I haven’t read the book Cold Mountain, nor have I seen the movie, but I do know that its soundtrack has some great Sacred Harp music on it!

In a nutshell, Sacred Harp is the degenerate, revolutionary child of English choral music. It’s raw, it’s rough, and it’s definitely not cultivated. But it’s beautiful in its own way, and the passion in which it’s sung makes it powerful to hear.

Cold Mountain is set in the heyday of Sacred Harp singing, the American Civil War. Some musicians criticized the movie soundtrack because it uses trained singers instead of the “authentic”, untrained amateurs that are associated with this tradition. Authentic or not, the music and text have the strength to really hit home.

Henry Purcell is probably the best-known English composer of the baroque era. To this day, he is revered in England much like Bach is revered in Germany – as the father of their musical heritage. He is buried next to the organ in Westminster Abbey, where was organist.

“Hear My Prayer” is a somber setting of the first verse of Psalm 102. The lamentations of the psalmist are clearly heard in the chromaticism of the music.

Sometimes it’s the darkest, saddest moments of a person’s life that elicit the most beautiful artistic response.

Herbert Howells is a composer who is mostly unknown except to Anglican church musicians, who tend to adore his music. In 1935, his nine-year old son died, which profoundly affected him and his compositions. A few years later, World War II broke out, deepening his depression.

Out of this sadness came a much-beloved series of anthems, originally titled “In Time of War”. Legend has it that one of these, “Like As the Hart“, was composed as the Nazis were bombing London, where Howells lived. It paints haunting image, and the text used (from Psalm 42) is downright chilling: “Where is now thy God?”