'Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England' breaks new ground in the religious history of Elizabethan England, through a closely focused study of the relationship between the ...practice of religious music and the complex process of Protestant identity formation. Hearing was of vital importance in the early modern period, and music was one of the most prominent, powerful and emotive elements of religious worship. But in large part, traditional historical narratives of the English Reformation have been distinctly tone deaf. Recent scholarship has begun to take increasing notice of some elements of Reformed musical practice, such as the congregational singing of psalms in meter. This book marks a significant advance in that area, combining an understanding of theory as expressed in contemporary religious and musical discourse, with a detailed study of the practice of church music in key sites of religious worship. Divided into three sections - 'Discourses', 'Sites', and 'Identities' - the book begins with an exploration of the classical and religious discourses which underpinned sixteenth-century understandings of music, and its use in religious worship. It then moves on to an investigation of the actual practice of church music in parish and cathedral churches, before shifting its attention to the people of Elizabethan England, and the ways in which music both served and shaped the difficult process of Protestantisation. Through an exploration of these issues, and by reintegrating music back into the Elizabethan church, we gain an expanded and enriched understanding of the complex evolution of religious identities, and of what it actually meant to be Protestant in post-Reformation England.
In Catholic doctrine, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is the belief that Mary, the mother of Christ, was exempt from original sin from the moment of her conception, and thereby a ...co-redeemer alongside her son. Praise for this complicated devotion took place in Europe throughout the medieval period and resounded in the Americas with the founding of the first convent in Mexico City under the Order of the Immaculate Conception in 1540. All other orders of nuns in New Spain branched out from this convent, spreading the Marian devotion throughout the region. In this book, author Cesar D. Favila argues that the sonification of virginity and the Virgin Mary was fundamental to the promotion of the Immaculate Conception doctrine, and that this was part of a complex network of sonified practices in the lives of New Spanish nuns. These ""immaculate sounds,"" a term Favila uses for the cloistered nuns' idealized vocalizations as well as the expression of doctrinal rhetoric through musical metaphors, echoed the highly regulated realm of the convent and played a pivotal role in mediating between the lives of New Spanish nuns and the expectation that they would save the secular world with their vocalized prayers. In addition to the sonification of discipline, Favila shows that immaculate sounds also enhanced the nuns' engagement with their religious practices and facilitated embodied and spiritual engagement with Catholic doctrines. Throughout his study, he delves into rarely studied music sources from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New Spain alongside the rulebooks, devotional literature, and nuns' biographies that regulated convent life and inspired nuns' hymns. In doing so, Favila brings together a narrative of salvation that shines a light on the musical lives of nuns and locates women's agency within a hierarchical society that silenced some women and required others to sing.
In Artistic Disobedience Claudio Bacciagaluppi shows how music practice was an occasion for cross-confessional contacts in 17th- and 18th-century Switzerland, especially in Reformed private music ...societies (collegia musica).
Songs of Seoul Harkness, Nicholas
2014., 20131213, 2013, 2013-11-16
eBook
Songs of Seoul is an ethnographic study of voice in South Korea, where the performance of Western opera, art songs, and choral music is an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian enterprise. Drawing on ...fieldwork in churches, concert halls, and schools of music, Harkness argues that the European-style classical voice has become a specifically Christian emblem of South Korean prosperity. By cultivating certain qualities of voice and suppressing others, Korean Christians strive to personally embody the social transformations promised by their religion: from superstition to enlightenment; from dictatorship to democracy; from sickness to health; from poverty to wealth; from dirtiness to cleanliness; from sadness to joy; from suffering to grace. Tackling the problematic of voice in anthropology and across a number of disciplines, Songs of Seoul develops an innovative semiotic approach to connecting the materiality of body and sound, the social life of speech and song, and the cultural voicing of perspective and personhood.
