Rev. Gordon Giles
// AuthorREV. GORDON GILES is an author, priest, and vicar of St. Mary Magdalene’s Church in Enfield Chase, England. His book “The Music of Praise” (2002), “The Harmony of Heaven: Musical Meditations for Lent and Easter” (2003), “O Come Emanuel” (2005), and “Fasting and Feasting” (2008) are all available from The Bible Reading Fellowship, and “O Clap Your Hands” (2008) is available from Paraclete Press and SPCK. Rev. Gordon Giles writes books on music and theology, and has a regular column for the RSCM publication Church Music Quarterly. He is also a priest in the Church of England, and between 1998 and 2003 he was Succentor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Photo: Rev. Gordon Giles
Interview:
Whether music is blown, scraped or sung, or beaten on a drum, it comes from both inside us and outside of us. When we make music we are connecting our inner beings to the world out there, and are expressing our fundamental created-ness. However we understand our relationship with the Creator or the Natural World or Cosmos, music is something which connects that which lies at the heart of our being with that which is outside experiences we can articulate in words. In music we enter another world and another time zone, where duration and distance operate on a different level. In this way, music brings us into a unique experience of the eternal and the timeless yet while grounding us in the rhythms of human life. Music is God’s gift in creation, and musical talent witnesses to something vital, transcendent, and necessary.
The music of praise is the ‘returning’ of God’s gift to us back to Him, stamped with our own personality and response. All things come from God, and of His own do we give Him: the returning of music in worship is a supreme example of this. Where music is performed or enjoyed outside the context of worship, it still reflects something of creation back to the Creator as the ability to be musical is built into the very fabric of our existence.
“The music of praise is the ‘returning’ of God’s gift to us back to Him, stamped with our own personality and response.” – Rev. Gordon Giles, author of “The Music of Praise”
