Dark, sweet and subtle: recovered music orientates us

The alt-folk music seeking inspiration from forgotten hymns.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A woman stand at a mixing desk playing a small keyboard.

Lleuwen Steffan plays.

In 2012, musician Lleuwen Steffan first came across a trove of lost Welsh folk hymns preserved in the sound archive of St Fagan’s Museum. Knowing they were not in current hymn books, she undertook further research and discovered they had been excluded from earlier hymn books by the then all-male hymn book committees of their time. Instead, they had been passed on orally, and, although recorded for St Fagan’s by the historian Robin Gwyndaf, had become lost with time and secularization.

Steffan was particularly attracted to these hymns as many dealt with the dark side of the psyche including addiction and mental distress. She has said that many of these hymns, some of which date back to the eighteenth century, are “conversational and the lyrics feel so current”. She is currently taking these hymns back to where they were born through a tour of 50 chapels in Wales but this is not an exercise in nostalgia as her focus is on their contemporary resonance: “Musically, I’m not interested in recreating something from the past. That’s missing the point. Yes, the words are old but the message is always new. The music is free form.”

Although the subject matter of these hymns will have been part of the reason for their exclusion from the hymn books of their day, that same subject matter has been part of worship songs from the time of the Psalms to the present. The Psalms are the worship songs of the people of Israel as recorded in the Old Testament and are the first occasion in ancient literature where the voice of victims is heard and valued.

The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann in his book Spirituality of the Psalms provides an insightful and structured overview of the Psalms using three categories: orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. Orientation is the establishment of structure and order. Disorientation is a place of imbalance and nonsense, which is potentially unjust. New orientation is moving forward away from what was and toward new possibilities. As a result, the Psalms provide us with expressions of suffering and hope in the seasons of everyday life. In his book, Brueggemann explains how Psalms of negativity, cries for vengeance, and profound penitence are foundational to a life of faith, and establishes that the reality of deep loss and amazing gifts are held together in a powerful tension.

“This eerie, intriguing and enchanting music... is infused with echoes of the past two centuries’ beliefs and threads of spirituality and song.”

Rupert Loydell

With such a collection of worship songs as the foundation of worship in churches, and with plainsong in Western churches providing a means by which to chant the Psalms on a daily basis, it should not be surprising that later hymns, such as those being reimagined by Steffan, tap into the dark side of the psyche. The success of albums such as Officium by saxophonist Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble, together with Steffan’s own collaboration with pianist Huw Warren and saxophonist Mark Lockheart on Welsh hymns Duw A Wyr (God Only Knows) which is in a similar vein, show how such music can be made relevant to contemporary audiences.

Ghostwriter’s latest album, Tremulant, inhabits similar sonic territory to Steffan’s current Tafod Arian (Silver Tongue) music. Created over several years by Mark Brend, Suzy Mangion, Andrew Rumsey and Michael Weston King, this album has also been borne out of a shared love of antique evangelical hymns and spiritual songs. Using English, Welsh, Scottish and American source material from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the quartet pieced together their reconstructed hymnal through remote collaboration – creating an album that sounds both ancient and modern.

In his review of Tremulant, Rupert Loydell says it is “a strange ambient gospel album, where what used to be called spirituals and hymns are subverted by echo, wheezing organ and spacious musical interludes, which recontextualise, reimagine, stretch and mutate the very idea of song”. This, he says, “is eerie, intriguing and enchanting music” with “echoes of classic Nico (the cold beauty of Desertshore)”. It's ”declamatory poetry, alt-folk, noise and gentle discord” combined with “calm vocals” is “infused with echoes of the past two centuries’ beliefs and threads of spirituality and song”. As such, it's not what you’ll hear the local worship band playing, more’s the pity!

“Something kept bringing me back. That something has always been there. For that I am extremely thankful and am listening to it more and more.”

Lleuwen Steffan

Like buses, other revisiting’s and reimagining’s of old hymns and gospel songs are also coming along together. Hymn Time In The Land Of Abandon by Over the Rhine is “Music that we grew up singing, music as present in our formative years as the air we breathed”. Their recordings of hymns have been described as “spare, sweet and subtle renderings that transform the familiar into something fresh and new”.

The musical reimaging involved in Over the Rhine’s reinterpretations of hymns takes them into the space that Brueggemann defines as new orientation, while the sounds and, in some cases, content of the hymns chosen by Steffan and Ghostwriter are more in the realm of his disorientation category. The music making of Lleuwen Steffan, Ghostwriter and Over the Rhine takes us to places not commonly accessed by the music used in many church services. As is indicated by the story of hymn book committees omitting hymns that tap into the dark side of the psyche, much of the music used in church services can be located firmly in either the orientation or, sometimes, the new orientation categories.

Given that the arc of Christ’s life, death and resurrection takes us on a similar journey to that which Brueggemann sees occurring in the Book of Psalms, when our music and liturgy fail to go on a similar journey, we are only encountering part of the meaning and message of faith. The recent music of Lleuwen Steffan, Ghostwriter, and Over the Rhine is therefore profoundly helpful in beginning to redress that loss of balance in worship by taking us back to a fuller appreciation for the original songbook of the faithful, the Book of Psalms.

In speaking about why she has been drawn again and again to church music, Steffan described her teenage experience of drinking with her “mates in Bangor on the Saturday night” then getting “the last bus back home” and rolling “out of bed the following day to go to Sunday School”. She concluded: “That’s a strange paradox but, you see, something kept bringing me back. That something has always been there. For that I am extremely thankful and am listening to it more and more.” It may well be that that something is the arc of orientation, disorientation and new orientation we encounter and experience in the Psalms.

