
released 1/1/2021
From 1999 (Volume 41 of the venerable Mars Hill Tapes), composer J.A.C. Redford talks about the theme of the Incarnation as musically presented in his choral symphony for Christmas entitled “Welcome All Wonders.” Redford describes his choice of five poem texts to set to music, each of which includes visceral imagery and the paradoxes inherent in the Incarnation, the marriage of Spirit and flesh.
23 minutes
PREVIEW
The player for the full version of this Feature is only available to current members. If you have an active membership, log in here. If you’d like to become a member — with access to all our audio programs — sign up here.
Related reading and listening
- Rose without thorns — Ken Myers introduces various settings of “Ther is no rose of swych vertu,” a medieval carol that uses imagery of a rosebush to describe the Virgin Mary. (29 minutes)
- In tune with the muses of Zion — Ken Myers on the Christmas music of Michael Praetorius
- “Investigations of divine works” — Greg Wilbur explains how closely connected music is to the order of the cosmos and how it even reveals attributes of God. (56 minutes)
- Nun komm der Heiden Heiland — Ken Myers looks at the history of an Advent hymn written by St. Ambrose in the fourth century, adapted by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, and transformed by J. S. Bach and many others in the years since. (21 minutes)
- The experience of a “real presence” in sacred music —
FROM VOL. 126 Jonathan Arnold explores why people of no religious commitment pay money to hear specifically sacred music. (22 minutes) - How music blesses and teaches —
FROM VOL. 64 Theologian and musician Jeremy Begbie explores what we learn about time, theology, and the structure of Creation from the experience of music. (28 minutes) - The founding of a choral ensemble —
FROM VOL. 119 Founder Peter Phillips recounts the history of his choral ensemble The Tallis Scholars. (23 minutes) - A beautiful human geometry — Musicologist Leopold Brauneiss compares Arvo Pärt’s compositional technique with Jungian archetypes
- A bridge between yesterday and today — Composer Arvo Pärt describes how he came to appropriate the mysteries of polyphony
- From the heart of silence — Conductor Paul Hillier on the sources of Arvo Pärt’s distinctive musical expression
- Prayer and complexity in Arvo Pärt’s music — In honor of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s 90th birthday, Ken Myers talks with Peter Bouteneff, about the singular qualities of Pärt’s music. (19 minutes)
- How to illustrate music and mystery —
FROM VOL. 164 Illustrator Joonas Sildre discusses his graphic biography of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. (19 minutes) - Music that conveys spiritual truths —
FROM VOL. 137 Musicologist Michael Marissen discusses the masterful way in which J. S. Bach uses musical idiom and quotation by way of theological counterpoint to the texts of his sacred vocal works. (13 minutes) - Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 164 — FEATURED GUESTS: Dana Gioia, Brady Stiller, Robert Royal, Richard DeClue, Tiffany Schubert, and Joonas Sildre
- Gifts for a baby King — Ken Myers introduces listeners to various musical compositions created for Epiphany (January 6), the Church’s feast day celebrating the revelation of Christ to the world. (25 minutes)
- Music, silence, and the order of Creation — In this lecture, Ken Myers explains how it is that our participation in harmonic beauty in music is a kind of participation in the life of God, in Whom all order and beauty coheres and is sustained. (61 minutes)
- Angelic voices: saying or singing? — Pope Benedict XVI on the intrinsically musical character of angelic utterance
- “The angels sang, and the shepherds too” — Ken Myers introduces listeners to the Christmas musical compositions of French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier (c.1645–1704). (19 minutes)
- Seven Messianic titles, seven attributes of Christ — Ken Myers introduces listeners to four composers who each have set all seven of the O Antiphons to music. (17 minutes)
- The physical beauty of music — Music can be likened to a cathedral, says professional guitarist Gordon Kreplin, when it creates through silence and sound a meditative space into which one may enter and encounter God. (14 minutes)
- Music and the meaning of Creation — In this 2018 lecture, Ken Myers advocates for a recovery of the pre-Enlightenment idea of the intelligibility of music. (61 minutes)
- Counterpoint as a “spirited discussion” — In this essay, John Ahern explains the beauty and order of counterpoint, the accumulation of multiple melodies that come together in a harmonious whole. (20 minutes)
- The Decline of Formal Speech and Why It Matters — John McWhorter examines the reasons behind the decline in articulate speech and writing in the late 20th century, and the implications of this change across many areas of culture. (55 minutes)
- Forms as portals to reality — Ken Myers explains the ancient classical and Christian view that music embodies an order and forms that correspond to the whole of created reality, in its transcendence and materiality. (54 minutes)
- The formative power of hymns and hymnbooks —
