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From his first success with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1967 at the age of 19, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s works have given a prominent role to religious themes. Recently, in a surprising move prompted by the 1982 death of his father, William Southcombe Lloyd Webber, organist at All Saints Church near Westminster Abbey, …
Continue reading “Andrew Lloyd Webber: From Superstar to Requiem“
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Every poet would like, I fancy, to be able to think that he had some direct social utility. . . . to be something of a pop entertainer [T. S. Eliot, “Poetry and Drama,” 1951]. From his Harvard undergraduate days until shortly before his death in 1965, T. S. Eliot exchanged spooling rhymes, bawdy limericks, …
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We weren’t really sure what to do,” Daniel Davison said, after his entire rap-metal band Luti-Kriss got “saved” at an Assemblies of God revival service. “But we figured we should stop cussing so much in our songs. And . . . maybe we can write songs about God!” Inexplicably, the group changed its name to …
Continue reading “Jesus Climbs the Charts: The business of Contemporary Christian Music”
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My wife and children have not forgiven me yet; perhaps they never will. We were in the small southern Indiana town where I grew up, and a gospel concert was advertised for the auditorium of the little Christian college there. It seemed like a grand opportunity to let my family in on a part of …
Continue reading “Looking for the Gospel at a Gospel Concert”
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Of all the arts, music is the most available and the most universal. It springs out of the very speech and soul of a person or a community. It uses the most universal instrument, the human voice, and sounds created by earthy things like catgut and skin and wood and brass. Its tenderness and its …
Continue reading “On Being Alive to the Arts and Religion: Music”
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After a performance in a shabby industrial town in Tennessee of the Mozart Requiem, which the concert manager had requested the Robert Shaw Chorale not perform because ‘it was too highbrow,” a young woman waited for the autograph seekers to depart. “I suppose,” she told Shaw quietly, “there are two kinds of people who would …
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The images abound in stock video footage accompanying stories on evangelicals, the religious right, megachurches and the culture wars — the obligatory shots of middle-class worshipers, usually white, in corporate-looking auditoriums or sanctuaries, swaying to the electrified music of “praise bands,” their eyes closed, their enraptured faces tilted heavenward, a hand (or hands) raised to …
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Being wise in the world of music from a Christian perspective means being aware of music’s powers and the way some sound patterns are especially well suited to drawing us into the purposes of God. One of these powers is the way that music can represent tensions and resolutions. It is seven in the morning. …
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The phrase “contemporary Christian music” evokes for many people visions of pious confection and Amy Grant; singers preaching to the converted in an extremely insular subculture. However, a few performers in recent years have brought to the industry a more substantial expression of feelings, thoughts and impressions that center on a seriously considered journey of …
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Never mind all the times I’d heard the hymn sung by a congregation, or by a children’s choir, or as a solo during communion–this time it was as if I was hearing “They’ll Know We Are Christians” for the first time. The singer stood absolutely still, her eyes closed, her head tilted back. With open-hearted …
