Hymns, whether composed for religious contexts or as expressions of spiritual reflection, are historically revered for their redemptive nature. For generations, Black Hymnody has cried out for ...Christological interventions to end shambolic and systemic oppression against Black people. The vicious murder of George Perry Floyd, Jr. on May 25, 2020 reverberated and initiated, as a catalyst, an overdue global awakening that sparked a catalytic moment for conversations too long deferred. Conversations that question how we experience and name things; how we negotiate trauma; and how we engage one another as neighbors. In many ways, the redemptive nature of hymns has been used in non-redemptive, and perhaps even oppressive ways over the many years. Inspired by the prophetic hope of hymnist, Rev. Charles Albert Tindley (1851-1933), this article will offer a reflective gaze on the intersection of hymnology and the study of race while offering an invitation to expanded ways of holding space for that which has been too long ignored. Issues of agency, mobility and de/coloniality will be explored with an eye towards equity, inclusivity and redemption, not solely in the communal singing of select hymns but also their canonization. Further conversation will be focused on how hymns, sung in congregations, become a form of community expression beyond the Church. Finally, this article will offer insights and hopes for how scholars approach the study of race within their analytical research and interpretative scholarship on hymns.
We offer here the first of two special sections on the theme of "Hymns Beyond the Congregation." Divided into the two sub-themes of "Hymns Beyond the Congregation: Constructions of Identity," and ..."Hymns Beyond the Congregation: Legacies of Meaning," our authors (based in institutions both in the USA and the UK) comprise both early career and senior scholars and come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds in American history, South African colonial history, political history, the history of mission education, and historical musicology. Together, these two special issues will pave the way for facilitating new dialogues between historians, musicologists and congregational studies scholars, inviting fresh perspectives on how hymns have long constituted a powerful genre for community-building that often resists and reframes the hierarchies within which most hymns have hitherto been studied. We also hope that this work encourages the traditional binaries between secular and sacred contexts for hymn singing to be broken down, so that the migration of hymns between church services and secular spaces can also be understood as a largely inevitable societal and cultural process.
Hymns played a role in envoicing the politics of protest in England long before their integration in the established Church – and do so to this day. Yet it was nineteenth-century radical movements ...that embraced the hymn as in many ways the ideal musical form. From the bloody field of Peterloo to the secularising South Place Society, from the mass meetings of Chartists to the top-down productions of the Fabian socialists, the century resounded with this increasingly familiar music. Many writers laid claim to the rhetoric of the hymn to advance causes from abolitionism to solidarity with Poles exiled to Siberia, and compositions that might more realistically be described as marches, odes, or even ballads all insisted upon the legitimating, respectable language of the hymn. As the century progressed, however, those recognisable musicological and lyrical features that have come to epitomise the hymn proper, became indispensable to political activism in spaces beyond the congregation. This article concentrates on the work of three writers in particular – Samuel Bamford, Eliza Flower, and Ebenezer Elliott – in order to explore the aspects of the hymn that lent themselves to political performance in public space. Through the efforts of these and other writers, the tropes and techniques of congregational singing fundamentally altered both the shape of nineteenth-century struggles over class and the franchise, and the sound and rhetoric of political song-writing in the longue durée.
This article is a summary of 60+ Tēvāram hymns on Veṇkāṭu which are not only important documents in the history of South Indian Śaivism, but also the sthala and organizing principle of the structure ...of the temple, its location and iconography. The Śaivite Navagraha-sthalas in the Kāviri delta, are Curiyanārkōyil-Sūrya, Tiṅkalūr-Candra, Tiruveṇkāṭu-Budha, Vaittīcuvarankōyil-Aṅgāraka, Ālaṅkuṭi-Bṛhaspati, Kañcaṇūr-Śukra, TirunaḷḷāṟuŚanaiścara, Kuṃbhakoṇam/Nākeśvaram-Rāhu and Perumpaḷḷam-Ketu. The Vaiṣṇavas have their Navagrahasthalas in the Tāmiraparaṇi basin, called Navatiruppatis (nine holy lands). The nava-Kailāsas in this zone are also treated Śaiva grahasthalas. Śvetāraṇyeśvara temple. Tiruveṇkāṭu, is a crucial Śaiva-sthala, much less known to the outer world. The three authors of the Tēvāram, viz., Campantar (Tirumuṟai 1-3), Nāvukkaracar (4.6) and Cuntarar (7) have contributed six patikams (decades of hymns, totally of 62 hymns) on the Budha-sthala in Tiruveṇkāṭu. The different manifestations of Śiva are extolled in these hymns, particularly Ardhanārīśvara, Naṭarāja, Yogīśvara, Candraśekhara, Ekapādamūrti, Bhikṣāṭana, Kālāri, Gajasaṃhāra and so on. These remain unexamined in scholarly works. It is worthwhile to see what the Tēvāram-trio have to say on Veṅkāṭu. It seems during the past, Cōḻa, Veṇkāṭu was a base of the Vīraśaivas. Therefore, a shrine for the Lord Vīrabhadra is present within the Śvetāraṇyeśvara temple. The bhakti Tamil literature clearly recognizes the importance of this venue with reference to its landscape, sthala, vṛkṣa, cultic values, mythologies, nāmāvalis ‘epithets’ and its implications on the visual iconography of the temple that evolved under the Cōḻas and successive rulers of the region. This article hopes to show the importance of an aspect of Tamil Śaivism which is often neglected by scholars.
Among the writers of the Syriac Christian tradition, none is as renowned as St. Ephrem of Nisibis (ca. 307–373), known to much of the later Christian world simply as “the Syrian.” The great majority ...of Ephrem’s works are poetry, with the madrāšē (“teaching songs”) especially prominent.
This volume presents English translations of four complete madrāšē cycles of Ephrem: On the Fast, On the Unleavened Bread, On the Crucifixion , and On the Resurrection . These collections include some of the most liturgically oriented songs in Ephrem’s corpus, and, as such, provide a window into the celebration of Lent and Easter in the Syriac-speaking churches of northern Mesopotamia in the fourth century. Even more significantly, they represent some of the oldest surviving poetry composed for these liturgical seasons in the entire Christian tradition. Not only are the liturgical occasions of the springtime months a source of colorful imagery in these texts, but Ephrem also employs traditional motifs of warm weather, spring rainstorms, and revived vegetation, which likely reflect Hellenistic literary influences.
Like all of Ephrem’s poetry, these songs express early Christian theology in language that is symbolic, terse, and vibrant. They are rich with biblical allusions and references, especially to the Exodus and Passion narratives. They also reveal a contested religious environment in which Ephrem strove to promote the Christian Pascha and Christian interpretations of Scripture over and against those of Jewish communities in the region, thus maintaining firm boundaries around the identity and practices of the churches.
The paper discusses the landscapes of Apollo, Hermes, Pan, and Demeter in the Homeric hymns, analysing how particular landscape representations articulate the gods’ functions and identities, their ...relationship to humanity and the structure of the Olympic cosmos. It is argued that an in-depth examination of the representation of landscape in Ancient literature reveals patterns of representation that contribute to a deeper understanding of the religious worldview of the ancient Greeks.
Straipsnyje aptariami Apolono, Pano-Hermio ir Demetros kraštovaizdžiai Homeriniuose himnuose, analizuojant, kaip per juos artikuliuojamos dievų funkcijos ir tapatybės, santykiai su žmonija bei olimpinio kosmo struktūra. Teigiama, jog gilinantis į kraštovaizdžio reprezentaciją antikinėje literatūroje atsiskleidžia vaizdavimo dėsningumai, padedantys giliau suprasti religinį senovės graikų pasaulėvaizdį.
