Reading group: Augustine weeps at the hymns, Confessions IX.6–7 and X.33, over two weeks
Its coordinates: 5.8 Philosophy of Music and Literature
Every Sunday I play hymns for people who are moved by them, and I'm never sure whether that is the point or a distraction from it. Augustine wasn't sure either. Let's read the two passages where he struggles with it.
Text: Augustine's Confessions (book page). Any translation will do; Chadwick's and Pusey's are both good, and Pusey's is public domain.
Week one: Book IX, chapters 6 and 7. In Milan, after his baptism, Augustine weeps at the hymns and canticles of the church. He tells us Ambrose's congregation had begun singing hymns and psalms in the manner of the East, partly to keep their spirits up during a time of trouble.
Week two: Book X, chapter 33. Years later, examining himself, Augustine confesses that the pleasures of the ear hold him. When the singing moves him more than the words sung, he says, he sins, and then he would prefer not to hear the singer. He recalls that Athanasius had the psalms read with so little inflection that it was nearer speaking than singing. And yet he remembers his tears in Milan and cannot condemn them.
A question to bring: is Augustine's worry that beauty distracts from God, or that it can stand in for him? And is there an answer to it that a church musician can live with?