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Available for over a year

Good morning. Some years ago I had an internship which required me once a week to see the same people who didn’t like me, had no hesitation in telling me so, and would give me the runaround for a couple of hours, leaving me physically exhausted and emotionally drained. On the way home I always put on the same piece of music. For 25 minutes I’d be bathed in glory and showered in grace, and the strains of the afternoon would disappear like a river of sweat off an athlete’s back. Music can do that. It can’t make things happy, but it can still make them beautiful. It can sweep you up into a fountain, where your tiny droplet of misery is engulfed by a plume of refreshment. The hymn writer John Mason recalled St Augustine’s peerless words, ‘God is an infinite circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.’ That led him to write this spectacular description of God: ‘Thou art a sea without a shore, a sun without a sphere.’ That combination of wonder and beauty is what music draws us to. When I became vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields everyone said, ‘I had no idea you knew so much about music.’ Actually I don’t – St Martin’s is famous worldwide for classical music so I ride on its reputation. But at St Martin’s it’s never just music – it’s always about beauty, truth and goodness – some desire through music to forge friendships between powerful and powerless, together to make something everyone can be proud of, that combines the joy of volunteers with the experience of professionals in a gathering where everyone’s contribution is vital, and we all need each other to be greater than the sum of our respective parts. As ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Music Day highlights, music makes community: it’s about soul, and desire, and the heart of all things, and seeing beyond the everyday into the eternal. A few months ago at a memorial service for an admirable man, a friend of his turned up with 850 copies of Parry’s ‘I was glad,’ written for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. He said, ‘I thought we’d just get everyone to sing it. No rehearsal. The choir can help with the difficult bits.’ It was a crazy idea. But a beautiful one. Standing amid 800 people spontaneously shaping their four-part song, I realised we were living what the memorial was proclaiming: a much-loved man taking his place in the heavenly choir, adding his unique tenor to that of the angels, receiving the shower of God’s glory in the music of praise, entering the infinite circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. I was glad.