Page 367 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

19 April 2019

Why do the godless yearn for religious music?

Saint Cecilia (oil on canvas) by Rocca, Michele (c.1670-c.1751) CREDIT: BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Ivan Hewett, CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
19 APRIL 2019 • 8:05AM
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Today is the high-water mark of the great tide of religious music that sweeps over the country at
this time of year.

In churches up and down the country there are performances of Bach’sPassions, those dramatic
retellings of Christ’s arrest, trial and crucifixion, and also Handel’s oratorios, above all the
Messiah. In concert halls, remarkably, it’s the same story.

And yet the sudden rush of Passions and oratorios at Easter obscures an astonishing fact about our
secular age, which is that religious music is absolutely everywhere, all the time.

This hunger for music with a spiritual dimension takes many forms. On the populist side there are
albums that lace easy-listening with a spiritual ambience such as Pure by New Zealand-born singer
Hayley Westenra, which 15 years after its release is still the bestselling classical album of the 21st
century.

Alongside pop covers it has arrangements of Maori religious songs, Amazing Grace, and a sacred
piece from Carmina Burana. More than 20 years on, Charlotte Church’s debut Voice of an Angel,
which features Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu and César Franck’s Panis Angelicus, is still at
number five in Classic FM’s list of top sellers of the past 25 years. Just a few places below are those
plainchant-singing Priests at number 10.

Far away from these albums in terms of greater historical accuracy, but quite close in terms of pure
“angelic” voices, are the choirs performing church music from centuries ago, much of it in Latin.
The trend was launched more than 40 years ago by the Tallis Scholars, who found there was a

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