Sunday 10 January 2010

Music and Worship: The Music of Taizé

The religious community at Taizé, near Cluny in Burgundy, France was founded in 1940 by Brother Roger Schutz (1915–2005). The community is ecumenical and international, and people from all over the world, including many young people, spend time there and find peace and fulfilment.

Like most Christians, members of the Taizé community believe that singing is a vital part of worship. What makes Taizé songs distinctive is brevity, simplicity and repetitiveness. Typically a short song is repeated several times, sometimes with varied improvised accompaniments, often at a time of prayer.

Brevity, simplicity and repetition ensure that each piece can be sung by everyone and that its message is direct and easily understood. Although the Taizé songs that most people know were composed in the 1970s, the musical style will probably strike us as more ancient than modern – there is sometimes a debt to the eighteenth and previous centuries, and no obvious resemblance to late twentieth-century popular-style worship songs. Limited parallels might, perhaps, be drawn between Taizé songs and some post-modern, minimalist music. But ultimately there’s a timeless quality about Taizé music, which is probably one reason why it speaks to so many people worldwide.

The preface to the publication Chants de Taizé (Taizé, 2001) states that ‘nothing fosters a communion with God more than a meditative prayer with others, with singing that goes on and on and that continues afterwards in the silence of one’s heart’.

Originally the Taizé brothers composed much of the music themselves, but Jacques Berthier (1923–1994), later organist of the Jesuit church of St Ignace in Paris, began to compose for them in 1955. Of the hundreds of songs by Berthier we have probably used a dozen or more in Chandler’s Ford, including ‘O Lord, hear my prayer’, ‘Jesus, remember me’, ‘Veni, Sancte Spiritus’ and ‘Ubi caritas’. Taizé songs have in recent years featured particularly in our Holy Week services, but we sometimes use them at other times, for example during the distribution of communion.

Some songs have Latin words – even today Latin has some claim to be a universal language. Many can be sung in various languages – Chants de Taizé gives plenty of examples. Music from Taizé is widely available in printed form and as recordings. Christian bookshops should be able to provide details.

‘Sing praises to the Lord. Alleluia, alleluia! Sing in joy and gladness.’
‘Wait for the Lord. whose day is near. Wait for the Lord: keep watch, take heart!’

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