In Commendation of Music

(Illuminated manuscript of Gregorian
chant, likely fourteenth century, part
of the collection at McMaster University,
Hamilton, Ontario)

For almost ten years now, I have begun my mornings by listening to Gregorian chants. My favorites are the recordings by the monks of St. Peter’s Abbey, Solesmes, France, and of Stift Heiligenkreuz, near Vienna (click here for a sample of their singing).

Gregorian chant, also known as plainsong, is named after Pope Gregory I (540?-604), who is said to have standardized this form of liturgical music sung in Latin. It is composed of a single vocal line, free of rhythm and sung in unison.

This beautiful and serene music points my day in the right direction. “Chant calls us first and foremost to a sense of unity,” writes Katherine Le Mée in Chant: The Origin, Form, Practice, and Healing Power of Gregorian Chant, “a unity that exists between singer, listener, and the sound itself. It invites us to join together for a few moments in what is essentially an act of worship. We fall still, and then quietly and gently the chant rises. We are carried along together on the crest of its wave . . . As the wave touches back to shore we remain awake and more at rest. We have experienced what [the French philosopher] Jacques Maritain speaks of as ‘the intercommunion of all things, among themselves and with us, in the creative flow from which all existence comes.’”

IN COMMENDATION OF MUSIC

When whispering strains do softly steal
With creeping passion through the heart
And when at every touch we feel
Our pulses beat and bear a part;
When threads can make
A heartstring shake,
Philosophy
Can scarce deny
The soul consists of harmony.

When unto heavenly joy we feign
Whate’er the soul affecteth most,
Which only thus we can explain
By music of the wingéd host,
Whose lays we think
Make stars to wink,
Philosophy
Can scarce deny
Our souls consist of harmony.

O lull me, lull me, charming air,
My senses rock with wonder sweet;
Like snow on wool thy fallings are,
Soft, like a spirit’s, are thy feet:
Grief who need fear
That hath an ear?
Down let him lie
And slumbring die,
And change his soul for harmony.

~ William Strode (1600?-1645), English poet

The Cities inside Us

(The Bay, New York, 1922 by Joseph Pennell, 1857-1926,
American artist and author)

Each of us may be a world unto himself, arriving from a different place, carrying a different past, but coming together in community.

“The supreme value in the American scale of values is goodness; human reliability, goodwill, devotion, helpfulness. Hence the American kindness which is so striking a feature to foreign visitors,” wrote the French philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973). “Americans are ready to help, and happy to help. They are on equal terms of comradeship with everybody. And why? Simply because everybody is a human being. A fellowman. That’s enough for him to be supposed worthy of assistance and sympathy — sometimes of exceedingly thoughtful and generous attention. When you arrive in this country, you experience in this connection a strange, unforgettable sense of relief. You breathe more easily.”

Maritain traveled frequently to North America and lectured at the Universities of Toronto, Notre Dame, and Princeton, among others. He also helped draft the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

THE CITIES INSIDE US

We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.

It’s loud inside us, in here, and when we speak
In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm

Does not reach out
In place of the tongue.

~ Alberto Álvaro Ríos, born 1952, American writer of poetry and prose