By Ali Biddiscombe
“As a juxtaposition of the fast-paced and stressed world we live in, music within the liturgical sense has now become, and will continue to provide, a stillness and reflection we need.”
— Grace Feltoe
Music is often described as a feeding of the soul – this connection between the soul and music arguably stemming from the 1950s and 60s where traditional gospel music first met jazz, rhythm and blues in African America.
It is often discussed as an element of worship with potential to touch our souls, expressing that which we cannot always articulate in words, but which goes some way in explaining our spirituality and feelings towards it.
Others describe music within worship or prayer at home as a form of meditation offering both giver and receiver profound moments of transcendence, potentially lifting and bringing their “souls” closer to God.
It can be both an intensely personal journey and a shared congregational experience often accompanied with an understanding of sentiment.
This sentiment certainly resonates for both cantor Grace Feltoe and music educator Hugh Lydon, who are both charged in quite different fields of their Catholic music ministries with nurturing music and feeding of the soul.
Grace, 24, is an experienced cantor and has been singing seriously since she was 14, completing a double major in music at the University of Western Australia. She began cantoring at St Patrick’s Basilica in Fremantle and has also sung at St Paul’s Church Mt Lawley Parish, New Norcia Benedictine Monastery, and now St Mary’s Cathedral.
Hugh, 36, started his music ministry as a chorister in Westminster Abbey, London, which led him to study Music Education at Trinity College in Dublin. After moving to Perth in 2010, he sang in several choral groups and is currently charged with the growth of sacred choral music at Aquinas College. Grace and Hugh are testament of how essential music in ministry can be to the nourishment and feeding of our spiritual souls.
“… music can generate incredibly strong emotional and spiritual responses within an individual, which the purely spoken word struggles to replicate.”
Grace chose to use a quote by CS Lewis to explain how music and the soul are connected for her. Lewis said: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body”.
“I think this is the most glorious and beautiful thing to know – that we were made in the image and likeness of God, and our soul manifests the animation and life of our being,” Grace said.
“The good in us and the many gifts we each individually receive from God give us a chance to profess an aspect of God’s beauty, love and grace. One of mine happens to be music, and an avid love for singing. It comes from a very emotional and spiritual place for me.”
“When I experience beautiful music, it hits the very core of me – my soul perhaps – and provides a truly heightened connection to my own emotions and sense of expression.
“In these moments, it can help me to express a prayer of thanksgiving or petition that sometimes words can’t describe, and other times the emotion is the prayer itself.”
Hugh acknowledges that he may hold a minority view in that music can generate incredibly strong emotional and spiritual responses within an individual which the purely spoken word struggles to replicate.
“I regard the soul as the source point of all of our emotions, decisions and choices. With regards to music, it is the part of us that responds to sound in a way that generates an emotional and spiritual reaction,” he said.
“Regardless of the genre of music I am performing, my goal is always to generate the strongest possible emotional response in the listener.”
As a practising musician and leader in a Catholic environment, Hugh’s hope is that the path that Aquinas is forging, where Sacred Choral music is at the heart of the College community and identity, becomes far more commonplace.
“We should be able to replicate the choral community found within the UK. They have been doing this for over 500 years, so we have some way to go here in Australia,” Hugh said.
From pages 24 to 25 of Issue 24: Soul: ‘Nurturing the Spiritual Principle in Us’ of The Record Magazine