Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Leopold Mozart, The Rationalist? Humanism And Good Taste In Eighteenth-Century Musical Thought, Katherine H. Walker

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The religious turn in eighteenth-century studies over the last two decades has created opportunities to revisit and refine some of our most entrenched ideas about this period in history. Revisionist histories of the Enlightenment emphasize various compromises between religion and secularism, tradition and individual freedom, faith and reason. One important nexus among these tendentious beliefs and values is the Jesuit education system. Using Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as a case study, this essay argues that “enlightened Christianity” long predated the Age of Enlightenment. The Jesuit educational system, which was founded on the humanist neoclassicism that proliferated in …

The Acoustics Of Justice: Music And Myth In Afro-Brazilian Congado, Genevieve E. Dempsey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

For the Afro-Brazilian musicians of popular Catholicism, or Congadeiros, who live precariously on the urban and rural margins of Brazil, ritual undergirds their struggles for subsistence, spiritual fulfillment, and racial equality. When Congadeiros create ritual, they enter into a tradition begun in the seventeenth century in Brazil by their enslaved African and Afro-descendant ancestors who intoned songs of redemption. In keeping with their ancestors’ evocations of dignity during slavery, worshipers in the present day embed multiple kinds of vested interests within ritual festivity to achieve racial equality. This article explores Congado, the ceremonies of these disenfranchised musicians, to …

Relational Power, Music, And Identity: The Emotional Efficacy Of Congregational Song, Nathan Myrick

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Relational Power, Music, and Identity: The Emotional Efficacy of Congregational Song

The power of congregational song to unify (or divide) people along various lines is well documented. Yet, how this process of uniting or dividing is accomplished has proven necessarily difficult to document. This paper examines the complex and polyvalent factors that contribute to the meaningfulness of congregational music making, seeking to offer a synthetic, conceptual framework with which to engage this often murky milieu.

Employing interdisciplinary research techniques drawn from sociology, ritual studies, and ethnomusicology, I construct a conceptual framework with which to understand the profoundly formative power of …

War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract

This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …

Pilgrimage And Audience On The Maharashtrian Vārī, Jaime Jones

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract.

Each year during the monsoon season, devotees of the Hindu Vārkarī sect take to the streets of the cities and towns of Maharashtra, to go on the vārī, a massive annual pilgrimage lasting twenty-one days. The procession of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims is not only seen but heard, as the songs written by the singer-saints of the tradition occupy nearly every moment of the journey. In this article, I examine the relationship between music and pilgrimage procession by focusing on the idea of audience - defined as both the listening public and the act of hearing itself. Rather …

A Note From The Director, Martin Jean

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

No abstract provided.

Pure Land And The Social Order In Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation Of "Longshu’S Treatise On Pure Land", Trevor Davis

Student Work

A 2012-2013 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Trevor Davis (Saybrook College '13) for his essay submitted to the History Department, “Pure Land and the Social Order in Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation of Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land.” (Valerie Hansen, Professor of History, advisor.)

Davis' essay makes a powerful argument about the Pure Land Buddhist Wang Rixiu's understanding of Southern Song (1127-1279) society. Although Pure Land Buddhism is often thought to be egalitarian - or at least to challenge traditional hierarchies - Trevor shows that for Wang Rixiu, an egalitarian Pure Land coexists …