Desert Tracks

I realize we are well into Lent, but as sometimes happens for us priests this season can be busy.  I have been ruminating however on a bit of a notion.  I enjoy entering into prayer with some music.  There is a bit of a radio tradition of asking people for their "desert island discs".  What music would they like to listen to if they could only have a limited amount with them to sustain them in their isolation?

Lent is a time when we take a square look at ourselves.  No varnish.  In this sense at least it is ascetical.  What sort of music could be an accompaniement on a Lenten journey or introduce some contemplation or meditation during this time?

So I made a bit of a list.

For whole pieces of music I would have to put Henryk Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs near the top of my list.  I've mentioned it before.  The recording I have has Dawn Upshaw singing and David Zinman conducting.

We have two Canadian composed Tenebrae services that I have also mentioned before:  one by the Anglican Healy Willan and the other by Msgr. Edward Ronan, founder of St. Michael's Choir School.

The Scarlatti Stabat Mater is something I like very much as well. I have a recording with John Eliot Gardiner.  All of these pieces have contemplative dimensions but rather intense moments.  The Stabat Mater is a traditional hymn recounting Mary's solidarity with and love for Christ as He suffers and dies.  It is often used in conjunction with the Catholic devotion of the Stations of the Cross.  The Stations are often prayed publicly on the Fridays of Lent and especially on Good Friday evening.

For pieces or tracks that might relax one to enter into greater stillness, I can recommend the following:

• Gabriel Faure
• Cantique de Jean Racine -- expresses the sentiment of gathering in prayer and worship.  Like one great breathing in and breathing out of praise
• Pie Jesu -- from Faure's Requiem.  Other tracks from the Requiem are beautiful too.  
• Camille Saint-Saens
• Second movement of the third symphony, also called the "Organ Symphony" for its use of the organ as its featured instrument.  Really an organ concerto in some ways.  Movement is sonorous with long melodic lines and that lovely chromatic quality that blends mutually affectionate sounds together. 
• Allegri
• Miserere -- A setting of the penitential Psalm 51.  Written for worship in the Sistine Chapel.  It has a great soaring refrain sung by a treble voice.  
• Georg Frederic Handel
• Messiah -- "He was despised".  The track "How beautiful are the feet" also highly recommended.  The first is a kind of empathetic lament, the second an other-worldly reflection.  
• Rachmaninoff
• 2nd Piano Concerto 2nd movement.  Happy pathos if that can be said.  Freakishly disarming resolution.  
• Dvorak
• 2nd movement of the "New World" Symphony -- recognizable melody.  Contemplative and quite vital at the same time.  
• Olivier Messaien
• Chants de Terre et de Ciel -- Songs of the Earth & the Sky.  Messaien forces movement inside of us.  
• Contemporary
• The sound track to Les Miserables -- any number of tracks can be fodder for reflection.  
• Traditional
• Gregorian chant, e.g. recordings by the monks of the monastery of Melleray in France.  Chant is designed to even out breath and sing in and through the words.  
• Traditional & Contemporary
• Jan Garbarek -- Recording of chant of Morales accompanied with saxophone and modern recording techniques on the ECM label.  

Even when I sit down to pray at home I find the traffic noise and the activity around distracting.  Music helps me block that out and then ease into a more focused and conscious embrace of prayer.

In your journey in the desert, I hope that you find that inner still voice that speaks and yet without human words to you.  God is love.