Crucifixion

The new term begins at Morley College and I resume rehearsing Stainer’s The Crucifixion with our choir. I am profoundly disturbed by it.

“O come unto me, this awful price, Redemption’s tremendous sacrifice, is paid for you...”

“Yet in the midst of the torture and shame, Jesus the crucified, breathes my name.”

Both of these quotations are from hymns which Stainer stipulates should be sung by the choir and (significantly) the ‘congregation’.

Most classical composers of Christian religious music have managed to produce something which manages to transcend the specifics of Christianity. Byrd, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven have all written ‘Masses’ which a Japanese, and even a Muslim, choir could sing without too much offense. But Stainer’s is a piece of nineteenth century evangelicalism that proclaims a substitutionary version of the atonement, glorying in a Scorcese-like focus on the physical details of the process aimed at producing guilt and repentance in the listener. I will continue with the rehearsals because of the friendships I have developed with choir members but I cannot participate in a public performance.