This Concert would make Hurley Hum

At the Denis Hurley Centre in Durban we are gearing up to celebrate 100 years since the birth of the late archbishop.

Four days of events will culminate in “World Religions in Concert” on Archbishop Hurley’s birthday, November 9: the call to prayer will be chanted from the roof of the mosque next door, church bells will then ring out in response, and the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra and choirs and soloists from Durban and beyond will present music from different religious traditions.

It all sounds wonderful, but, to be honest, helping to devise the concert has challenged me to learn about the very different roles that music plays in different religions.

I should have anticipated this, given the way that art is used by different religions.

As Catholics, we expect to see our churches rich with paintings, stained glass, mosaics and sculptures. We share this with our Anglican and Orthodox brothers and sisters — in fact, if anything, the latter surpass Catholics in the quality and the quantity of their church art.

But we are also probably aware that this is in contrast to many reformed churches — especially Lutheran, Baptist and Congregational — where the interiors are very stark and simple.

The argument over the use of art in churches has frequently become violent, whether the iconoclasm of the 7th century or the destruction wrought by the Calvinistic followers of Cromwell in England in the 17th century.

When we look at other faiths we see a similar range of expression. Hindu temples make the art in Catholic churches seem restrained, whereas Sikh temples (though coming from a similar background) avoid any physical representations, while still using elaborate goldwork.

While there are some Jewish places of worship that use ornate decoration, synagogues are generally quite plain except around the place where the Torah is kept — the tradition on which our Catholic tabernacles are based. However, all Jews, like some Christians, would insist on avoiding any physical representation basing their argument on the 2nd Commandment’s injunction against “graven images”.

Mosques, from a similar theology, would never show any human representation — of Allah or even of the Prophet — but their tradition of calligraphy (elaborate decorative writing) has given them a way of decorating, and adding in some flowers and leaves, that is still seen as theologically acceptable.

When we decided to create an orchestral concert that drew on the music of different traditions, I assumed naively that this would be an easy exercise. After all, there is no shortage of Christian music: beginning with the earliest forms of written music (the beautifully designed books that enabled psalm settings to be passed from monastery to monastery), to the orchestrated versions of the Mass (a form that even a Protestant composer like Bach could not resist), to the hymns of the founder of Methodism Charles Wesley and his sons.

Almost every Christian tradition uses music in some way in their worship services, and much of this works well for an orchestra.

But the same is not true of other religions. Hindus and Sikhs have a strong music tradition, but it is specifically with chanting, drums and accordion, and definitely not congregational singing of the sort that Christians are used to.

In their services, Jews really use only unaccompanied chanting, but outside of synagogue they do have a very rich tradition of folk music, orchestral composers (Mendelssohn and Mahler, for example) and musicians.

Muslims are similar to Jews, as they are in so many other matters, in terms of music in services being limited to chanting, but they do not necessarily share the Jewish commitment to non-religious music.

There are great Muslim folk music traditions — think of Egyptian singers — but then other Muslims will argue fiercely that music is haram since it detracts from worship of God. Inevitably, there are examples from the life of the Prophet that can be invoked by each side in the debate.

Not surprisingly there are also religious traditions, like the Shembe or the Sufi whirling dervishes, who do use music extensively but would be offended if that same music was used outside a religious context.

So after months of negotiating this theological maze we have finally come up with a programme which we hope will satisfy all parties and inspire those who hear it: the hymn setting of St Francis’ “Make me a Channel of your Peace”, the Bach version of “Ave Maria”, the Jewish prayer of forgiveness “Kol Nidrei” (by Bruch; especially apt since November 9 is also the anniversary of Kristallnacht), Muslim chants and Buddhist prayer bells, an orchestral setting of Ragupati Raghva (which was one of Gandhi’s favourite pieces of music), a modern setting of the Zulu ceremony of ijadu or family reconciliation, Ennio Morricone’s “Gabriel’s Lament” from the film The Mission, and an orchestral piece celebrating the earth written by a modern Muslim composer from Qatar.

To add to the complexity, the bells that will open the concert, though seeming to come from the cathedral, will actually (in an act of ecumenism that Archbishop Hurley would have appreciated) be the Anglican bells of St Mary’s Greyville since they provide a much wider range of sounds.

Meanwhile, the closing of the concert will be a hymn that uses Archbishop Hurley’s own words. But it will be set to the tune that Beethoven composed for Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” — both of them men with little commitment to organised religion—which has ironically been adopted as a secular hymn by the European Union.

So we have a concert programme that will provide a wonderful range of music — and also reflect the very many ways in which religion and spirituality has been expressed in music across different traditions.

We hope that Archbishop Hurley will be looking down, smiling and perhaps humming along!