If doctrine strengthens our minds, and other music quotes

The posting of quotes by human authors may usually, but does not necessarily, constitute agreement with either the quotes or their sources. (I try to confirm the sources that I give, but may miss on occasion; please verify if possible.)

“If doctrine strengthens our minds, psalm-singing fortifies our souls.” -- From “Psalm Roar” website

“Some Christians listening to a subset of their number sing is nowhere commanded or exampled in New Testament churches.” -- Mark Dever

“I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God.” -- Martin Luther

“Though the open-throated harmonies violate every rule of classical counterpoint, there’s an anarchic spirit and an invigorating sense of energy about shape-note singing.” -- Alfred Hickling

“We sing because we’re created to, commanded to, and compelled to.” -- Keith Getty

“Your voice may not be of professional standard, but it is of confessional standard.” -- Keith Getty

“What do you want to remember when you’ve forgotten virtually everything else? Sing that.” -- Chad Bird

“Leading worship is a pastoral role before it’s a musical one.” -- Bob Kauflin

“Gospel music is not a sound; gospel music is a message. Gospel music means good news. It’s good-news music.” -- Kirk Franklin

“I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.” -- Johann S. Bach

“Cheerfulness is like music to the soul, it excites to duty, it oils the wheels of the affections.” -- Thomas Watson

“Music is spiritual. The music business is not.” -- Van Morrison

“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” -- Leopold Stokowski

Religious effect of a hymn

When Joshua Leavitt sent out The Christian Lyre, he testified that “the work is not designed to please scientific musicians, so much as to profit plain christians…” He generally gave a melody and bass for the tune, but sometimes only the melody, writing, “As the number of parts is apt to distract the attention of an audience, or to occupy them with the music instead of the sentiment, the tunes here printed will generally be accompanied with only a simple bass, and sometimes not even with that. In a vast multitude of cases the religious effect of a hymn is heightened by having all sing the air only.”

He also possesses a good attitude about its future: “Possessing no musical skill beyond that of ordinary plain singers, I send out my work, without pretensions. If it aids the progress of Christ’s cause, I shall be rewarded. If not, I shall be accepted according to what I had, and not according to what I had not. And it will prepare the way for some other person to do it better.” (Preface, page 3)

Congregational psalm-singing

I do not advocate exclusive psalmody (that all our worship songs must be based on the Psalms), and I am unsure of whether the author of these words, Alistair Roberts, does or does not. However, I think much of what Roberts says about psalm-singing in the excerpt below is a great corrective to what American church singing has devolved into, a performance-based consumer-oriented mess that steals the songs from the congregation. (And unfortunately, many congregations “love to have it so.”)

“Too often, modern worshipers treat worship as if it were something chiefly to be consumed by them as individuals (leading to a great concern that church music styles cater to their more general tastes in music consumption). Yet worship is not chiefly to be consumed quasi-passively, but to be an act. In the purposeful and practiced act of singing psalms together, we joyfully and lovingly present our hearts and our assemblies to God and we take his word into us. Because it is an act of worship, we should want to take time to learn how to do it well. Typically greater delight will follow.

“A huge obstacle to good psalm-singing is the ingrained passivity that comes with a lifetime of being consumers of music. Great psalm-singing is entirely achievable, but we must approach worship more as an act of making music before the Lord, demanding practice and effort.

“Indeed, the more the church’s music is driven by the musical tastes of religious consumers, the more divided it will be. The corporate act of making music has a power to unite that exceeds the unity produced by the convergence of private tastes in its consumption. Congregational psalm-singing is a form of expression of God’s Word by which, within the body of Christ, we address each other and by which Christ’s word and his Spirit indwell us (Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:18-21). As we do it, the body can become self-aware in a new way. As we don’t merely sing along with performers at the front, but sing in unison or in harmony as a congregation, we take fuller ownership of the words that God has given us as our own joyful and purposeful expression and also receive those words from the lips of our neighbours.”

[Note: I do advocate that we need to sing more of the Psalms. Our singing is sadly lacking if we do not do so.]

To sing is to pray twice, and other music quotes

The posting of quotes by human authors does not constitute agreement with either the quotes or their sources. (I try to confirm the sources that I give, but may miss on occasion; please verify when possible.)

“The music must not turn the church into an audience enjoying the music but into a congregation singing the Lord’s praises in His presence.’ -- John Calvin

“To sing is to pray twice.” -- Old proverb, often attributed to Augustine of Hippo

“Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.” -- Ludwig van Beethoven

“Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.” -- Pablo Casals

“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” -- Berthold Auerbach

“It is not sufficient to offer the empty vessel of our joy unto God, or our singing voice in musical tune only; but also it is required that we fill our joyful voice with holy matter and good purpose, whereby God only may be reasonably praised.” -- David Dickson

“The music of the Gospel leads us home.” -- Frederick W. Faber

“Shaped note is the music faw me. Everything else is just so-so.” -- R. L. Vaughn

There are three things, and other music quotes

The posting of quotes by human authors does not constitute agreement with either the quotes or their sources. (I try to confirm the sources that I give, but may miss on occasion; please verify when possible.)

