This week I'm writing the obituary of Dr Mary Berry who preserved and revived Gregorian chant when sweeping changes following the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s threatened to destroy all that she loved.
Dr Berry is still alive - although ill and elderly - but The Times likes to have its obituaries tucked away ready for the moment when they're needed.
I'm mentioning this because, as well as being a musicologist, nun and Cambridge don, Mary Berry started Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge in order to study, teach and perform Gregorian chant. Not only started - she has since worked all over the world teaching the chant.
For several years I've attended her singing weekends where - despite not being a Catholic - I've been enriched, purified, even ennobled to a degree by the practice of singing the liturgy, and also by listening to the superlative sounds issuing from the cantors - our leaders.
Yehudi Menuhin said that no one who sings in a choir can be unhappy - and this is true.
We have such an opportunity with Sanscrit - perhaps as much as the Schola with Latin. But it needs to be chanted again and again until the sound enters one's being.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
The power of chant
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19 comments:
Are you saying that sounding the Sanscrit in School is not enough - it needs to be chanted?
Yes, I'd like to explore the subject at any rate. If it works for Gregorian chant then why not for the sutras? The music may not be so beautiful but the sounds will be there.
I find Sanscrit grammar a struggle and a penance. Is it meant to be like that? If the knowledge is in the sound then the more we sound the more knowledge there will be. And the only way I know to keep on soundiung is to chant.
Otherwise we keep on stopping and starting and the sound is dissipated.
surely 'the music not being so beautiful' is a personal cultural limitation? in the same way that not everyone hears the beauty of Ravi Shankar's playing. But what is the benefit in sounding sanskrit? superlative sounds issuing from the cantors yes, but an average group purlease! chanting a prayer, possibly, though if not a religion then prayers seem out of place for sounding. if you don't understand the words then poems are meaningless. admiring the grammar I can understand but sounding won't bring understanding of the grammar, only learning the rules and using them to construct. If culturally you find the sound is not beautiful then where is the benefit? Sanskrit is not magic!
An Indian sitar player recently told me that it is only non-Indians who can enjoy Shankar's racket.
It could well be worth the try. Although my practice of Gregorian chant is certainly not perfect, that doesn't seem to matter. As a group working together, we can reach a place of harmony and 'prayerfulness' that would be impossible acting singly.
Moreover, one learns through singing - words that would be difficult to remember otherwise may easily be recalled within the context of song.
On the matter of beauty - Gregorian chant is very beautiful as are the hymns and psalms within the service. I've had little experience of chanting Sanscrit but it does not appear to me to have that beauty. I may be wrong.
Nevertheless, chanting Sanscrit is a recognised and traditional way of giving praise and acknowledging the Self. If Sanscrit is limited only to the grammar it becomes dry and arid, for me at any rate.
We hear so often that truth is in the sound. We also hear that truth may be understood from the Sanscrit itself.
I have not experienced this. I would like to do so. No one has demonstrated this to me.
I'm seeking a means of entry other than through the grammar. If chant can do it - then let's have the chant.
I once had an experience of sound = meaning. It was awesome. I don't know if it's magic, Anonymous, but it wasn't explicable.
So I believe there's something in it, but I wouldn't want to explore that under the instruction of anyone in the School at present - because I don't believe anyone knows enough about it.
As for chanting ... why not? I think it's great fun. Again I would not agree with Anon. because in my experience the average group makes a fantastic sound and I totally lose myself in it.
"As a group working together, we can reach a place of harmony and 'prayerfulness' that would be impossible acting singly."
But SES is supposed to not be a religion...
maybe I've spent too much time chanting with people who don't know enough about it!
Possibly what the West has to learn about is the gap that there is between what it labels as 'religion' and a spiritual path.
I have no problem with a spiritual path, I was picking up on Laura's comment about "prayerfulness". If the path is not religious then "prayer' plays no part in it. Although in a legal context a prayer can be unrelated to a deity in common context and in association with a discussion of spirituality it is a direct address to a deity, which may or may not be God.
