Excursus: The song of angels
How do angels sing? – angels? Those androgynous humanoids in white robes
with a pair of wings sprouting out of their shoulders who, when the going gets
tough, carry divine messages to man? The chubby infants that cluster around the
edges of baroque altars? Yes, those are the ones I’m talking about. And the
others, the Seraphim who are completely covered by the feathers of their six
wings and who fly about crying to each other: "Holy,
holy, holy, is YHWH of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory."
In the book of Job, rejoicing to god after he created the world is the domain
of the “sons of god”– a problematic description for later interpreters who then
swiftly demoted them to angels. The evangelist Luke provides entire celestial
hosts to announce the birth of Jesus Christ to the shepherds in the fields. But
just how did it sound, this angel song? How do angels sing? What kind of
question is that? Angels can’t sing because they don’t exist – so say today’s
joyless rationalists. Better than most of what passes for singing today say
those who lean towards romanticism infused with a dash of religion and who are
somewhere along the spectrum between petty bourgeois and philistine. Although
both answers address a number of aspects worth discussing, neither is entirely
satisfying. Angels do exist. Their presence, to a greater or lesser extent, has
accompanied the cultural history of the western world for thousands of years.
After a long phase of niche existence during which the sciences asserted the
undisputed sovereignty of their world view, more recently feathered and
feather-free angels are enjoying growing popularity in popular theology, the
self-help genre and television. With their help, increasing profits in the
field of insurance advertising and films with titles like “A heavenly gamble”
reduce these heavenly beings to deceased but still all-too human beings – a
misconception that, although theologically indefensible, has enjoyed a
resurgence in the residue of what were referred to in less secular times as
‘popular beliefs’. Other examples
populate our daily life with guardian angels in the form of a beloved partner
or child but also as angels of death who through murder and assassination bring
death and suffering down on man. But this new version of heavenly being cannot
sing, although singing the praises of god used to be one of the most important of
an angel’s tasks. The last angel in (German) popular culture confronted with
this form of song and who failed spectacularly was “Ein Münchner im Himmel” …
zifix! H´luja, sog i!
At the purely physical level, a naturalistic understanding of the
question of how song could be produced by angels has always been avoided in
sermons and tracts. Generally speaking, angels do not normally have bodies that
bear any comparison to human bodies. Given the lack of larynx, tongue, lips and
vocal cords, the idea of a singing angel takes on a puzzling aspect. And these
heavenly beings were apparently capable of much more than innocent song in
praise of god. According to Genesis (6,1-4), after the creation of the world a
particularly wild band of these “sons of god” had their way with a group of
defenceless women with the result that a new species of giant came into the
world. And all of this without physical bodies? And even if the physical
process of angel song was never discussed in detail or clearly explained and
any witnesses are sadly unavailable, the old texts leave no doubt that angels
can sing. The question how has more
to do with the musical style in which their voices are raised. Do they sing in
the style of Bach, Hildegard von Bingen, or perhaps in the style of a Gregorian
chant? Why not in the style of Stockhausen? If angels are regarded as purely
spiritual beings then perhaps they particularly like the music of Schönberg and
Webern. The strange absurdity associated as much with the second question as
with that of the physical aspect takes us to the point where we can bring the
relationship between man and angel into play. We find ourselves close to a
possible culturally intrinsic speech on aspects of this culture. In our culture
angels act as beings that appear and take action without actually belonging to
this culture. They stand beyond the world of humans and mediate between it and
the sphere of the divine. They stand outside of human culture, yet are a part
of it but as outsiders. They stand beyond history but influence it. Just think
of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to the Virgin Mary. This outsider position is due
to the fact that on the one hand we think nothing of accepting stories in which
angels come into contact with humans and can make themselves understood, while
at the same time, as soon as we question “how” they manage to do so, we run the
risk of spiralling down into the absurd, regardless of the manner in which this
“how” is interpreted. This has, however, never stopped people from maintaining
bilateral relationships with these kindred spirits from the upper spheres and
attributing to them a caring, supportive or even destructive influence on
earthly relations. The angel – as a role model – has been extraordinarily
important to western song and therefore on the local development of music as a
whole.
Already in the second century before Christ, the aprocryphal Book of
Enoch underlined an aspect that would characterise how Christian angels are
presented: their unceasing songs to the glory of the Lord. These songs of
praise would become the angels’ most important task. In a later version of the
same book penned around 70 years after Christ, this aspect is even more clearly
present. Singing is also the way the angels fulfil other tasks such as
monitoring the course of celestial bodies and maintaining order on earth.
Through their song, angels bring all of heavenly life in harmony: “so wonderful
and marvellous is the singing of those angels, and I was delighted listening to
it.” For the Christian church the obvious step was to take the choirs of angels
as the role model for the praises sung by man. And that is what subsequently
took place. To the Christian understanding, the liturgical song during mass is
the participation of man in the angels’ songs of praise. Mortal and immortal
beings join in one choir in that man adds his voice to the song of angels. And
not only in liturgical song, the idea of music at all becomes a gift made by
winged beings to us mortals. According to Hildegard von Bingen, the world was
created from words that resound and human music from the choirs of angels.
Similarly, Martin Luther is also familiar with the idea that music was brought
to man by the angels:
“He who chooses music has won a heavenly treasure, as its source is heaven and the dear angels themselves
are musicians.”
A number of legends tell how saints were taught certain songs by angels.
Parts of the Catholic liturgy such as the Sanctus and the Gloria are traced
directly back to the angels. Monks’ chants emulate the songs of angels.
Monastic life in general was initially understood as the human equivalent to
the angels’ ministry and certain sources state that, when singing, the monks
sounded like angels.
Liturgical song encompasses the idea of kinship with the song of angels.
