Different music has within it a particular kind of architecture. It’s much like a building or a room. It has shape, movement, depth, direction, and a unique thumbprint that identifies its creator. J.S. Bach, for example, is one of those amazing composers whose music has an architecture that is unmistakably recognizable. The composer of our offertory piece, Vere Languores, is another. TomásLuis deVictoria, one of Spain’s most famous composers of the late 16^th century, was also a Catholic priest and an accomplished organist and singer. But his music – how divinely inspired!

A cappella choral music of the Renaissance always transports me, particularly Victoria. It’s lofty, mysterious, and transcendent, but we mustn’t mistake it for being highfalutin snobbery. Even though it sounds otherworldly, God “up there” or “out there,” that concept of the divine is never implicit in its sound.

Old concepts of God tend to draw our attention to the “heavens.” European cathedrals represent God this way with massive spaciousness made possible with lofty walls and Gothic archways. As resplendent and awesome as that is, it personifies God as “up there,” in the untouchable nether regions of the universe; however, transcendence itself is a palpable, visceral experience in the core of our very being. That’s the invocation of spaciousness embedded into this music’s architecture – the inner spaciousness of each human, the epicenter of God’s activity.  

We move, breathe, and have our being in God, especially when we’re creative. God’s work is in people who are deeply connected to divine inspiration and take it upon themselves to express that in some earnest way. Although this kind of “highbrow” music might sound out of reach, it’s never out of touch. These ancient pieces of music are like relics, like the bones of saints or pieces of the cross, etc. But we must not be fooled, believing that divine presence is in precious, historical artifacts. This anthem speaks of the “sweet wood” of the cross; but relics are simply pointers to God’s loving activity, not “up in heaven” but in our highest awareness of being.

I think Victoria knew the depths within him. That’s where God stirs around, not in the rafters of a musty cathedral, but in the cockles of your own heart and in the quietness of your own mind. That’s why this music sounds so transcendent, it invokes stillness. Each time you hear it, something new comes out of it. It’s illuminated, it lives, breathes and communicates, even though it’s 750 years old.

If God had a sound, it would be this music. Victoria must have been deeply contemplative, understanding his divine potential as a composer. If only we all expressed such awareness! Our words and our actions would literally transform the world, but we often look in the wrong direction. This music may seem to point you upward and outward, but the true direction of the living God-presence is downward and inward, into the quiet spacious recesses of your very soul. Soli deo Gloria.