Christmastime is upon us, that season in which peripheral musical artists like Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé once again enter the collective consciousness of celebrants everywhere. But it’s not just pop artists that receive the spotlight. Music in the church experiences a similar seasonal renaissance, both in the form of carols and in the music of composers like Tchaikovsky, Bach, and, of course, Handel. “Who is George Frideric Handel?” you ask, drawing a blank from January to November. But when December hits, you know his name, and you know his most famous work—Messiah. Most of the articles in this month’s theme are guides to listening to the Messiah—meditations on biblical texts used in Messiah, explanations of the music, historical reflections on its composition and reception, etc. In this article, I strike out in a different direction, one more concerned with the creative process that Handel models of presenting a faithful witness to Scripture and stirring people’s affections for God through music.
Handel’s Messiah, written in 1741, is notable for many reasons. From a purely musical perspective, it is a masterpiece in composition. For Christians, though, its significance lies beyond its musical craftsmanship. Handel’s ability to bring biblical theology to life is what has captivated the Church for centuries. The libretto, organized by Charles Jennens, is a patchwork of Old Testament prophecy and New Testament fulfillment detailing Christ’s coming. When you listen to each movement, you sense the richness of Scripture: its truth, its timelessness, its eternal weight.
This is what music does when it is paired with God’s word. It enriches our experience with Scripture—not that the Bible is lacking anything or needs an external art form to accomplish its goal. Rather, because humans are stubborn and hardheaded (even we Christians who still battle with the flesh), God is pleased to magnify his truth to us through such avenues as communion, baptism, preaching, and singing, to bring the gospel more to bear on our hearts. The Holy Spirit is the primary agent facilitating change, and, in his infinite wisdom, he sees fit to use these mediums to that end. God, then, created music to glorify himself not only through its aesthetic beauty, but also through its capacity to convey his word in uniquely powerful ways.
But how does one do this? How does someone like Handel go about this task of weaving some of the highest narratives in Scripture into an exquisite tapestry of sound? Considering Handel’s incredible genius—he famously wrote and composed the nearly three hours of Messiah in only 24 days—he may not be the best reference point. So let me rephrase my question: how does a normal person go about setting Scripture to music?
Four Questions
I have been setting the Bible to song for the past ten years through a group I founded called Psallos. Our mission is to create artistically excellent and theologically rich music that leads people to better understand God’s word and his gospel. My primary means for accomplishing this is through musical adaptations of entire New Testament letters. So far, I have set to music Romans, Hebrews, Jude, and Philippians, and my plan is to tackle the remaining 17 letters in the future.
Throughout my time writing for Psallos, I have thought a great deal about how to compose Scripture songs. Setting God’s word to music is a difficult and heavy task. James’ warning that “not many of you should be teachers, my brothers, for those who teach will be judged with greater strictness (3:1)” constantly rings in the back of my mind. Writing songs for public or congregational consumption is undoubtedly a form of teaching. If the church sings something or if it is offered up to listeners, the song must be true to Scripture, and it must edify its recipients.
I’d like to offer some general remarks about the process, highlighting four questions that, I believe, help safeguard an accurate presentation of Scripture and cultivate creativity among composers and lyricists who seek to express its truths through song.
1. What does the text say? The starting point is exegesis, an exploration of finding the author’s original intent. All the skills of hermeneutics—studying grammar and syntax, looking at the original language, reading commentaries—are useful for identifying the main message. Before we imprint too much of ourselves onto the music, there needs to be a grounding in the text, with a prayerful posture for the Lord to open our eyes.
2. How does the author say it? The next stage is identifying the way in which the author communicates the content. This, of course, is part of biblical hermeneutics, but it is helpful here to bring certain questions to the fore, like “Are there any literary devices or forms being used?” or “What is the mood at this point in the passage?” Each book of the Bible possesses its own unique literary characteristics. Examining structure, plot, setting, recurring motifs, tone, and writing style not only gives you a fuller picture of the text’s meaning, but it also shapes its identity. To understand Jude, for instance, it is beneficial to engage with the literary particulars of the text, such as the author’s preference for organizing elements into groups of three, references to apocryphal literature, and a possible chiastic structure. All of these inform our understanding of the content and are especially helpful in translating Scripture into song. When you’re setting a text to music, preserving or utilizing these qualities to develop lyrics and music avoids genericism and brings focus and unity.
3. What do I want to say? The next two steps involve crafting the song. After an analysis of what the passage says and how the author says it, the songwriter decides what he or she wants to say. I am not here referring to eisegesis, in which a person reads into the Bible an external meaning. I’m referring to the inherent limitations involved in songwriting. If I am setting a passage to music verbatim, then this step is rather straightforward (apart from selecting which translation to use). It is possible in this case to cover the full scope of the text. If I choose, however, to render it in paraphrase form, I will inevitably have to be selective of what elements I cover and how deep I go. It is analogous to a pastor preaching through a passage, who, given a thirty-minute time constraint, is forced to draw out only three observations and four points of application. No preacher can exhaust a passage in one sermon, let alone an entire book. He must figure out what he believes is most important for his audience and appropriate for his medium. The same is true for setting Scripture to music.
