Exposed by Beauty

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In 1638, Gregorio Allegri composed a rendition of Psalm 51 to be sung during Holy Week at Vatican City. The song, Miserere Mei, is arguably the most beautiful piece of music ever written. It was deemed so sacred, the Pope refused to allow anyone to transcribe it. For over 100 years, the song could only be heard during Holy Week in Vatican City. 

That all changed in 1770 when 14-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart went with his father to the Vatican for Wednesday evening mass. Upon hearing the music, the young genius went home and transcribed the entire score from memory in two hours. Since then, the once-secret piece has been reproduced so many times that an error was made when Felix Mendelssohn made his own copy, scoring the most moving portion of the piece a fourth of an octave higher than intended. The result is a haunting top C note, pretty much the highest note found in the entire choral repertoire, reserved for a boy soprano whose yet-unchanged voice has the rare capacity to hit the note in its purest form. It’s a thing of sheer beauty. 

I heard the Miserere for the first time in February when I popped into Westminster Abbey for Ash Wednesday service, during which, unbeknownst to me, the singing of Allegri’s masterpiece by the boys choir is an annual tradition. Unprepared for this thing of beauty, when the young chorister hit the famous note, I burst into tears, overcome by what I can only describe now as a luminous moment of divine beauty. “Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them,” warns author Frederick Buechner. 

Beauty is the divine language of God, speaking truth and goodness into the banality of our souls, which are so satiated by entertainment and artificiality that we are deaf to the sounds of the sacred all around us. “In turning away from beauty, we turn away from all that is wholesome and true, and deliver ourselves into an exile where the vulgar and artificial dull and deaden the human spirit,” observes author and poet John O’Donohue. 

And if we are honest, much of our modern world is ugly, driven by power, pragmatism, and good, old-fashioned, quantifiable utilitarianism. Our schools are built to look like prisons, and we wonder why they are the seedbed for so much violence. Our language, like our food, has become so ugly and industrialized that “words come to us processed like cheese, depleted of nutrients, flattened and packaged, artificially colored and mass marketed,” writes UC Berkeley professor Marilyn McEntyre. Porn has automated, mechanized, and degraded human sexuality, distorting the divine image of women into mere objects to be acted upon, abused, and discarded. It is shocking just how much ugliness we endure and even allow on a daily basis. 

And though beauty is elusive, she still remains. Beauty brings the ideal into the real. To experience beauty is to glimpse the face of God. Unlike mere entertainment—the sole goal of which is to anesthetize us to the pain and reality of our hurting world—beauty disrupts the status quo, breaking into our tired, old world by awakening our imaginations to new possibilities and new ways of being human. Is it any wonder then that “every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist,” as Hebrew scholar Walter Brueggemann quips?  

It is possible that that’s what Fyodor Dostoevsky meant when he foolishly claimed, “Beauty will save the world,” hinting that the way things currently are aren’t the way they will always be because the Beautiful One has already saved the world. Our task is to join Him in creating the beautiful future He has promised, one where there is “no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things have passed away.” 

And maybe the best way we do that is not through a sermon, but a song—a song so beautiful, so captivating, so teeming with the sacred that to hear it will change your life forever. To borrow the words of professor Vigen Gurorian, “God is more like a cantor who chants His creation into existence and rejoices everlastingly over its beautiful harmony. His song continues, and its melody moves and inspires humankind to restore beauty and harmony to a Creation that is fallen and misshapen.”

Reflection:

Developing a habit of appreciating and being transformed by beauty takes conscious effort. What can you change this week to better prepare your heart to behold, cultivate, and immerse yourself in the beautiful? 

Listen:

Just prior to his untimely death in 2008, John O’Donohue gave one of his last interviews on Krista Tippett’s podcast, On Being. The episode details O’Donohue’s theology of beauty and its salvific role in the world. After listening to the interview, listen to Miserere Mei not just with your ears, but with your whole heart, paying attention to how your body responds.

Awed by heaven, rooted in earth,
Gary Alan for The Sophia Society

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Photo by Joshua Mudge.