Portraying Christ in Music : Fully Human and Fully Divine

Gauguin as Christ in the Garden, 1889

A script of a joint talk given by Henry Lamprecht (my better half!) and me as part of a series on Music and Spirituality at Holy Sepulchre London (The National Musicians Church) on Wednesday 26th March 2025. We veered off script at several points. We were grateful to our friend Ben Schoeman for playing excerpts from Beethoven’s works on the piano.

Start:Stop - Ode to Joy (and Freedom)

From The Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt, 1902

Hello and welcome to this week’s Start:Stop reflection from St Stephen Walbrook, when we stop for ten minutes and start to reflect on a passage from scripture. You can hear an audio version of this reflection at this link. Today our text is taken from Luke’s Gospel, in which we hear the words Jesus spoke in the synagogue at the start of his ministry. 

Daily Devotion - Ode to (Advent) Joy

From 'Ode to Joy' a series of woodcuts by Ernst Barlach, 1927

A Daily Devotion written for St Stephen’s Rochester Row, where I have been on a placement this term.

Christ on the Mount of Olives - Beethoven's only oratorio

Christ on the Mount of Olives by Giovanni

In this, his 250th Anniversary year, please listen to Beethoven’s only oratorio – Christ on the Mount of Olives. Criticised by some for emphasizing Jesus’s humanity, for others it is precisely the vivid portrayal of Christ’s agony in the garden that connects the listener to the divine.