Angel Band
The installation of the “Angel Band”, stained glass work by artist Ted Goodden, in the Christ Church parish hall happened in July 2004. The installation has since been viewed by a large number of people interested in the connection between art and spirituality and creation. The “Angel Band” is a fresh, contemporary embodiment of the ancient theme, “the music of the spheres”. In medieval cosmology, each planet was thought to produce o tone in wondrous musical scale as it whooshed through space. Inspired by depictions at Chartres Cathedral, France, the work embodies the seven liberal arts, accompanied by their corresponding colours of the Newtonian colour spectrum and also the traditional corresponding “planets” that were believed to have influence and effect upon the manifestation of the arts and human beings as they sought union with the Divine source of Creation. The distinct cosmic “music” of each is portrayed in one of seven musical instruments. The Divine connection is portrayed in an angel figure within each of seven medallions.
“The medieval cathedrals were classrooms and teaching tools for promoting spiritual knowledge. Everything had a religious significance behind it. Just as they are today, the stained glass windows of the time were composed of biblical stories. Likewise, the sculpture. Even the pointed shapes of the Gothic spires were designed to lead your eyes up to Heaven. The Liberal Arts were merely an integral part of that spiritual curriculum….In addition to grammar and dialectics, there were beautiful speech or rhetoric, plus music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. These subjects still form the basis of a solid education today. But to the medieval age, they were only the start.
Studying music, geometry and the other arts refined the mind. They provided the foundation. Through them, one was taught self-discipline and one refined the self or soul. Then one was capable of self-knowledge which led to spiritual enlightenment…how appropriate that these aspects of a sound education should be represented in this room. How fitting because, it was in this church that the foundations were laid for the University of Western Ontario.” (from an article in “Q” Magazine, May 2005, by Bruce Flowers)
This installation in Christ Church parish hall is meant to affirm and complement the spiritual work of the arts of music, dance and life that happens in this space. The work represents a cosmology of the connectedness and mutual interdependence of the powers of the Universe and human activity.