Less perfect but still close. There can be no fundamental difference as it
would have been a hopeless endeavour to emulate it without an acoustic
reference. While it is often said that man is not able to sing well enough to
do justice to the object of his praise, namely god, nevertheless he was on the
right path. Hildegard von Bingen has left us with the wonderful notion that, in
song, the soul is reminded of sounds from its heavenly home. However, in order
to give man any chance at all of emulating angelic songs of praise in a recognisable
form, first of all the sounds that issue from the heavenly home must be
translated into human terms with concrete points of reference in terms of their
musical-tonal structure. In the earlier writings of the Old Testament that
dealt with acoustic experiences with angels, the audible results could not be
called beautiful in any musical sense nor could any individual join in with
this song. When the first instances were recorded, the voices of angels, along
with every other sound they produced, such as that issuing from their wings,
were shattering, terrible, it sounded like a thundering army, the roaring of
mighty waters or the boom of a great earthquake. The first angels, those who
hadn’t been through the Western program of cultivation, don’t actually sing,
they call, cry out, their voices sound like that of a lion. Of music, the gift
made later by angels to man, there is not a single trace. With this experience,
it is no surprise that angels in the New Testament mostly announce themselves
with a “Fear not!” Until then the advent of an angel connoted something
terrible that also went far beyond the human scale in acoustic terms. Over
time, a friendlier and more moderate note began to characterise the visual and
acoustic world of angels throughout Christendom. The unceasing songs of praise
remained “indescribable” and the first attempts to place the song of angels
into an aesthetic category cannot have been very encouraging to the fallible
human singer: perfection, ineffability, sounds that had never been heard
before, una voce (with one voice), sine fine (without end), alter ad alterum (dialogical,
alternation between two choirs), were the conditions applied to the song of
angels and were therefore also applied as an ideal for man to fine singing and
songs of praise. “Sweet” as an attribute would soon also follow and is one that
would develop to be a consistent characteristic in regard to the song of angels
over the centuries.
The aesthetic definition of songs of praise also included disparaging
the areas of the human voice that had not contributed to the ideal of fine
singing and disputing their suitability for the liturgical art of song and
indeed for several centuries for art at all. It resulted in a complete
separation of the part of the voice that best suited the world or other-world
view: the ugly part of the voice was simply attributed to evil in the form of
the devil. When they were consigned to hell, the fallen angels – led by
Lucifer, the devil – lost their ability to sing beautifully. In direct contrast
to the song of angels with their harmony and purity, the sound of the devil’s
voice was all shrieking and dissonance. The howling of the fallen angels is so
terrible that it defies description using the human voice. As with everything
else, the devil also corrupts music, he cannot sing properly, instead he
hisses, howls and cackles; he is incapable of making true music. Hell is filled
with deafening noise. One hears coarse animal sounds, from grunting pigs
through to roaring lions, and the acoustic space resounds with the rattling of
chains and gnashing of teeth. This horrifying pandemonium is reminiscent of
those first angels, whose “song” was anything but harmonious and sweet. Before
the rupture that split the heavenly hosts into good and evil angels, the
messengers of god had every possible sound available to them without anyone
defining them as godly or diabolic. What was central, however, was the
shattering impression they normally left behind them.
Already in medieval times,
descriptions of the devil’s music were likely regarded with greater interest
than talk of the sweet song of angels and peace and harmony. The distinction
made by the church between good music inspired by the songs of angels and the
evil “rasping” that must have been contaminated by the devil was unable to
hinder the development of a secular tradition of song and dance to which high
art was of little consequence and in which vocal expression could sometimes be
given to the coarseness associated with the body and real life. Angelic beauty
was less important to the musicians who travelled from place to place singing
their songs and cantastoria than real
life. The aesthetics of beauty were in conflict with the aesthetic of life and
the prevailing aesthetic categories of ritual song that were represented and
propagated by the spiritual and artistic elite in medieval western culture
could not accommodate a larger dose of real life. But life cannot so easily be
stifled. In the niches that escaped the watchful eye and absolute domination of
high art, naturalistic song has always found a voice and developed further. The
pre-Lenten carnival must surely be the most impressive proof of this strong
counter-movement. These colourful singing subcultures of the middle ages could
not, however, prevent the idea of a good, precious and beautiful sound as
separate from the evil and ugly voice being burnt deep into the collective
psyche of the Western world. We know to a relatively precise degree which
sounds are acceptable to our fellow men and which are not. This is currently
felt to a lesser degree in the public arena as the boundaries separating art
from popular culture have relaxed considerably.
The conflict between the good and the forbidden voice that was reflected
over the centuries in the metamorphosis of the song of angels is played out
today principally in the way we deal with our own voice. This is where the
forces that want to preserve the beautiful, risk-free voice clash with those
that want to enforce the rights of that other voice that did not lose its
vitality while underground. The images that illustrate this battle emerge in
the dreams of those who seek that voice. When exploring the dark side of the
voice, it is not unusual for all the animals, demons and devils whose intention
it is to put the integrity of the beautiful voice at risk to appear during the
hours of sleep. However, the more success one has in integrating the supposedly
dangerous aspects of one’s voice, the more peaceful become the dream beings.
Its malicious character turns out not to be the reason why this part of the
voice was banished, but, to the contrary, its consequence. The fallen angel is
not banished from honourable society because he is evil but becomes a demon
because he has been banished. Our efforts to make the entire human voice
resonate can be viewed, from the angels’ perspective, as an attempt to erase
the division within the world of the angels. The acoustic results of this
liberation of the voice bear some similarity to that primal song of angels
rather than clinging to the dulcet tones of the angelic choirs after the fall
of Lucifer. Beauty is released from its one-sided dependence on harmony and
filled with vitality in which all the feelings and sounds have the right of
expression.