Hence my comment about SES claiming to NOT be a religion. About as futile as google insisting it is not a verb. If some of it's members regard it as a religion and use terms associated with religion when discussing what they experience or aim for through SES then doesn't it become a religion despite any protestation to the contrary?
I don't think the SES has this one voice claiming not to be a religion. As you say, a lot of people in it seem to believe that it is one.
I heard anecdotally that Mr Townend was very struck by an argument that he witnessed between some senior members of the School as to whether the organization believed in God. Some of them insisted that it didn't, some did. They were unable to agree.
But you seem to be focusing on the political entity and not on the possibility. In our culture organizations are either religious or philosophical or scientific or whatever. I don't really see that there has to be this great distinction. Laura's just saying that she likes prayerfulness. She's not a spokeswoman for anything, or against anything. Fair enough?
Perhaps I can clarify here? In the context of Gregorian chant 'prayerfulness' is entirely right. The word needn't be a stumbling block when considering Sanscrit chant. Just substitute 'devotion' for 'prayer'
'Devotion'? What to?
It would be whatever - or whomever - one was chanting to. In other words, the words are important here.
But then the words are always important.
Then, logically, if you're chanting a Sanskrit prayer then you are "praying". And if school demands that you chant Sanskrit it is demanding that you pray to...?
So if members believe they are praying then aren't we verging on religious rather than spiritual or philosophical?
This may be a different point, but I think it is wrong to have religious terms and practices in a "philosophy school". For example, the material used to throw in a mention of "the Creation" [aka the product of a Creator] which I thought was both underhand and irrelevant to whatever point was being made.
I don't think that if there is a Creator, he, she or it gives two hoots whether or not I am an Atheist.
I really enjoy chanting Sanskrit, but it's not for religious reasons. I would hate to think that this made me a devotee of some faith without my knowledge.
Maybe this is the crux of Anonymous's persistence. Religion through the back door? Yuck.
Exactly right V. How much of the material is drawn from 'thinkers' and how much from religious texts? It's not exactly as if the Sanskrit already studied doesn't consist of prayers. So is this via the back door or has it already nabbed the port, taken over the best seat in the smoking room and settled back to read the telegraph?
Hee hee.
Well, I think though there is a difference between "religious texts" that demand belief and those that suggest, inspire or give one a different perspective. Christian culture is based on dogma, and I think we translate the Indian stuff into our dogmatic terms. So far as I understand, in India it's more important to live in a certain way (orthopraxy) than to hold a certain set of beliefs (orthodoxy).
It's hard for us to imagine that devotional hymns might not be allied to orthodox belief, but I think it's possible. We are all devoted to something, whether or not we admit it.
This is a paradox. Even though I've said earlier that the words are important, when singing Gregorian chant I've found that they're not. Or not very.
Thank goodness it is in Latin, I'd find it difficult to stomach the threats of hell (in the mass for the dead)if we sang them in English.
So intellectually I'm a non-believer - or, possibly, an appalled believer - in this sense.
But, at another level, the sound penetrates deeply, the unity and harmony gathers all together, the profundity of feeling is there. It is devotional. It is beautiful. At times like that I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
What I'm exploring here is the possibility of chanting Sanscrit for similar reasons. I understand the intellectual difficulties, the discussion about philosophy vs religion, and it may be that a philosophy school simply couldn't allow chant for love.
But it would be a deprivation. This is a school of the fourth way, recommending action, knowledge and devotion. If devotion is to be more than making cups of tea for 20 years (as V noted)then what have we to offer it?
So from 'the words are always important' we now move to the 'words are not important, it's the sound...'
The crux of what I was trying to get at was not just 'is this religion by the back door' but that we have to recognise what it is we are 'devoted' to v. what we are expressing 'devotion' to. (please substitute whichever belief/religious word seems most appropriate to you).
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