FROM VOL. 149 Christopher Phillips discusses the cultural and spiritual effects of hymns and the “thingness” of hymnals. (18 minutes) - Congregational singing in Martin Luther’s time —
FROM VOL. 137 Liturgical scholar Robin Leaver clarifies some misconceptions about Martin Luther’s commitment to congregational singing. (10 minutes) - Early 19th-century hymnody —
FROM VOL. 151 Musicologist Peter Mercer-Taylor tells the story of how early 19th-century hymnody introduced many Americans to a repertoire of classical music. (27 minutes) - St. Irenaeus against the Gnostics — In this reading of an essay by theologian Khaled Anatolios, St. Irenaeus is remembered for his synthesis of faith and reason. (52 minutes)
- How music reflects and continues the created order — Musician, composer, and teacher Greg Wilbur explores how music reflects the created order of the cosmos. (55 minutes)
- “Reading Lewis with blinders on” — Chris Armstrong explains how C. S. Lewis’s work is grounded deeply in the Christian humanist tradition. (45 minutes)
- Martyrdom and music — To mark the feast day of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, we offer an interview from 2004 with composer J. A. C. Redford and poet Scott Cairns about their work together on an oratorio based on the story of Polycarp’s death. (15 minutes)
- Redford, J.A.C. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: J.A.C. Redford is a composer, arranger, orchestrator and conductor of concert, chamber and choral music, film, television and theater scores, and music for recordings.
- In dulci jubilo — Ken Myers introduces some of the music for the season composed by Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), best known for his settings of Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (“Lo how a rose e’er blooming”) and In dulci jubilo. (18 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
- Maximalist music —
FROM VOL. 8 Dominic Aquila explains how — unlike the minimalist composers John Cage and Philip Glass — Arvo Pärt uses purity and simplicity to point beyond the created world to the transcendent Creator. (6 minutes) - Turn to the Lord your God — Ken Myers introduces musical settings from the book of Lamentations, traditionally sung during Holy Week. (26 minutes)
- Music without emotivism — Julian Johnson discusses how novel, historically speaking, is the idea of complete relativism in musical judgment. (33 minutes)
- Music, passion, and politics — In this interview from 2001, Carson Holloway discusses his book All Shook Up: Music, Passion, and Politics, which summarizes the dramatic chasm between the classical and modern views of political ends and of musical means. (45 minutes)
- The mysteries and glory of Christmas and its music — Ken Myers presents examples of music from five centuries that capture some sense of the astonishing fact of the Nativity of our Lord. (15 minutes)
- The music and the notes are precious — Ken Myers encourages an understanding of the Church as a particular culture that should be nourished and sustained, and then describes the history of an Advent hymn written by St. Ambrose. (27 minutes)
- Parsing the intellectual vocation — Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann demonstrate that some form of humanism has always been central to the purposes of higher education, and insist that the recovery of a rich, Christocentric Christian humanism is the only way for the university to recover a coherent purpose. (39 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 154 — FEATURED GUESTS: Felicia Wu Song, Michael Ward, Norman Wirzba, Carl Trueman, D. C. Schindler, and Kerry McCarthy
- Stabat Mater dolorosa — Ken Myers offers some thoughts on the aesthetics of sympathy, and introduces some of the musical settings of the remarkable medieval poem known as “Stabat Mater dolorosa.” (23 minutes)
- Passions before Bach — In preparation for Holy Week, Ken Myers presents a whirlwind music history lesson with musical examples from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. (22 minutes)
- “Broken Bodies Redeemed” — Today’s Feature presents a reading of a 2007 article by Gilbert Meilaender that explores the significance for bioethics of the mystery of human being as body and soul. (39 minutes)
- The mysteries and glory of Christmas and its music — Ken Myers presents examples of music from five centuries that captures some sense of the astonishing fact of the Nativity of our Lord. (26 minutes)
- Beckoning to wisdom — Poet Malcolm Guite and composer J.A.C. Redford talk about their collaboration on a song cycle inspired by the O Antiphons of Advent. (22 minutes)
- Renaissance music for Good Friday — In a special Feature for Good Friday, Ken Myers shares settings of passages from the Book of Lamentations and of the Tenebrae Responsories by Tomás Luis de Victoria. (18 minutes)
- Meditative music for Passiontide — At the start of Passiontide, Ken Myers introduces listeners to works by the Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus which highlight the theme of lamentation. (18 minutes)
- The role of hymns in building faith — Darryl Tippens reminds us of Scriptural texts in which a person is moving closer to God when music breaks out (such as Mary’s Magnificat, and he discusses the history of music in the church. (23 minutes)