Dec 23, 2025
Maestro’s Monthly Blog
Where Does It Come From?
Encore of a Post from December 2012
Occasionally, I find myself in a state of awe pondering this question: Howdoes someone create a piece of music that can—several hundred years after its composition—still emotionally move people to their very core? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere beyond reason. Could the source of these incredible masterpieces be extraterrestrial? Some of the composers who wrote these incredibly moving musical works were devoutly religious.
It is said that Franz Joseph Haydn would recite the rosary when he had “writer’sblock” to get himself back in the composing groove. Whether that is true or not, we know from his manuscripts that he usually wrote the Latin words In Nomine Domini (In the Name of the Lord) at the beginning, and the words Laus Deo (Praise Be to God) at the end of his compositions.
By no means were all members of the traditional “classical music pantheon of composers” religiously observant. Brahms certainly was not. Wagner was openly antagonistic to organized religion for most of his life. But both Brahms and Wagner—at least to this listener—also seemed to have tapped into a wellspring greater than themselves.
When I listen to classical music, I am personally so moved that I feel myself in the grasp of some overwhelmingly powerful force. The origin of this force need not be defined for me—it is sufficient for me just to experience it. But, it is interesting to note that even such a worldly person as George Frideric Handel—at times—credited God for his inspiration.
At the end of his much beloved oratorio Messiah—which annually receives multiple performances during the Christmas season—he wrote in the score the acronym SDG—meaning Soli Deo Gloria (To God Alone the Glory). We also have the unverified account that—after he wrote the chorus, Hallelujah––he told a servant: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God Himself.”
Regardless of our own intellectual conclusions on God, the origin of the universe, ET’s, ancient aliens and other imponderables, might it be that composers who write music that is so very moving, even long after they die, must be channeling something beyond the norm? Here’s a link to Discovery Chat 55 featuring our own performance of Hallelujah.
