Toby Ward "Why Me?" talk for the 26th of February, 2023 - Second Sunday of Lent
I was delighted to accept Peter’s invitation to be a small part of this year’s Why Me? Lent talks at St John’s. I dearly hope this personal reflection assists our collective journeys as we travel through Lent, looking ahead to Easter Morning.
Making music to enhance and beautify worship has been my life for 20 years. I was drawn to music at my childhood Methodist chapel in Bramhope, West Yorkshire, in the heart of what I was taught to call ‘Wesley Country’. Fervent hymn-singing worked hand-in-hand with serious meaningful congregational prayer; it is remarkable looking back that despite no mass setting, no anthems, no sung responses (certainly no Gregorian chant!) - those early services felt as sincere and replete as any I have experienced.
Clearly, much was subconsciously imprinted during my early years in John Wesley’s Methodist Church. We sang hymns by his brother - Charles Wesley - which are central to so much of Anglican tradition, and as my musical progression grew, I entered the choir re-founded by Charles’ grandson, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, at Leeds Parish Church, singing seven services a week from the age of 9 onwards.
As a result of Leeds’ growth in the early part of the 20 th century, a new church was called for; what we now know as Leeds Parish Church, or latterly Leeds Minster, the largest church to be consecrated since the new St Paul’s Cathedral. Looking back, Leeds Parish Church in the early 2000s was a remarkable Victorian time-capsule. Perhaps because Leeds reached its height as a city when the new church was consecrated, or because of S.S Wesley’s titanic influence, I first experienced Anglican church music and liturgical practice soaked through with all the trimmings of Victoriana. It must have been this that
led Sir John Betjamin to relect on Leeds’ unique ecosystem, writing: there’s high church, low church, and Leeds Parish Church.
I started to feel keenly as a young teenager (I enjoyed a late voice-break at 16), that music should first beautify and enhance worship; and often vehemently hated any repertoire which crossed this. A little like the classic one- liner referring to singing – ‘never louder than lovely’ – I felt (and still feel) a keen and personal embarrassment when performing music which does not lift the text above the spoken word. Why bother? This is why you are unlikely to find late 20 th century brutalist Anglican settings on the music list here at St John’s!
Alongside this, I started to consider whether visibility of musicians actually assist or hinder worship. After a joint service with Leeds Catholic Cathedral, where the choir are hidden behind the high altar (a little like here at St John’s), I started to feel strongly that the collegiate layout of Oxbridge chapels, quire of Cathedrals and Greater Churches like Leeds, is a hindrance rather than a help to music’s role in worship. The traditional Catholic and Anglo-Catholic form, of course, is to have the musicians in a west-mounted gallery. Out of sight, allowing the music to speak.
A year at another of S.S. Wesley’s choirs, Gloucester Cathedral followed, preceded three years at King’s College, Cambridge, arguably the ultimate concert-church experience. The chapel would be packed every day, with the eyes of the hundreds present not on the altar or texts, but keenly trained on the choir – whose reason-to-be is ostensibly augmenting the worship with music. What role does music play, and what should be the focal point? This question extends beyond worship; in discussion with friends only a few night ago, we unpicked whether – at a concert – closing your eyes to listen and
focus is a ‘waste of the experience’ or ‘not seizing the opportunity to watch’. Fascinating though it is to lift the car bonnet and observe the moving parts, in this context to watch the choir in the middle of the chapel or cathedral, we should return to why the music is there in the first instance.
Music, in essence is transformative, invisible, possessing an extraordinary power and emote us, often against our active will. Watching the musicians in worship, I believe, removes much of that magic and transformative power. The core of my approach as a lay person and church musician is always the same – we are here to augment, beautify and assist the pre-existing worship. It comes as no surprise to me that music has been at the heart of the brilliantly orchestrated revival of St John’s. Making a joyful noise has been at the very heart of Judeo-Christian worship forever, from King David calling for lyres, harps and cymbals to praise God, to that famous line from this season of the church’s year: ‘and when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives’. Music creates communities, transports us, and most central to my approach, it lifts us out of the mundane towards elevated states of contemplation, emotion, reflection and grace.
Today we celebrate Woman Composer Sunday. Only in its second year, it sits uneasily with me that we need to have a Woman Composer Sunday at all. The battle to change the vast imbalance of the centuries has only just begun. As part of my day-job work in early music, there is a saying or often-repeated opinion that ‘anonymous’ in a source most likely means it was written by a woman, and it is only in all-female establishments that we truly know names for
works. Today, we represent female composers from 16 th century Italy right through to a Kerensa Briggs, one of our finest young British choral composers.
It is my pleasure and my duty to augment the worship of this community with music once a month. As part of the ongoing growth of St John’s, it is greatly encouraging to see the growth of music at the heart of future plans. I close by encouraging you all to use music more to your benefit; whether in private contemplation or by consuming live music, in worship and in concert.
Whilst this is not a sermon, reflecting on the music of the female composers today, I close with a verse held dear by many musicians from Psalm 96:
Sing to the Lord a New Song. Sing to the Lord all the earth.