I lost my religious faith the day I discovered my father was a fifth columnist. I say lost, though it is perfectly possible I never truly had it. But there I was, 16 years old in my school uniform, wearing a paper badge that read "Jesus Saves!" or perhaps "Smile, Jesus Loves You!"
"Why do you wear that?" As soon as Dad framed his question, I knew I'd been rumbled. I blushed. Yet it was the obvious question and what was this badge if not an invitation to ask it? Now that I'd been called to account, I floundered. Not only could I think of nothing to say to my father, I couldn't even explain the badge to myself. At length, I mumbled something about God, to which Dad replied that he didn't believe in Him.
Now this was a surprise. My father was a man who could – and did – recite chunks of The Book of Common Prayer. "We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep," he once observed in the car, having taken several wrong turns; "Have you done those things you ought to have done?" he was fond of asking, in relation to my homework. And it wasn't just the prayer book: there were quotes from oratorio. He needed little prompting – a closed garage door would do it – to burst into Fling Wide the Gates from Stainer's The Crucifixion.
So the badge was removed, and God went with it. But just as my father remained a quoter of the prayer book, so the accoutrements of Christianity never left me. Lines from hymns and verses from the Bible and, yes, the prayer book, pop unbidden into my head as they did into Dad's. Since I don't believe in God and don't wish to, I must be an atheist, but I am not a militant atheist, and when people such as Richard Dawkins insist that religion in history has only been a force for evil, I disagree. Setting aside everything else, there is the art that would not exist but for religion, art that was inspired by faith and often paid for by the Church.
In 2015 I was commissioned by four Australian cathedrals to compose a Mass – a Missa brevis, or short Mass – for liturgical use. When I told my friends, their most common response, after a beat of incredulity, was the tentative enquiry: "But aren't you an atheist?"
Let me say this was not a question asked by the cathedrals themselves, and there was no reason it should have been. They were commissioning a piece of music from me, so my relevant credentials were musical. The temptation to set to music Latin words previously set by Byrd and Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, Bruckner, Dvorák and Stravinsky was irresistible. And while many composers have been devout, there's also nothing to stop an atheist writing a Mass. Moreover, if you remove from the list of liturgical music all those pieces composed by non-believers, you will leave a significant hole. Brahms is gone for a start and probably Schubert, Strauss and Tchaikovsky.
Sibelius, who composed some of Finland's best-known hymn tunes, can also join the list. And the Anglican liturgy will be especially affected, for there will be no music by Parry (the composer of Jerusalem) or Holst (I Vow to Thee My Country) or Britten (A Hymn to the Virgin, A Ceremony of Carols and the Missa brevis he wrote for Westminster Cathedral's choir).
Ralph Vaughan Williams, editor of The English Hymnal, was described by his second wife as "an atheist who occasionally lapsed into agnosticism", yet he took to his editorship with gusto, even writing new tunes for the publication (Come Down O Love Divine; For All the Saints). John Ireland, who composed one of the English-speaking world's most beautiful hymns, My Song Is Love Unknown, once declared: "I am a Pagan. A Pagan I was born & a Pagan I shall ever remain."
Strictly speaking, I suppose we are all born pagans, but growing up in England, as I did, I was sent to Sunday school, which I disliked, and at my state primary school sang hymns and Christmas carols, which I liked very much. At my Church of England grammar school, there was more hymn-singing at twice-daily assemblies, along with Bible readings and prayers, and sometimes anthems, in which I sang, because I was in the choir. Most of the concerts we gave also contained religious music: oratorios by Bach and Handel, Vivaldi's Gloria – if a choir sings classical music, it will tend to be religious. But none of this accounted for that badge. My moment of teenage fervour can only be explained by two things, music and sex.
As a teenager, I listened to everything I could lay my ears on. Rock music, particularly the more progressive sort for which I now have little patience, folk music, jazz and classical music. I was an avid listener to the radio and each fortnight brought home an armful of classical LPs from the local public library. This music became so important to me that I began to explore the repertory.
If, for example, I heard a Schumann symphony on the radio, I would make it my business to hear his other symphonies. It seemed important to be familiar with the literature. And some of it moved me to tears.
But there was one particular moment – an epiphany, I suppose you'd call it. Nothing like this had happened to me before, and as epiphanies go I've had very little since that has matched it. I wish I could claim that it was something more recherché, but the music that floored me so unexpectedly was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and the choral finale at that. It wasn't the first time I'd heard it. On the contrary, the recording was one I owned and had played numerous times (Franz Konwitschny conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, since you ask).
I do think that perhaps what I and others get from music is what a lot of people get from their faith.
The moment that got me comes midway through the finale, following the variation on the famous Ode to Joy theme that Beethoven turns into a Turkish march, the tenor soloist joining in with a tune that always seems to have escaped from a bierkeller. This is followed by a serious fugal workout for orchestra alone. But then comes a mysterious, ruminative passage in which the French horns have repeating F sharps in a rhythm reminiscent of a heartbeat. Over this, oboes and bassoons play a tentative ascending figure in D major, which leads nowhere; they try it in D minor (still nowhere); finally they settle for the dominant key of A and, without warning, we are whisked abruptly back to the chorus, loudly and triumphantly punching out Schiller's ode in D.