Victorian-era divas who were better paid than some corporate chairmen, the boy soprano who grew up to give Bing Crosby a run for his money, music directors who were literally killed by the job-the ...plot of a Broadway show or a dime-store novel? No, the unique and colorful history of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Since its inception more than 125 years ago, the Cathedral Choir has been considered the gold standard of liturgical music-an example of artistic excellence that has garnered worldwide renown. Yet behind this stately facade lies an intriguing mix of New York history, star secrets, and high-level office politics that has made the choir not only a source of prime musical entertainment but also fodder for tabloids and periodicals across the nation. In this unique and engaging book, readers are treated to a treasure trove of vibrant characters, from opera stars from around the world to the thousands of volunteer singers who brought their own hopes and dreams-and widely varying musical abilities-to the fabled choir.As the city's preeminent Catholic institution, St. Patrick's Cathedral has served one of the most dynamic and diverse communities in the world for well over a century. It has been intimately entwined with the history of New York: a major center of culture in the nation's cultural capital. The Cathedral Choir provides an extraordinary and largely overlooked insight into this history, and in Salvatore Basile's pitch-perfect exploration, it becomes a microcosm for the larger trends, upheavals, and events that have made up the history of the city, the nation, and even the world. Basile also illuminates the choir's important role in New Yorkers' responses to some of the most momentous events of the past one hundred years, from world wars to world's fairs, from the sinking of the Titanic to 9/11, as well as its central role in the rituals and celebrations that have made life in the city more joyful-and bearable-for millions of people over the decades. While the phrase "church choir" usually evokes the image of a dowdy group of amateurs, the phrase "Choir of St. Patrick's Cathedral" has always meant something quite different. Salvatore Basile's splendid history shows just how different, and just how spectacular, the music of St. Patrick's is.
Five hundred years ago a monk nailed his theses to a church gate in Wittenberg. The sound of Luther's mythical hammer, however, was by no means the only aural manifestation of the religious ...Reformations.This book describes the birth of Lutheran Chorales and Calvinist Psalmody; of how music was practised by Catholic nuns, Lutheran schoolchildren, battling Huguenots, missionaries and martyrs, cardinals at Trent and heretics in hiding, at a time when Palestrina, Lasso and Tallis were composing their masterpieces, and forbidden songs were concealed, smuggled and sung in taverns and princely courts alike.Music expressed faith in the Evangelicals' emerging worships and in the Catholics' ancient rites; through it new beliefs were spread and heresy countered; analysed by humanist theorists, it comforted and consoled miners, housewives and persecuted preachers; it was both the symbol of new, conflicting identities and the only surviving trace of a lost unity of faith.The music of the Reformations, thus, was music reformed, music reforming and the reform of music: this book shows what the Reformations sounded like, and how music became one of the protagonists in the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century.
How do we as Christians today learn about worship and church music? How do we think about not only what music we will sing in Christian worship, but also the principles that should guide us in ...choosing and leading church music? Certainly, there are many different ways we answer that question: we study the Bible, we sing the words of the Scriptures, we read what theologians, worship leaders, and scholars of church music are writing today, we attend lectures and conferences by scholars and practitioners of church music. In this article, I offer and explore yet another example of how we live out God’s call in leading music for the Christian church: by studying the example of a faithful Christian musician from the past. My particular example for this article is the German composer and church musician Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). I want to clarify from the start that I am not arguing that J. S. Bach is the best example of a Christian church musician and certainly not that he is the only example. But Bach does offer us one example of a musician who dedicated most of his life to creating and leading music for the Christian church and sought to do so faithfully, creatively, and skillfully.
Burdened by famine, the plague, and economic hardship in the 1500s, the troubled citizens of Milan, mindful of their mortality, turned toward the veneration of the Virgin Mary and the creation of ...evangelical groups in her name. By 1594 the diversity of these lay religious organizations reflected in microcosm the varied expressions of Marian devotion in the Italian peninsula. Using archival documents, meditation and music books, and iconographical sources, Christine Getz examines the role of music in these Marian cults and confraternities in order to better understand the Church's efforts at using music to evangelize outside the confines of court and cathedral through its most popular saint. Getz reveals how the private music making within these cults, particularly among women, became the primary mode through which the Catholic Church propagated its ideals of femininity and motherhood.
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