The music and the notes are precious

Related reading and listening

• 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.”
• 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)
• Music that demands an existential commitment — Jaroslav Pelikan on the radical differences between Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Passions
• The dance of law and freedom — Calvin Stapert on the experience of joyous order in Bach’s music
• The infinity of beauty in Bach — David Bentley Hart on why Johann Sebastian Bach is the greatest of Christian theologians
• In tune with the muses of Zion — Ken Myers on the Christmas music of Michael Praetorius
• 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)
• 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)
• 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)
• 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)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 151 — FEATURED GUESTS: Richard Stivers, Holly Ordway, Robin Phillips, Scott Newstok, Junius Johnson, and Peter Mercer-Taylor
• 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)
• Bach’s Passions in context — Calvin Stapert on the evolution of an ancient musical-liturgical tradition
• 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)
• How hymnody produced an important English poet — Christopher N. Phillips on William Cowper’s suffering and (artistic) triumphs
• From cities humming with a restless crowd — In a much-sung hymn and a little-known poem, William Cowper seeks retirement from worldliness
• 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)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 149 — FEATURED GUESTS: Dru Johnson, Steven L. Porter, Reinhard Hütter, Matthew Levering, David Lyle Jeffrey, and Christopher Phillips
• Walter Hooper, R.I.P., and Christina Rossetti’s Advent poems — Walter Hooper (1931-2020) describes his first meeting with C. S. Lewis, a man he so admired and long served. In a second chapter in today’s Feature, Emma Mason explains how Christina Rossetti’s hopeful eschatological beliefs influenced the poems she wrote about the season of Advent. (21 minutes)
• 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)
• 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)
• O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: Malcolm Guite and J. A. C. Redford on the Advent O Antiphons — Poet and priest Malcolm Guite and compose J. A. C. Redford talk about how poetry and liturgy invite repetition, and also about how music interprets a text and alters how one inhabits poetry over time. (64 minutes)
• Martin Luther, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation — Historian Andrew Pettegree (Brand Luther: 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation) describes how Luther’s facility for writing in German and his intuitive business sense spread ideas and transformed the distribution model of the printing industry. (55 minutes)
• Music for Good Friday — A conversation with Marcus Rathey and Michael Marissen about Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion. (12 minutes)
• J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion — Divine glory and human suffering
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 137 — FEATURED GUESTS: Gilbert Meilaender, James L. Nolan, Joel Salatin, Michael Di Fuccia, Robin Leaver, and Michael Marissen
• 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
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 135 — FEATURED GUESTS: Bob Cutillo, Hans Boersma, Dana Gioia, Matthew Levering, Bruce Gordon, and Markus Rathey
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 132 — FEATURED GUESTS: David I. Smith, Susan Felch, D. C. Schindler, Malcolm Guite, and J. A. C. Redford
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 126 — FEATURED GUESTS: James W. Skillen, Christian Smith, B. W. Powe, David Downing, Roger Scruton, and Jonathan Arnold
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 120 — FEATURED GUESTS: Douglas Rushkoff, Phillip Thompson, Jonathan Wilson, James Bratt, D. C. Schindler, and Paul Elie
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 106 — FEATURED GUESTS: Adam Briggle, John C. Médaille, Christopher Page, Christian Smith, Herman Daly, and Thomas Hibbs
• 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
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 71 — FEATURED GUESTS: Peter Augustine Lawler, David Koyzis, Roger Lundin, Craig Gay, Steven Rhoads, and R. Larry Todd
• Creation as beauty and gift — FROM VOL. 67 David Bentley Hart describes how the Christian understanding of Creation as beauty and gift, as the outward expression of the delight the Trinity has in itself, reveals a vision of reality different from the pagan or fatalist vision of reality. (12 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 67 — FEATURED GUESTS: Eric O. Jacobsen, Allan C. Carlson, Terence L. Nichols, R. R. Reno, David Bentley Hart, J. A. C. Redford, and Scott Cairns