Sacred Music as an advocate for interfaith dialogue and peace

Music has always been a valuable art form that crosses boundaries and borders to promote the idea of peace and of interfaith dialogue by sharing beauty via different cultural expressions.

Aug 21, 2014

By SHANTI MICHAEL
Music has always been a valuable art form that crosses boundaries and borders to promote the idea of peace and of interfaith dialogue by sharing beauty via different cultural expressions. Most major religions have some form of sacred music as part of their worship and prayer, and one of the simplest ways to appreciate the faith of others is to listen to the devotional music that is associated with that faith.

With everything going on in the world today, not to mention our own country, it would be a good time to explore ways and means of performing sacred music as a way to promote interfaith harmony. The media is filled with news and pictures of the horrors of war and bloodshed, pictures of boycotts of local franchises and protests and rants over offences and insults over race and religion. While in many ways social media a blessing, it is also a curse to be inundated almost everyday with the negative outcomes of people warring physically and verbally over religion, when religion is supposed to bring forth love and peace.

Throughout history, there has been sacred and secular music written, advocating for peace and unity. Most people are probably more familiar with the secular music that has been written, but there have been various sacred works that are worth listening to and examining. An example of some of the more modern works is Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Britten was commissioned to write the piece for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed during the Battle of Britain in World War II.

The War Requiem is a public statement of Britten's anti-war convictions and a denunciation of the wickedness of war. For the text of the piece, Britten interspersed the Latin Mass for the Dead with nine poems written by a World War I footsoldier called Wilfred Owen. Britten also wrote the piece for three specific soloists — a German baritone (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), a Russian soprano (Galina Vishnevskaya), and a British tenor (Peter Pears) to demonstrate that he had more than the losses of his own country in mind, and as a symbol of the importance of reconciliation. The piece was also meant to be a warning to future generations of the senselessness of taking up arms against fellow men.

The first London performance was in Dec 1942, in Westminster Abbey. The work received immediate critical acclaim and was hailed as a masterpiece. It is widely performed all over the world.

Another excellent example is Karl Jenkins The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace. The piece was commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum for the Millennium celebrations to mark the museum's move from London to Leeds, and it was dedicated to victims of the Kosovo crisis. It is also an anti-war piece and is based on the Catholic Mass, which Jenkins combines other sources, principally the fifteenth century folk song L’homme arme (The armed man). The text also incorporates words from other religious and historical sources, including the Azan (Islamic call to prayer), the Bible (e.g. the Psalms and Revelation), and the Mahabharata (one of the two major Sankrit epics of ancient India). Writers whose words appear in the work include Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Sankichi Toge, a Hiroshima survivor.

This piece was premiered at The Royal Albert Hall, London on Apr 25, 2000 and performed by The National Youth Choir of Great Britain and the National Musicians Symphony Orchestra. Like the Britten piece, it was very well received and since its premiere has been performed hundreds of times worldwide.

There are also collaborative works done to promote interfaith dialogue through the arts all over the world. Though these efforts are worldwide, we don’t have to look very far to attend them.

Every year, Singapore has a festival of sacred music called A Tapestry of Sacred Music. It was a highly admirable effort that presented acts from all over the world. This year, they had Malaysia’s very own Pusaka, who presented a ritual dance originating from Terengganu called the Ulek Mayang. The festival also has Buddhist chants, Sikh devotional songs (Kirtan), American Appalachian Folk Hymnody and Christian choral music. There was also Jordi Savall’s Jerusalem, a production that had music from the three Abrahamic religions- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There were Israeli, Palestinian, Iraqi, Greek, Armenian and Turkish traditional musicians who performed music from the ancient Holy Land, medieval Europe, the Greek Islands, Armenia; from Hebrew psalms to Arabic prayers and from Latin chants of Christian monks to zikirs of Sufi dervishes.

In Malaysia, we do have admirable cultural efforts like the Rainforest World Music Festival but we haven’t really had much specifically dedicated to interfaith sacred music, nor is it showcased much in the Peninsula.

Imagine what it would look like if we made a concerted effort to have a Festival of Sacred Music for the purpose of healing all the interreligious tension that has been happening recently. Malaysia is blessed to have so much diversity in culture and religion that if there were to be a collaboration for the sacred arts, specifically in music, it could only bring about light to a society that is growing increasingly murky with the ugliness of discrimination, and efforts like this could help heal the horrors of war that we see happening all over the world.

By sharing our art and devotions with each other, we could let sacred music heal us.


-- If you have any questions with regards to music in church please feel free to send your questions to the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission at liturgy. [email protected]

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