Page 369 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

to the Renaissance and medieval periods, and also forward, to our own time. That has to be a good
thing.

But what is the significance of this boom in religious or “spiritual” music? I would say it shows
that in a stressful age, people have developed a need for music that quietens the mind, offers a
haven from the hurry and noise of everyday life, and unlocks a passage to our deeper selves.

Despite the decline of organised religion, there is still a vast, inchoate sense in the population at
large that there is more to life than getting and spending. Surveys of religious attitudes bear this
out. A Eurobarometer poll in 2010 found 37 per cent of UK citizens “believe there is a God”, and 33
per cent believed there was “some sort of spirit or life force”.

Religious music gives us access to that realm, without the commitments of organised religion. And
while everyday music is full of messages one has to labour to grasp, the stillness of Pärt or Tavener
is simpler, and seems to go far beyond time and place.

However, I think the wave of Bach Passions and Handel oratorios taking place all over the UK this
weekend stands apart from the general hunger for spiritual music. You can’t ignore that fact that
it’s happening now, at the most solemn time of year for Christians.

And it would be a strange listener who ignored the Passion story in Bach’s St Matthew Passion,
and treated it just as nice music. There’s an urgent message in those tragic arias and angry
choruses that we have to pay attention to. Just for a moment, we are reminded with blazing force
of what religious music truly meant, before belief ebbed away.

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