stuckcnschmidt, Schoenberg, pp. 549f.
36 George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the
Inhuman, New York, Atheneum 1967, p. 132.
37 Mellers, Caliban Reborn, pp. 48-50.
38 Halbreich, op. cit.
39 Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, p. 542.
40 White, Stra vinksy, p. 378.
41 Stravinsky, Dialogues, p. 58; Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, p. 409.
42 Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer, Anton von Webem, A Chronicle of His Life and
Work, New York, Knopf 1979, pp. 269, 305-313; H . H . Stuckenschmidt,
Twentieth Century Music , New York , McGraw-Hill 1970, p. 145.
43 Otto Deri, Exploring Twentieth-Century Music, New York, Holt, Rinehart and
Winston 1968, p. 368.
44 Hans Moldenhauer, (ed.) , Anton von Webern: Perspectives, Seattle, University of
Washington 1966, p. 63.
45 Stravinsky, Themes, p. 93; Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, p. 485; David Ewen , The
Complete Book of 20th Century Music, revised edition, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. ,
Prentice-Hall 1959, p. 418.
46 David Hamilton, in High Fidelity (Sept., 1979) p. 128.
47 Mellers, Caliban Reborn, pp . 12,52-58.
48 Steiner, Language and Silence, pp. 46-48.
49 Aaron Copland, The New Music, 1900-1960, second edition, New York, Norton
1968, p. 92.
50 Robert Sherlaw Johnson, Messiaen, Berkeley, University of California 1975, pp.
10,40.
51 Le Banquet celeste (1928), Apparition de L 'Eglise itemelle (1932), L 'Ascension
(1934), La Nativite du Seigneur (1935), Les Corps Glorieux (1939), Messe de la
Pentecote (1950), Miditations sur le Mystere de la Sainte Trinite (1969) .
52 Visions de L'Amen (1943), Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-}esus (1944).
53 Le Banquet Eucharistique (1928), Les Offrandes oubliees (1930) , Hymne au St.
Sacrement (1932) , L'Ascension (1933) , Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (1941),
Couleur de la Cite celeste ( 1963), Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (1964) .
54 Me sse (1933), Trois petites Liturgies de la Presence divine (1944), La Transfigura-
tion de Notre SeigneurJesus-Christ (1963-69).
55 Johnson, Messiaen, pp. 40-42.
 Religious Music 267

56 Ibid., p. 43.
57 Arthur Cohn, Twentieth-Century Music in Western Europe, Philadelphia, J. B.
Lippincott 1965, p. 195.
58 Karl H. Woerner, Stockhausen; Lift and Work, Berkeley, University of California
1973, p. 41. Stockhausen speaks about his continuing religious search in an
interview, 'Spiritual Directions,' Music and Musicians, 19 (May, 1971), pp. 32-
39.
59 Mellers, Caliban Reborn, p. 120.
60 Bernstein's Mass is in a category by itself, since its focus is on man and his doubts
and beliefs rather than on the transcendent subjects of religious devotion-fatal
in a religious work.
61 Pierre Bernac, Francis Poulenc: The Man and His Songs, London, Gollancz 1977,
pp.28f.
62 See Michael Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, London, Oxford
University Press 1964, appendix.
63 Also Prokofiev, Prodigal Son (1929); Hindemith, St. Francis (1938); Stravinsky,
The Flood (1962).
64 Ursula Vaughan Williams, R. V" w., A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams,
London, Oxford University Press 1964, pp. 138, 162,308.
65 James Day, Vaughan-Williams, London, Dent 1961, p. 244; Hugh Ottaway, in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London, Macmillan 1980, 19:
569.
66 Stravinsky, Conversations, p. 82.
67 Dimitri Shostakovich, Testimony; The Memoirs of Dimitri Shostakovich, New York,
Harper 1979, pp. 155-159, 181-184, 33. Some doubt has been raised as to the
entire authenticity of this memoir.
68 Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw (1947); Poulenc's Figure Humaine (1943);
Britten's Pacifist March, Advance Democracy, and Ballad of Heroes (1937-39);
Vaughan Williams's Dona Nobis Pacem (1936) might be placed in this category.
69 Antheil, Blitzstein, Bush, Dessau, Durey, Eisler, Nigg, Tiessen, Weill, Wolpe.
See Stuckenschmidt, Twentieth Century Music, pp. 135-143.
70 For examples, see Shostakovich, Testimony, pp. 137f, 193f, 198.
71 Peter Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota 1979, p. 76. Auden was later to collaborate with Stravinsky after he,
too, had discovered an interest in religion.
72 Ibid., pp. 464f.
73 Mellers, Caliban Reborn, p. 173.
74 Eric Walter White, Benjamin Britten; His Life and Operas, Berkeley, University
of California 1970, pp. 32,46,61.
75 Ibid., pp. 82-91.
76 Ray Robinson, 'KrzysztofPenderecki,' Ovation (November, 1983), pp. 19--23.
77 Erik Routley, Twentieth Century Church Music, New York, Oxford University
Press 1964, pp. 119f, I42f.
78 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Memories and Commentaries, Garden City,
Doubleday 1960, p. 76.
79 Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England; From Andretoes to Baxter and
Fox, 1603-1690, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975 p. 268.

C. JOHN SOMMERVILLE is Professor of History and writes on popular

religion and the history of secularization in early modern England.

Department ofHistory, University ofFlorida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.