(Published in the diocesan e-newsletter, Thursday 16 October 2025)

St John Henry Newman celebrated the God-given inner tunefulness of people, places and things. He was ‘note-worthy’ in being both melodical and methodical in his approach!
 
“His list of blessings worthily to crown God sent his sweetest gift, sent music down. - Soul of the world! – for thy harmonious force restrains all nature in its proper course…”  (Letters and Diaries, Volume 1, p.38-39).
 
A multi-instrumentalist, Newman played the piano, the organ and especially the fiddle.  He enthuses: “No-one is a greater advocate for music than I am.” (Letters and Diaries, Vol XXII, p.145). Corresponding with his mother, when a Tutor of Oriel College, Newman captures his joy of living, broad range of interests and energetic capacity for work in these words:
 
“I am a harp of many chords, and each strung by a separate hand…come, add a string to my assort of sounds - widen the compass of my harmony -.”  (Letters and Diaries, Vol II, p.13).
 
The use of musical analogies to convey his feelings about himself and his relationship with others continued throughout Newman’s life. Writing to W.J. Copeland, in his late sixties, he states: “I wish I could turn myself into a musical snuff box saying all in verse and song and you obliged to wind me up every day.”  (Letters and Diaries, Vol XXIV, p.112).
 
Newman thanks R.W. Church for his leisure-time gift and reveals its impact upon him:
 
“I was obliged to lay down the instrument and literally cry out in delight…I really think it will add to my power of working and the length of my life.  I never wrote more than when I played the fiddle.  I always sleep better after music.  There must be some electric current passing from the strings through the fingers into the brain and down the spinal marrow.  Perhaps thought is music.”  (Letters and Diaries, Vol XXII, p.9).
 
Ultimately, Newman’s reflections reinforce his belief that music allows us to touch the divine and inexpressible nature of God through our humanity:
 
“I think of musical sounds and their combinations – they are momentary – but is it not some momentary opening and closing of the veil which hangs between the worlds of spirit and sense?”  (Letters and Diaries, Vol XXIII, p.255).
 
Pope Benedict XVI on the fifth anniversary of his pontificate, crystalises Newman’s saintly thoughts by concluding that music is: “capable of opening minds and hearts to the dimension of the spirit and of leading persons to raise their gaze on High, to open to absolute Goodness and Beauty, which have their ultimate source in God.”
 
Fr Peter Conley
image c. cbcew/mazur