That was the moment – and it shook me, literally. I was physically affected. There were tears, but there was also something harder to explain, something like possession. I felt the music had taken me over, taken me in. The music was inside me – in my head – but I was also in the music. This must be God, I thought.
I wanted it to be God, because I secretly hoped He might help me locate a girlfriend. At a school for boys, it wasn't immediately obvious how I might meet members of the opposite sex, but a couple of my friends attended the local Methodist youth club, and I knew there were girls there. Now that I had God, I could go, too. Maybe there would be sex.
It is easy enough, 40-something years on, to smile at my teenage self. But something significant had occurred. For a short time, I was serious enough about religion to attend church and get confirmed. If my father had a problem with that, he never mentioned it; it was only when I took to badge-wearing that he finally raised the matter. And hand in glove with this brief commitment to religion – it can't have lasted much more than a year – went an ever-deepening engagement with music and art in a broader sense, a curiosity that eventually took over from religion.
For when I stopped going to church I began attending concerts – new music and early music, symphony concerts, chamber concerts and operas – and music became something to proselytise about. I might have been half-hearted when it came to religious evangelism, removing my Jesus badge the first time I was called upon to justify it, but my advocacy for music was tireless. I seldom attended concerts alone, and often dragged along half a dozen friends.
I find it interesting that Richard Dawkins has almost as little time for art as he does for God. I think he detects a similar irrationality of response by adherents of both, and it bothers him. It doesn't bother me – quite the contrary – and it didn't bother the musicologist Wilfrid Mellers. The last time I spoke to him, he was in his late 80s and had just written a book about religious music in the European classical tradition. It was called Celestial Music? (note the question mark).I asked him what he thought about religion, to which he replied that he thought it was "nonsense, really". Then he added: "But perhaps we need more non-sense in our lives."
I suppose my response to Beethoven's Ninth was irrational. I still find that moment exhilarating, but it has never again bowled me over the way it did that particular day. At the time I thought it was something to do with God, now I just think it was Beethoven. Either would condemn me in Dawkins' eyes. My feelings at that sudden choral entry, blazing away in D major, were, it occurs to me, something like Stendhal syndrome. The Frenchman had his dizzy spell while viewing Giotto's frescoes in Santa Croce, but if a painting can provoke such a reaction, how much more likely is music to do it, an art form that takes over the body? And isn't this all fairly close to the way that some Pentecostals respond to the divine presence? Isn't this what they call being "slain in the spirit"?
I can't recall a single religious inclination in the past four decades, but I do think that perhaps what I and others get from music is what a lot of people get from their faith. And of course it's not all bursting into tears or feeling faint – in fact, hardly ever. Proper listening involves engagement with a musical work. We have to concentrate, to contemplate,but mostly we must listen.
I often think that an important aspect of music is that it forces us to stop talking, an attitude similar to prayer. If listening takes place in the concert hall, then sometimes the experience will be amplified by the presence of others. By sharing the experience, even wordlessly, we seem to make it more intense: the audience as congregation, music as communion. This is not, however, to suggest that everyone in the concert hall is having the same experience. If there are 100 listeners, there are arguably 100 slightly different pieces of music, because we hear and process music, and certainly understand it, in our own unique ways. We make it – or at least remake it – in our heads. Perhaps it's the same with God.
As a composer, I want people to pay attention to my music. I want their ears, their concentration, their critical faculties. And I have to confess, I'm delighted when told by an audience member that my music has moved them. It means that something inexplicable has occurred, some wordless exchange between me and the listener, some non-sense.
My Missa brevis was commissioned by St John's Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane; St Stephen's Catholic Cathedral, Brisbane; St Patrick's, Melbourne; and St George's, Perth in consortium with Fr Arthur Bridge's Ars Musica Australis. The mass is dedicated to "all who seek asylum" and each of its sections makes use – sometimes quite subtle use – of the tune of the spiritual, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.
A year ago, I found myself at St John's early one Sunday for a final rehearsal before the choir sang the mass at that morning's Eucharist. At the end of the rehearsal, St John's director of music Graeme Morton asked me when was the last time I'd been to church, not counting weddings and funerals (they can tell, you see). I did a quick sum and told him it must have been 42 years ago. At the end, as the choir walked up the aisle and Morton, bringing up the rear, passed my pew, he muttered under his breath, "When was the last time you were in a procession?" and, grabbing my arm, pulled me into line behind his choristers.
The whole business was fascinating to me: composing the Mass, writing for an organ for the first time in my life, discussing the work with the commissioners, hearing it sung in a liturgical context, dotted through a 90-minute service. Still, the single most interesting part was when it was all over and the tea and biscuits came out. This was when I was approached by a number of parishioners who told me that their worship had been enhanced by my music.
Now I have had compliments over the years, but never of this nature, and while, of course, I said thank you, I admit the words gave me pause for thought. Only for a moment. Then I realised I had never been so pleased in my life.
Edited extract of a story to be published in the summer edition of Meanjin (out December 15, $25).