Meditative music for Passiontide

Related reading and listening

1. 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)
2. 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)
3. The relationship between prudence and reality  — In this lecture, Ken Myers explains how the virtue of prudence is fundamentally connected with a deep and anchored understanding of reality. (54 minutes)
4. Constructing your Favorites List — Ken Myers describes the new ecosystem of Mars Hill Audio’s membership/partnership program and shares clips from five recent lectures released as Bonus Features. (26 minutes)
5. Festivity and the goodness of Creation — Drawing on Josef Pieper’s ideas, Ken Myers explains why the spirit of festivity is the spirit of worship, and that “entertainment” is ultimately an artificial, contrived, and empty effort to achieve festivity. (25 minutes)
6. 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)
7. In praise of a hierarchy of taste — In a lecture at a CiRCE Institute conference, Ken Myers presented a rebuttal to the notion that encouraging the aesthetic appreciation of “higher things” is elitist and undemocratic. (58 minutes)
8. No neutral view of the cosmos — Ken Myers argues that Christians need to recover a “whole-earth discipleship” that enables them to think Christianly about all areas of life, including public life. (50 minutes)
9. 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)
10. 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)
11. 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)
12. Friendship and life together — In a lecture at Providence College, Ken Myers explores how the concept of friendship, which used to be central to political philosophy, was banished from considerations of public life as the state was exalted over society. (53 minutes)
13. Developing a Christian aesthetic — In the inaugural lecture for the Eliot Society, titled “Faithful Imaginations in a Meaningful Creation,” Ken Myers addresses the question of the relationship between the arts and the Church. (59 minutes)
14. The Life was the Light of men — In a lecture from 2018, Ken Myers contrasts the Enlightenment’s understanding of reason with the Christocentric conception of reason. (57 minutes)
15. Genealogy of a work of praise — For Good Friday, Ken Myers tells the history of the text and music behind the popular hymn, “O Sacred Head, now wounded.” (27 minutes)
16. Bach retrospective — In light of Passiontide and Holy Week, Ken Myers revisits three interviews — with Calvin Stapert, Robin Leaver, and Christoph Wolff — that provide an illustrative background for listeners to appreciate J. S. Bach’s theological attentiveness and scholarly genius. (36 minutes)
17. Pierced feet, wounded side, bloodied head — As Passiontide begins (the coming Sunday), Ken Myers introduces listeners to Membra Jesu Nostri, an hour-long cycle of seven cantatas written about 1680 by Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707). (16 minutes)
18. In tune with the muses of Zion — Ken Myers on the Christmas music of Michael Praetorius
19. 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)
20. Earthly things in relation to heavenly realities — In this lecture, Ken Myers argues that the end of education is to train students to recognize what is really real. The things of this earth are only intelligible in light of heavenly realities. (59 minutes)
21. Turn to the Lord your God — Ken Myers introduces musical settings from the book of Lamentations, traditionally sung during Holy Week. (26 minutes)
22. 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)
23. 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)
24. 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)
25. 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)
26. 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)
27. 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)
28. 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)
29. Bach’s Passions in context — Calvin Stapert on the evolution of an ancient musical-liturgical tradition
30. The Passion and compassion — Richard Viladesau on art, meditation, and the affections
31. Peter wept — Poetry and music from the sixteenth century imagining the sorrow of St. Peter in recognizing his betrayal of Jesus
32. 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)
33. The Incarnation presented in music — 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.” (23 minutes)
34. Music for St. Cecilia’s Day — Ken Myers introduces several poems and related musical compositions that celebrate the heavenly gift of music and thereby honor St. Cecilia. (21 minutes)
35. Music as medicine for the body and soul — Remy Chiu examines how music in the Renaissance era was marshaled to combat the effects of plague and disease, relating that history to our own response to the current pandemic. (29 minutes)
36. The Mystery Sonatas of Heinrich Biber — Baroque violinist Fiona Hughes reflects on Heinrich Biber’s 15 “Mystery Sonatas,” each of which corresponds to one of the mysteries in the life of Jesus and Mary that focused meditative devotion. (14 minutes)
37. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 145 — FEATURED GUESTS: David I. Smith, Bruce Hindmarsh, Jason Baxter, John Fea, Laurie Gagne, and Matthew O’Donovan 
38. The poetic power of hymnody — Leland Ryken argues for reading hymns as devotional poetry, that we might have constant access to their spiritual insights and that they might help nurture and shape us into disciples. (12 minutes)
39. Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
40. Paul Tyson: Escaping the Silver Chair — With the help of C. S. Lewis’s story The Silver Chair, Paul Tyson explains how identifying and then escaping the ways in which we are bewitched about what is “really real” is no easy task. (68 minutes)
41. The inevitability of escalating public animosity — With excerpts from books and lectures by Alasdair MacIntyre, Oliver O’Donovan, and Wendell Berry, Ken Myers argues that modern political theory has guaranteed increasing levels of public conflict. (19 minutes)
42. Music for Good Friday — A conversation with Marcus Rathey and Michael Marissen about Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion. (12 minutes)
43. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 137 — FEATURED GUESTS: Gilbert Meilaender, James L. Nolan, Joel Salatin, Michael Di Fuccia, Robin Leaver, and Michael Marissen
44. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 136 — FEATURED GUESTS: Thomas Albert Howard, Mark Noll, Andrew Pettegree, Peter J. Leithart, Norm Klassen, James Litton, and Joseph O’Brien
45. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 132 — FEATURED GUESTS: David I. Smith, Susan Felch, D. C. Schindler, Malcolm Guite, and J. A. C. Redford
46. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 126 — FEATURED GUESTS: James W. Skillen, Christian Smith, B. W. Powe, David Downing, Roger Scruton, and Jonathan Arnold
47. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 119 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mary Eberstadt, Allan Bevere, Peter J. Leithart, Steven Boyer, Karen Dieleman, and Peter Phillips
48. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 106 — FEATURED GUESTS: Adam Briggle, John C. Médaille, Christopher Page, Christian Smith, Herman Daly, and Thomas Hibbs
49. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 88 — FEATURED GUESTS: Diana Pavlov Glyer, Michael J. Lewis, Steve Talbott, Darryl Tippens, Everett Ferguson, Alexander Lingas, and Calvin Stapert
50. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 83 — FEATURED GUESTS: Barrett Fisher, Dick Keyes, Richard Lints, Paul McHugh, Paul Weston, and Paul Walker