Music Spotlight! (Sunday, October 10, 2021)

This week, I'd like to shine a light on two religious communities who have, over the last 50 or so years, broadened the way many Western churches worship through music. First is the Scottish Iona community--a volunteer-run abbey with a heart for global song. Second is the Taizé community in France--a monastic brotherhood adapting meditative prayer to song. 

-Hannah Cruse, Music Director

Offertory Anthem

"Many Waters Cannot Quench Love" by John L. Bell

This lulling piece was written by John L. Bell (b. 1949), a member of the Iona Community. Bell is primarily concerned with the renewal of congregational worship at the grass roots level. The Community is known for its publishing of new songs and prayers for worship, both developed in fellowship and gathered from around the world. John Bell is probably their most well-known member, having composed and arranged much of the Community’s music. 

The Iona Community was founded in Glasgow and Iona in 1938 by George MacLeod, minister, visionary and prophetic witness for peace, in the context of the poverty and despair of the Depression. From a dockland parish in Govan, Glasgow, he took unemployed skilled craftsmen and young trainee clergy to Iona, a tiny and beautiful Hebridean island off the west coast of Scotland, to rebuild both the monastic quarters of the mediaeval abbey (pictured above) and the common life by working and living together, sharing skills and effort as well as joys and achievement. 

Iona remains a center for pilgrimage and tourism. The daily services of the Iona Community in the Abbey church and worship elsewhere on the island are open to all; many visitors come again and again. There is a year-round population of over 100--long-established island families as well as more recent arrivals, including those who work for the Iona Community in its centers as staff or volunteers. [Source]

Middle Hymn

#205 "Live in Charity" (UBI CARITAS)

The Taizé community in France is now famous all over the world for songs like this one--short, enchanting melodies meant to be sung cyclically, in collective prayer. 

Taizé began with one man, Brother Roger. In 1940 he came to what was then a semi-abandoned village in Burgundy. He was twenty-five years old, and he had come there to offer a welcome to Jews fleeing the Nazi persecution and to work out a call to follow Christ in community--a community that would attempt to live out the Gospel call to reconciliation. A few years later he was joined by his first brothers, and in 1949, seven young men committed themselves for life to celibacy and to material and spiritual sharing. 

Today, the Taizé Community is composed of around a hundred brothers. They come from different Christian traditions and from over twenty-five different countries, and make a life commitment to live together in joy, simplicity, and mercy as a "parable of community," a sign of the Gospel's call to reconciliation at the heart of the world. Around the brothers, tens of thousands of people, mainly between the ages of 17 and 30, come throughout each year to spend a week going to the roots of the Christian faith.

When the number of visitors to Taizé began to increase, and more and more young people started arriving, the brothers felt the need to find a way for everyone to join in the prayer and not simply be observers. At the same time, they felt it was essential to maintain the meditative quality of the prayer, to let it be an authentic encounter with the mystery of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Finally, it was found that chants made up of a few words repeated over and over again made possible a prayer that was both meditative and yet accessible to all. The music developed and sung at Taizé, for the most part, was written by the Parisian composer Jacques Berthier. [Source]

When we sing "Ubi Caritas" cyclically together, allow your mind to drift off into meditation, notice how your body feels; listen to the voices of those around you; find peace in this moment of unencumbered corporate worship.

Special Music

"Immortal Love, For Ever Full, For Ever Flowing Free" by Philip R. Dietterich

(Text by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

Immortal Love for ever full, 

for ever flowing free, 

for ever shared, for ever whole, 

a never-ebbing sea.

Our outward lips confess the name 

all other names above; 

love only knoweth whence it came 

and comprehendeth love.

We may not climb the heavenly steeps 

to bring the Lord Christ down; 

in vain we search the lowest deeps, 

for him no depths can drown:

O Lord, and Master of us all,

What e'er our name or sign,

We own thy sway, we hear thy call,

We test our lives by Thine.