“There are three things I like about Sacred Harp: I like the songs they sing; I like the way they sing them; and, most of all, I like the folks that sing them.” -- Curtis Owen

“When we sing to God, we are looking hard in his direction.” -- J. I. Packer

“The Bible’s aesthetics should be the taproot of our contemporary worship aesthetics.” -- Scott Aniol

“We want to have some good singing and it is impossible to have good singing in sorry books, so everybody come and bring your Sacred Harp book.” -- Conrad, Oaky Grove community reporter to Abbeville Herald newspaper

“Music can change the world because it can change people.” -- Bono

“I feel most alive when I'm singing along to old gospel music.” -- Judith Hill

“The sacred harp singing tradition is as American as ‘Yankee Doodle,’ only much older and more so.” -- E. W. Carswell, in Pensacola News Journal, October 25, 1970

“Gospel music [is] calming. It’s soothing. It gets right to the point of whatever you’re dealing with.” -- Yolanda Adams

“Rhythm, harmony, and melody...must from the earliest age penetrate deeply into mind and soul through imitation and natural enjoyment.  Only in this way, by ordering the soul in harmony and giving it a sense of the meaning of proportion and relationship, can it be induced later to become fully rational, and to derive pleasure from the theoretic contemplation of ideas.” -- Stratford Caldecott, in Beauty for Truth’s Sake

To sing is to pray twice

“To sing is to pray twice.” This is an old proverb, often attributed to Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430). There seems to be no such quote in the writings of Augustine. However, the idea may have been distilled from his comments on Psalm 72:20 (from either the Greek or Latin).

What is, “there have failed the hymns of David, the son of Jesse”? Hymns are praises of God accompanied with singing: hymns are songs containing the praise of God. If there be praise, and it be not of God, it is no hymn: if there be praise, and God’s praise, and it be not sung, it is no hymn. It must needs then, if it be a hymn, have these three things, both praise, and that of God, and singing. What is then, “there have failed the hymns”? There have failed the praises which are sung unto God. He seemeth to tell of a thing painful, and so to speak deplorable. For he that singeth praise, not only praiseth, but only praiseth with gladness: he that singeth praise, not only singeth, but also loveth him of whom he singeth. In praise, there is the speaking forth of one confessing; in singing, the affection of one loving.

Exposition on Psalm LXXIII, Augustine

With the spirit and understanding, and other music quotes

The posting of quotes by human authors does not constitute agreement with either the quotes or their sources. (I try to confirm the sources that I give, but may miss on occasion; please verify when possible.)

“Music should be rendered with the spirit and understanding; that the very soul and heart should enter into the song being sung.” -- James L. “Jim” White

“Our singing will not be melody to the Lord unless hearts beat in harmony with hymn.” -- “Mountain Hoosier” in The Paulding New Era, May 29, 1885

“There is not enough singing in the churches these days. There is too much mechanical music for the spiritual welfare of the churches.” -- J. P. Reese

“Natural harmony seems to have more of the spirit of inspiration than much of the so-called harmony of the present age.” -- J. P. Reese (Reese was referring to singing without instruments vs. singing with an organ)

“Our sacred music is like pure gold. The more it is rubbed, the brighter it shines.” -- Prof. R. E. Bartlett

“There is no better music this side of the pearly gates than that found in the old ‘Sacred Harp’.” -- Cedartown Standard, Sept 7, 1911

“The Harp is going to float when this world is on fire.” -- J. G. Land

“The more I learn about the Sacred Harp, the better I love it.” -- J. G. Land

“The real music is the silence and all the notes are only framing this silence.” -- Miles Davis

“Heaven was very near as the music upward rolled.” -- A. H. Reneau

“When the old family Bible gets out of date, then the old Sacred Harp will be a back number too.” -- J. G. Land

We sing in the face of death, and other music quotes

The posting of quotes by human authors does not constitute agreement with either the quotes or their sources. (I try to confirm the sources that I give, but may miss on occasion; please verify when possible.)

“We sing in the face of death because our hope is stronger than the grave.” -- Greg Morse

“Tears come easily to the sound of Heaven here below.” -- Dan O’Dell

“Music is an art unsearchable, Divine, and excellent, by which a true concordance of sounds, or harmony, is produced, that rejoiceth and cheereth the hearts of men.” -- Israel Holdroyd

“Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, then when you sung the songs of Satan.” -- John Wesley

“Music made with your own hands, and heard in your own head and heart is incomparably the best.” -- Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich

“Worship is not a competition. If worship services were ‘American Idol’ or ‘The Voice,’ most of us would have been voted off long ago.” -- Scott Shepherd

“Music—what a powerful instrument, what a mighty weapon!” -- Maria August von Trapp

“A true friend learns the song of your heart and then sings it back to you when you forgotten the words.” -- sometimes credited to Shania Twain

“I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.” -- William James

“As long as we live, there is never enough singing.” -- Martin Luther

“The voice of humility is God’s music, and the silence of humility is God’s rhetoric.” -- Francis Quarles

Music is an art unsearchable

Music is an Art Unsearchable, Divine, and Excellent, by which a true Concordance of Sounds, or Harmony, is produced, that rejoyceth and cheareth the hearts of men...The first and chief Use of Music is for the Service and Praise of God, whose Gift it is. The second Use is for the Solace of Men; which as it is agreeable unto Nature, so is it allowed by God as a Temporal Blessing, to recreate and chear men after long Study and weary Labour in their Vocations. Eccl. xl. 20. Wine and Music rejoice the heart. Ælianus, in his Hist. Animal, I. 10. C. 29 writeth, that, of all the Beasts, there is none that is not delighted with Harmony, but only the Ass.

From “An Historical Account of Music,” in The Spiritual Man’s Companion, or, The Pious Christian’s Recreation, Fifth Edition, by Israel Holdroyd, 1753