No Human Ever Made a Cathedral Such As This": Scoping the Ecology of the Carols by Candlelight Effect in Australia's Open-Air Environments
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Yale Journal of Music & Religion Volume 5 Number 2 Music, Sound, and the Aurality of the Environment in the Anthropocene: Spiritual and Article 5 Religious Perspectives 2019 "No Human Ever Made a Cathedral Such as This": Scoping the Ecology of the Carols by Candlelight Effect in Australia's Open-Air Environments Robin Ryan Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University Follow this and additional works at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr Part of the Australian Studies Commons, Christianity Commons, Musicology Commons, and the Music Performance Commons Recommended Citation Ryan, Robin (2019) ""No Human Ever Made a Cathedral Such as This": Scoping the Ecology of the Carols by Candlelight Effect in Australia's Open-Air Environments," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 5: No. 2, Article 5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1139 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Music & Religion by an authorized editor of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "No Human Ever Made a Cathedral Such as This": Scoping the Ecology of the Carols by Candlelight Effect in Australia's Open-Air Environments Cover Page Footnote It is a pleasure to thank Drs. Aline Scott-Maxwell and Lorna Kaino for their constructive feedback. I am also grateful to Pastors Ossie Cruse and Nathan Bettcher for their insights, and to John Macpherson and Caroline Cook for supplying information. The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University sponsored the proofreading and copy-editing of this article. This article is available in Yale Journal of Music & Religion: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr/vol5/iss2/5 “No Human Ever Made a Cathedral Such as This”1 Scoping the Ecology of the Carols by Candlelight Effect in Australia’s Open-Air Environments Robin Ryan As we attend to making the images caroling experience that captures—more and sounds of our environment part holistically—the unique environmental of our worship, we will be urged to flavors of Christmas in Australia. The enflesh the gospel value of respect nation’s homegrown Carols by Candlelight and harmony with creation. Is it not timely to move occasionally from tradition may be conceptualized as a the sacredness of our churches to complete sensory experience: a collective worship in the sacred arena of God’s local remembrance of the birth of Christ, creation? Would we not perhaps performed alfresco. I will approach the topic more easily recognise the presence in the light of some emerging conversations of God under the natural canopy around ecomusicology4 and ecotheology.5 of gum trees? Or one of our many Cultural ecology is the study of human pristine beaches at sunrise or sunset? relationships with and within biological 2 Sister Carmel Pilcher and social contexts.6 My ecocritical reading The vocal practice of carol singing, or encapsulates a spiritual experience couched “caroling,” has long been a vital tradition within a complex sensory experience of in Christian communities around the nature: part of a burgeoning culture of world. Congregations regroup annually to ecological perception that creates cultural proclaim the story of the birth of Christ, meanings for nature through “communities alongside themes of charity and world of musical practice.”7 Jeff Todd Titon peace. Through this annual proclamation, famously theorized a sound commons, where peace is accessible, although the vision all living beings enjoy a commonwealth is a distant hope in many parts of the of sound. The concept embodies the world. The widespread practice of caroling principle of sound equity, encouraging in Australia—reinforced by commercial free and open sound communication, and forms—renders it the most audible and playing its important part in environmental, visible form of Christian music performed musical, and cultural sustainability. In a nationally, with the possible exception of sound community music is communicative, Hillsong’s praise and worship repertoire.3 as natural as breathing, participatory Since the mid-twentieth century, and exchanged freely, strengthening and caroling by candlelight has become a salient sustaining individuals and communities.8 seasonal component of musical culture in a Group performance has been concep- country where landscapes are characterized tualized as a live, phenomenological field by open expanses with congregations of akin to an ecosystem in its connectedness plants. Broadly probing the intersections and interdependence.9 Carolers reignite of Christian belief and sacred voice with public memory of the Christmas story the poetics of open-air environments, this as they move, sing, and act in outdoor article presents the case for a national venues. As networks of actors10 engaged 64 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 5, No. 2 (2019) in an established “ecology of practice,”11 increasingly important to conversations choristers and their audiences potentially around ecology. Many ways of thinking form relationships with natural sites by about, and living with, the environment have becoming entrained to the floral aesthetics roots in the Bible.15 In this age of ecological and faunal soundscapes that vivify them. crisis known as the Anthropocene—the It was this type of “entrainment” that led name derived from the observed human soul singer Nerida Vincent to compose influence and increasing dominance of Nature’s Cathedral. climatic, biophysical, and evolutionary The Merriam-Webster Dictionary processes occurring at a planetary scale16—a defines “cathedral” in three ways, the third need has arisen for improved understanding being “something that resembles or suggests of religious engagement with natural a cathedral (as in size or importance).”12 environments. Composer David Dunn Open-air sites comprising large, naturally urges that “we need to embrace every tool magnificent spaces where communities we have to remind us of the sacred.”17 Such gather are suggestive of cathedrals, even advocacy underlies thinking about how of ancient “proto-cathedrals” emanating people might live with the earth to respect from the authority of the Creator. Cultural and value spirituality and materiality. In the botanist John Charles Ryan notes that the words of theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson, ancient Greek agora was an open place of “The crisis of biodiversity in our day, when assembly. The word agora contrasts with species are going extinct at more than 1,000 claustro, referring to closed spaces, as in times the natural rate, renders this question cloisters.13 Thus, the acoustics and bodily acutely important.”18 experience of carolers positioned outdoors In a recent book situating the natural differ markedly from the enclosed venues world within the framework of religious used at Christmas. belief, Rod Giblett promotes nurturing I promote a performative context sacrality for the Symbiocene—that for caroling that expands the concept of is, the hoped-for age superseding the “sacred space” to the wider dimensions of Anthropocene.19 The term Symbiocene resonant outdoor spaces. All acts of music was coined by Glenn Albrecht from making—whether natural or built—are the Greek word sumbiosis, meaning inextricable from environment. However, “companionship.” It implies the idea of new communication technologies have living together for mutual benefit, a expanded the range of formats in which profoundly important concept and core carolers congregate. For example, singing aspect of ecological thinking that affirms from “inside the soundscape”14 engages the the interconnectedness of life and all living resonances between participatory caroling things.20 To consider caroling through and the poetics of Southern Hemisphere this lens is to explore the meaningful environmental sound. It expands awareness spiritual efficacy that nature can add to the of the spectrum of human voices to include performative tradition. Recognizing mass nonhuman voices: that is, the voices of caroling as a communal practice grounded other species. in nature also promotes acute musicianship, The relationship between religion opening new possibilities for the analysis and environmental issues is becoming of sound in worship. Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 5, No. 2 (2019) 65 Objectives and Framework settings variously shape the acoustic and The aims of this discourse connecting social tenor of caroling, yet preclude religion, music, sound, and our presence characteristics of the broader landscape and and copresence with nature are threefold. soundscape that—clearly exhibiting the First, I theologize the innate function fingerprints of the Creator—can become of carol singing. This ethos underpins conducive to a religious sphere of musical a succinct history of Australia’s Carols style and influence. by Candlelight movement. Second, the At Christmas, the challenge for a musical enquiry turns to the ecological connections director is to find ways to draw the public (dynamic points of encounter) between into the narrative using the vocal musical carolers and their landscapes in regional experience. To this end, an understanding infrastructures that privilege amateur, rather of the innate function of caroling can be than celebrity, voices—that is, community/ advantageous. England’s ninety-seventh congregational caroling as distinct from archbishop of York, the