When you hear great music, or you read compelling writing, partly what makes it amazing is that it draws your attention with great clarity. The same applies to a dynamic speaker, you hang on their every word. When that happens, it’s the truth that captivates you. The music of Bach is like this, Howells is another. The level of attentiveness that created it is like a tiny shard of glass, a pinpoint that is never frenetic. If its frenetic, it’s noise, and while it might get your attention, it’s never lasting. Truth is eternal, and something new comes of it each time you hear it. Very few people express truth that way.

One of my organ students was having difficulty with Bach, bewailing the concentration that it took to play it. Bach’s music is hard, requiring trapeze-artist focus. Dare I say that’s because Bach perfected his music? If not, imagine trying to “improve” upon it – what blasphemy! Have we the audacity to improve upon creation itself? I suspect that in order to achieve this kind of high-level, artistic output, one must create with a high-level of awareness, a purity of focus uncontaminated by a fidgety mind or external distraction.

The creative process works best in stillness. If you’re looking for good ideas, they come when you are far away from angst. Angst might motivate, but if you want quality, it has to feel like the very hand of God is moving yours. This only comes when you are alert, focused, and comported. We know this in the Psalm, “Be still and know that I am God.” Stillness, a pure focus and a quiet mind are the only way to bring about the right words when you need them; the most meaningful melodies, when you compose; or the most effective actions, when you need to make a decision. I envision Bach with a quill, manuscript paper, and a quiet candle guiding his undivided imagination.

When a person has depth, you can sense it. Creative types love being alone, likely because at a deep level, they know they are not alone. Manuscripts of masterpieces are preserved consciousness, artifacts of the universal intelligence out of which they were begotten. Most humans are plagued with cacophonous innards, so the best of creativity is never extracted. Herbert Howells, who wrote our offertory anthem today, was more like a visual artist that used sound to evoke images and feelings, than just a composer. Somehow, you can sense that the ideas came from a depth of stillness. If you listen carefully, you can literally hear the wind blowing in this anthem and sense the tenderness of the story as the vocal lines whir and meander through the unfolding of time itself. It’s a stunning picture of the perfection of God becoming human. In the middle of the anthem, the soloist comes in, seemingly out of nowhere, and sings of the tender shoot emerging from the no of all nothing; a mysterious truth of the divine source of all life manifesting form.

Somehow great artists, like Howells and Bach, seem to understand the source of their inspiration, which is essentially love. Not only do we know God in stillness, we know “God is love,” and those concepts are both applicable and interchangeable for us. I’m not saying we are God, but if God is the ocean, we are the ripples on the surface. Those who understand depth are able to express that in the most profound ways. The closer you become to the creator, the closer you become to that divine capability that lies deep within you. I hope you can hear why this music is so incredible, but be still and pay attention, it’s very subtle, but oh so sublime. Soli deo Gloria!