In honor of the day

It has been frequently asserted over the past several years – perhaps even centuries, for all I know – that people listen to music for the beat and melody without paying heed to the lyrics. We hear this especially from the youth who claim the lyrics do not subconsciously shape their thoughts (which is often not the case).

Be it naiveté or ignorance or simple refusal to admit it, I suspect it is a claim that has long been made, both by the young and the old. It is a claim that Saint Ephrem , whose memorial we celebrate today, knew to be false.

Born in Nisibis in Mesopotamia about 306, Ephrem was, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “a great composer, a musician.”

In his day, singing during the Liturgy was uncommon, though songs were frequently found on the lips of the heretics who knew well that little jingles long remain in the mind and are, at the very least, repeatedly hummed by those who hear them. With the passage of time the words that accompany the tunes begin to sink in, thus altering someone’s thoughts and beliefs or planting seeds of false doctrine in an uncatechized mind.

Ephrem, a Syriac deacon, recognized the danger here as he saw heretical beliefs grow so he took the tunes of the heretics and put his own lyrics to them, always remaining faithful to the true faith. He even organized a choir to sing his songs in the church and from there his good jingles took root in the people and slowly brought them back to the faith of the Church.

The Holy Father says of Ephrem:

Poetry enabled him to deepen his theological reflection through paradoxes and images. At the same time, his theology became liturgy, became music; indeed, he was a great composer, a musician. Theology, reflection on the faith, poetry, song and praise of god go together; and it is precisely in this liturgical character that the divine truth emerges clearly in Ephrem’s theology.

Regretfully, this unity between theological reflection and song is somewhat lacking in much of contemporary “church” music. It is often bad enough that the melodies are trite, but much of the time the lyrics are banal if not downright false.

Certainly there is good music being composed today for use within the Liturgy, but not enough.

Commenting on Ephrem’s songs, Pope Benedict says that he

gives his poetry and liturgical hymns a didactic and catechetical genre: they are theological hymns yet at the same time suitable for recitation or liturgical song. On the occasion of liturgical feasts, Ephrem made use of these hymns to spread Church doctrine. Time has proven them to be an extremely effective catechetical instrument for the Christian community.

Have you ever simply sat down with a contemporary hymnbook and simply read the lyrics on their own? Try it some time and see if the same be said for them as for Ephrem’s songs. I suspect not. Will our songs today really prove to be effective for catechesis? Let this be the aim for composers today.

In his own day Ephrem was called “the Harp of the Holy Spirit.” May he send us many more such harps in our own day.