The origin of music in historic times has always been traced to religion. There are endless myths in every form of primitive folk lore that connect the two together, and make the first musician a saint, a hero, or a god. Over this art above all others has been cast the romantic spell of divine worship; and there is this that bears out the legend, that the earliest emergence of music is connected with ritual and associated with sacrifice. The tom-toms of the savage races, beaten to drown the cries of the victims, are thus reserved for the service of the gods, while their connection with war and military attacks is due only to the notion that battle is merely a vaster sacrifice than any other, and that the slaughter of men appeases the anger of God. So, again, all the other arts have clustered round the sanctuary and the shrine, and have developed themselves in adorning these hallowed places. Painting, architecture, literature, dancing, have grown up under the shadow of religion; and in their exercise we recognize something of a divine inspiration. The idea seems to have been that because God required none of the necessaries of life, He could be worshipped only with superfluities. The place where His glory dwelt was not really supposed to be a lodging-place, but only a local site where the majesty of His presence might from time to time make Its appearance visible. It was beautified and made "lovely" because it had no need to be made comfortable: man builds his home for convenience, but his temple for honour. So, too, in its development of sacred music. Following the same historic idea, Christianity introduced a mystic origin to the organ when it placed Saint Cecilia as its inventor.
Nor is it to be wondered at that music should have come in a more especial way under the influence of religion. In the purpose of faith, or rather in the structure of its machinery, there is an extra ordinary parallel between it and the science of harmony: for music is in a very marked way a unification of distinct sounds. The idea that underlies it is, quite simply, that there are seven separate notes that complete the tones of the voice, though by means of arrangement these may be variously sounded at a high or low pitch. Starting, therefore, from these seven, it arranges them in a definite order, but in endless combinations. It starts, that is to say, with difference, and achieves unity: out of seven it welds together harmony, and out of diversity constructs a chord. It is for ever marrying what God has put asunder. It glories, not in the splintered colours of the rainbow, but in their perfect and harmonious concentration in pure white light. Science, on the other hand, works by contrary principles: it deliberately sets out to find difference. Where the amateur sees only mere repetition and specimens monotonously alike, the specialist takes a positive delight in discovering new species and minute points of difference. His business is always to distinguish, to separate, to label. He has his knife for ever ready to dissect. He plans for his museums his long line of cases that stretch out endlessly, and builds new wings to huge palaces to house his ever-increasing number of varieties. The type of mind that science generates is always inclined to grow less and less fond of the arts. Even when harmony continues to appeal, it is most often because it notes the differences that are united, not the unity of the differences.
Now it is just here that music finds in religion its old ally, for the purpose of religion is to gather together all the isolated phenomena of the universe and fit them into a single scheme. It takes up the broken pieces of a shattered world and places them, as a child does its puzzle, to form a perfect picture. It gathers up the fragments that remain to fill to overflowing the baskets of the soul's food. For religion, which insists absolutely on the unity of God, preaches also in consequence the unity of the world. There is no chance in life, no haphazard; but all is directed by a Supreme Providence towards a supreme goal. All human life, whether the individuals or the whole race or the continued details of individual experience, is not a separate accident, but part merely of a larger scheme: for Divine Power, Wisdom, and Love created and order the world. Religion, therefore, fronts the world, and facing also its manifold differences and variations, yet sees it as the seamless garment of God. It takes up from the single standpoint of the Divine Maker and Controller of all things such an attitude to life, that joy and pain, failure and success, good hope and ill, find themselves one in Christ. Music, then, makes appeal to me by preaching its gospel that out of variety and difference is achieved the harmony of creation. It mirrors for me the world, and I see God in the centre of the orchestra of the universe, beating time and keeping together every form of music. "Even that vulgar and tavern music which makes one man merry and another mad, strikes in me," said old Sir Thomas Browne, "a deep fit of devotion and a profound contemplation of the First Composer."
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.