Sing Like an Angel

What the Divine means to an atheist singing sacred music

In a world dominated by bouncy pop and lyrics that (if you’re lucky) drape a melody around a superficial cry of “Yolo!” many people never find their way inside the sacred pieces written in the 15th and 16th centuries.

That is a real shame.

There are many reasons why this could be difficult music to “get”—starting with the (usually) Latin words, and the (often) slow tempos. And then there is the religious angle. Some of us are put off by expressions of faith that we don’t share, whether we adhere to doctrines that differ from those in the text or are nonbelievers.

But if you can find your way inside some of these fascinating pieces, a reward is waiting for you.

Let’s start with a short secular piece by Orlando Gibbons, “The Silver Swan”:

The silver swan, who living had no note,

When death approached, unlocked her silent throat;

Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,

Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more:

“Farewell, all joys; Oh death, come close mine eyes;

More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.”

Granted, this isn’t party music, but we can certainly relate to the sentiment - surely, more fools than wise now live, and the mournful tones and textures of this composition may help you process how you feel about that.

From there, we move into a sacred piece, but one that is in English, “I call and cry to thee, O Lord” by Thomas Tallis:

This is another (relatively) short piece, clocking in under three minutes, but notice the underlying theme of the text:

I call and cry to thee, O Lord. Give ear unto my plaint
Bow down thine eyes and mark my heavy plight
And how my soul doth faint
For I have many ways offended thee
Forget my wickedness, O Lord, I beseech thee

Thomas Tallis done got the blues.

By now, you might be getting a sense of how these songs are structured. Rather than the familiar verse-chorus-verse we associate with popular music, these compositions are meant to give a framework to the words and ornament them. The longer phrases emphasize the arc of thought behind the text, and the tones of the chords give colors that highlight the emotions communicated by the piece as a whole.

Let’s do one more - this time, experience a piece from the Latin Christian liturgy, “Ave Verum Corpus,” composed by William Byrd:

Sing like a bird, indeed.

Once again, this is a poem pleading for mercy from God—and you have to remember that this theme of begging for forgiveness is central to all kinds and flavors of Christian traditions. In that way, it reminds me of the more recent Blues traditions, but it also captures some of the terror of the vastness of the universe that modern humans have experienced since we unlocked the secrets of the atom and began exploring the enormity of space.

These three examples show human beings grappling with eternal themes through art, joining together to create beauty, often in places that were purpose-built to enhance the sound, like the Ely Cathedral seen in the Gesualdo Six videos.

I have performed these pieces, and many pieces like them, with various choirs over the years. Most recently, I joined a group of colleagues from work to perform “The Silver Swan” and some Byrd, Tallis, and Palestrina pieces as part of a “spiritual fitness” program around the holidays. My boss came to one of the performances. She is Episcopalian, and she knows I’m an atheist, and she asked me later, “How can you sing such beautiful music and not be moved to believe in God?”

I couldn’t give her a coherent answer at the time, but I’ve thought about that a lot in the years since. If she asked again, I would tell her, “There is nothing more human than building a story to help process our pain and channeling that pain into our art. You hear God in what we humans are doing—and that is what makes us all Divine.”