Article

Care

Culture

Mental Health

Trauma

10 November 2025

5 min read

Stillness is not always peace: how wellness and illness intertwine in silence

Stillness invites clinical insight—and a deeper kind of presence

Helen Cowan

Helen is a registered nurse and freelance writer, writing for audiences ranging from the general public to practitioners and scientists.

Celine Dion, stiff-person syndrome sufferer.

Celine Dion.

The Global Wellness Institute defines wellness as the active pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health. It includes rest and rejuvenation, through mindfulness, meditation and sleep. As a care home nurse, I am intrigued by the subject of stillness – for patient and nurse - in the pursuit of wellness, and as a sign of illness.

There’s a lot of stillness in illness - from the dense paralysis that can follow stroke or spinal cord injury, to the subtle weakness or stiffness in an arm that might signal the onset of motor neurone disease. Over half of people with Parkinson’s experience ‘freezing’, feeling as if their feet are momentarily glued to the ground. Freezing is also a feature of stiff-person syndrome – the auto-immune neurological condition powerfully documented by Celine Dion in her film I Am. In so-called stone-man syndrome, muscle tissue is replaced by bone, an immobile ‘second skeleton’.

The stillest still is seen in death itself. I’ve stood still with spouses and sons as their loved ones breathe their last. Alone, I’ve watched the hush between heartbeats until there exists only stillness beside sorrow. It’s a stillness like no other, when breath becomes still air, and the only movement is through a window opened to let air in, and souls out, in time-honoured nursing tradition.

In memory of babies born still, a public education and awareness campaign has been launched in the US. “Stillness is an illness” calls for families and healthcare providers to take seriously altered foetal movement in pregnancy, which is reported by 50 per cent of mothers who experience stillbirth. Stillbirth is a tragedy insufficiently addressed in global agendas, policies, and funded programmes, according to the World Health Organization. Mothers in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia are at highest risk, with nearly 1.5 million stillbirths in these regions in 2021.

Sometimes stillness manifests in more muted ways. When dementia robs the recall of person, place and time, residents no longer lift their head in response to their name, nor appear at their chosen place at the breakfast table in the morning. Television presenter Fiona Phillips describes the late stages of dementia for her mother, when she “spent whole chunks of time just sitting and staring ahead, only able to give out a series of sounds.” In care home nursing, I have brought stillness to an agitated mind. Therapeutic touch has relieved tension; creative activities have reduced restless pacing up and down. Music, movement, and medication can also calm a troubled mind.

In the further pursuit of patient wellness, the nurse may need to be still. The “CAREFUL” observation tool has been developed in nursing homes, in which the nurse sits still and discreetly watches a resident for a period of time, assessing their activities and interactions, working out what brings wellbeing, or ill-being, for that individual; residents in this case being our best teachers. Other times in dementia care, the nurse is still as they patiently wait for a resident to explore, enquiring into self-made mysteries solvable only by themselves, examining everything from door handles to another resident’s buttons; or to slowly finish a meal, their swallow also affected by the disease.

Punctuating any frantic nursing shift are other moments of necessary stillness as the nurse performs intricate procedures, carefully inserting catheters, delicately taking blood from fragile veins, or applying prolonged pressure to stem bleeding caused by a catheter during cardiac stenting. In the operating theatre, the scrub nurse stands still awaiting a surgeon’s call; the “honor walk” or walk of respect is a ceremonial procession in which healthcare staff line the corridor, in silent tribute, as a brain-dead patient is taken to theatre for organ donation.

There’s a different stillness sought in nursing, and elsewhere, which runs very deep. Described by missionary and author Elisabeth Elliot as a “perfect stillness…a great gift”, it is, in her words, “not superficial, a mere absence of fidgeting or talking. It is a deliberate and quiet attentiveness—receptive, alert, ready”. It’s an expectant stillness in which we “put ourselves firmly and determinedly in God’s presence, saying ‘I’m here, Lord. I’m listening’.” Writing for the Christian Medical Fellowship, nurse Sherin describes such a seeking during a stressful shift. “Overwhelmed, I stepped away to find a quiet place. I ended up in a washroom. It wasn’t ideal, but there I cried out to God, asking for courage, peace, patience, and above all, love for that patient.” And her prayer was answered. “That, to me, was the quiet, powerful presence of Christ,” she writes.

Her role model was Jesus himself who often stepped away to be still, to seek spiritual sustenance. Just before he fed the five thousand, Jesus said to his tired and hungry disciples, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” When grieving the execution of John the Baptist, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place; and in the hours before his arrest, Jesus withdrew about a stone’s throw from his disciples, knelt down and prayed. An angel from heaven appeared to him, and strengthened him. We too are invited, in the book of Psalms, to “Be still and know God” when hard pressed and weary. Here, the words “be still” derive from the Hebrew rapha which means “to be weak, to let go, to release”, or simply to surrender. It’s a theme repeated in many of the great Christian hymns, hinting at an expectant, sustaining stillness, invoking God’s promise of His presence in that stillness. Little-known hymnwriter Katharina von Schlegel, writing in the eighteenth century, captures it perfectly.

Be still, my soul! the Lord is on your side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to your God to order and provide;
In ev'ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul! your best, your heav’nly friend
Thru' thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

I’ve sought this stillness, and it’s brought me wellness. It’s the reason why, despite some difficult days, I am a nurse. Still.

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