Songs of Your Truth

I was delighted when I learned a while back (in a conversation with Deb Saxon on the ReligionProf Podcast) that Natalie Renee Perkins would be setting the Odes of Solomon to music in a contemporary style. Her album Songs of Your Truth is now available. You can learn more about the Odes of Solomon and about the album on Shirley Paulson’s blog. Below is a sample track, courtesy of YouTube, but I encourage you to explore the others, since the range of styles and genres spanned in the different settings is also impressive and makes these ancient Christian songs accessible and engaging to a wider audience than they would if all rendered in one style.

There are some other settings (mostly in the form of “classical” choral music or art song) included in this earlier post on my blog:

ReligionProf Podcast with Deb Saxon (Extracanonical Texts in Musical and Animated Settings)

One of the examples of extracanonical text being set to music I have typically incorporated into my teaching on that topic is Gustav Holst’s. It was featured a while back on the Patheos blog Anxious Bench:

Alternative Scriptures: Gustav Holst’s Hymn of Jesus

See also my earlier post on this topic:

The Hymn of Jesus, Mandaean Hymns, and Other Gnostic Music

Also deserving of wider exposure is “Himnos de los neófitos de Qumrán” by Joaquín Rodrigo–yes indeed, the famous Rodrigo whose Concierto de Aranjuez is not just one of the best-known works for guitar, but one of the most famous works of “classical” music period. I have mentioned that on my blog previously:

Music From the Sorrowing Earth of Qumran

Finally, let me link once more to Shirley Paulson’s blog, and specifically to a post about taking comfort from extracanonical texts in our current situation.

Finding Comfort During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Dialogue of the Savior