CJ Replay: Choral Music After 9/11

(From the Choral Journal article “Church Music in Times of Crisis [p.63], by Tim Sharp.)

 

     After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, church musicians were reminded once again of the importance of their work through the medium of choral and vocal music. As houses of faith filled with people in the weeks following 9/11, the role of choral and vocal music and the role of church music ministry intensified along with other dimensions of church life. Thinking of Anne Lamott’s words in her book Traveling Mercies, “I can’t imagine anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy. Maybe it’s because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We’re walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn’t get to any other way.” Indeed, most of us needed to sing in September of 2001, we needed to listen, and we needed to meet in places “we couldn’t get to any other way.”