Ethnomusicology Commons^™

Chanting The Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription And English Translation Of The Medicine Buddha Service Of The Liberation Rite Of Water And Land At Fo Guang Shan Monastery, Jeffrey W. Cupchik

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.

Syriac Chant And The Limits Of Modality, Sarah Bakker Kellogg

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo, by Tala Jarjour. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 250 pp. ISBN: 978-0-190-63525-1.

James Macmillan's Mass Of Blessed John Henry Newman And The Culture Of Liturgical Music-Making In The Scottish Catholic Church, Michael Ferguson

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

James MacMillan composed his Mass of Blessed John Henry Newman as a congregational setting for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom in 2010. The work was heralded as the first setting of the new English Missal translation, and MacMillan expressed hope that it would make a longer-term contribution to music-making in the Roman Catholic Anglosphere. However, in Scotland at least, Mass of Blessed John Henry Newman has not made a widespread impact. The purpose of this article is to understand why MacMillan was unable to add his setting to the body of congregational music in Scotland. …

Sounding The Congregational Voice, Marissa Glynias Moore

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Congregational singing is a participatory vocal practice undertaken by Christians across a wide range of denominations, yet the specific qualities and active capacities of the congregational voice have yet to be investigated. Drawing on recent musicological and philosophical perspectives on voice, I theorize the congregational voice as an active practice, illuminating its abilities to do something in worship through sound.

Taking Brian Kane’s model of the voice as a circulation of content (logos), sound (echos), and source (topos), I explore how these categories are redefined through an active-based theorization of congregational singing. I argue that …

Tarian Perdamaian: Enacting Alternative Hindu/Christian Identity Discourses Through "Secular" Balinese Performing Arts, Dustin D. Wiebe

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article examines the nature of interreligious relations between Protestants of the Bali Church and Hindus as enacted through dramatic forms of Balinese music and dance. Particular attention is paid to the influence of mass tourism as a contributing factor in this process. Since the early twentieth century these arts have formed a central component of a pan-Balinese identity discourse known as" kebalian." The first Balinese converted to Christianity during the 1930s and were subsequently excommunicated from their ancestral villages for refusing to participate in local customary practices (including the ritualistic use of gamelan music). For this reason, Balinese …

Buddhism As Performing Art: Visualizing Music In The Tibetan Sacred Ritual Music Liturgies, Jeffrey W. Cupchik

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The eleventh-century Tibetan female ascetic, Machik Labdrön (1055-1153), developed a Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhist meditation method called Chöd (Tib. gCod, Eng. “to cut”) and associated ritual practices as a means of eliminating “self-grasping,” which is defined as the mistaken instinct of regarding one’s “self” and all phenomena as intrinsically, or independently, existent. Her musical-meditation method became renowned across Central Asia during her lifetime, and Chödritual practices and liturgies have been transmitted from teacher to disciple in unbroken lineages until today. The ritual is now well known globally, with Tibetan Lamas, nuns, and empowered exponents teaching widely, across a transnational …