4. How do I want to say it? Once you figure out what you intend to say, you need to figure out how you want to say it. Or, to put it differently: what type of experience do you want your listener to have? You may opt to stick closely to the text and follow its structure, tone, and contours (e.g. songs intended for Scripture memory). Or you may prefer to shape the passage into a song of praise or lament, in which you are offering more of a response to the passage rather than a walkthrough (e.g. hymns). Alternatively, you may take your listeners on an imaginative journey that causes them to engage with the text in a new way through juxtaposition, divergence, and various creative devices (e.g. oratorios, modern concept albums). I do believe that there is a certain amount of artistic liberty that can be taken with Scripture songs, if it is done in service to the passage. Artistic liberty need not suggest a looseness with interpretation and application of the text, as can sometimes happen. Instead, when proper hermeneutics combines with the expressive power of music, poetry, and imagination, the outcome can be compelling and formative.
“The Angels’ Moment in the Son”
To illustrate this process, I will use one my own compositions, a song that, like Handel’s Messiah, points to the incarnate Christ. “The Angels’ Moment in the Son” is the third track from my 2017 setting of the Book of Hebrews and is based on Hebrews 1:5–14. Through studying the passage and reading commentaries, I learned the author’s basic argument here is that Jesus is superior to the angels. This is the first of many lessons in which Christ is compared to other biblical figures to demonstrate unequivocally that his covenant, the new covenant, is better than the old covenant, just as Christ himself is better than the angels, Moses, Joshua, the Levitical priests, and the temple sacrifices.
The manner in which he builds the argument is through a series of Old Testament quotations that compound with each addition. In total, he layers seven quotations from Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel, and the Book of Psalms to explain that the angels, though glorious in their own nature, are far inferior to the Son of God. Verses 5 and 14 frame the quotations and serve as brief commentary.
In setting this passage to music, I decided the best course of action was to paraphrase the text. Freedom with the lyrics would allow me to underscore the main message of the song and avoid a potentially irregular, episodic flow native to the text (“Or again…”, “And again,” etc.). This is not to say a verbatim approach would have been bad; it would merely have created some musical challenges for me to overcome, and their solutions may not have fit within my vision for the album or my limitations with time.
The next stage was identifying creative ideas to communicate this text musically that offered listeners an edifying experience. To give the song forward momentum, I structured it in a form that alternates between contrasting sections: verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus. The verses parse out aspects of Christ’s superiority (rank, eternality), as reflected in the Old Testament quotations, while the chorus provides a summarizing statement. For the bridge, I included a portion of the hymn “Angels We Have Heard on High” but rewrote it to suit the context of the song:
Angels, they may be on high,
Sweetly singing o’er the plains,
But the songs they sing are songs of Christ,
Praising him who reigns supreme.
Gloria in excelsis deo!
The purpose of this addition was two-fold. First, it utilized the device of quotation used by the author of Hebrews in this text. Second, by alluding to a Christmas hymn, it anticipates where the author goes next in chapter two: the incarnation.
The last thing I’ll mention about my approach to this song is the melodic language. I wrote the music using the pentatonic scale, a five-note scale that has a pleasing, open sound due to its construction of only major seconds and minor thirds. But my motivation was not purely aesthetic—it was also theological. For my adaptation of Hebrews, I created two distinct harmonic languages to reflect the progression of Christ’s descent from and ascent to heaven. In chapters 1 and 2, Jesus is seated in glory, with chapter 2 serving as the transition to earth. Chapters 3 through 7 describe Jesus’ activity on earth as he is appointed a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. In chapter 8, Jesus reenters heaven to offer himself as the atoning sacrifice, once for all, in the true heavenly tabernacle. This is where the author’s focus remains for the rest of the book. To capture this progression, I drew from pentatonicism for whenever Christ is in heaven and octatonicism for those chapters in which he is on earth. The octatonic scale is an eight-note scale consisting of alternating minor seconds and major seconds, giving it an unstable, unpredictable character. Thus, for this passage in chapter 1, the pentatonic scale anchors us firmly in the heavenly realm, with Christ exalted in glory high above the angels.
What About Handel?
Did Handel and his librettist use this four-step approach when writing Messiah? Maybe. Maybe not. Composition is not always this linear, and every songwriter approaches the subtleties of his or her craft differently. From the humble hymns and metrical psalms we sing in our services to the towering oratorios and cantatas we hear performed in concert halls, we find a rich diversity of Scripture songs, and this variety is healthy for the Church. But no matter the forms or styles used, no matter the period in which they were written, the goal must always be the same. We must seek to honor God’s word and bring people to a better understanding of its truth. God’s worship and glory must be our ultimate aim.
