Musicology Commons^™

Tracking The Harmonium From Christian Missionary Hymns To Sikh Kirtan, Gurminder Kaur Bhogal

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The harmonium is prominent in Sikh practices of devotional music known as kirtan and yet its significance has barely been addressed in Euro-American scholarship. Following on the heels of a recent ban against using the instrument at the holiest temple of the Sikhs, Harmandir Sahib (popularly known as the Golden Temple), this article explores how the ban seeks to discard this colonial instrument and return to playing traditional string instruments (tanti saz) associated with the courts (darbar) of the Sikh Gurus. This study is the first to examine primary missionary sources from the nineteenth and early …

Early Modern Scottish Metrical Psalmody: Origins And Practice, Timothy Duguid

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Non-literate societies are often dependent on music for transmitting news and ideas because of music’s ability to enhance memory. Sixteenth-century reformers were aware of this, but they had to compete with secular and Roman Catholic music that often contradicted Reformed doctrine. Highly influenced by the Strasbourg-based Martin Bucer and the writings of Saint Augustine, John Calvin insisted that Biblical Psalms, set in vernacular poetry, were most appropriate for both corporate worship and private devotion. The result was a series of metrical psalters that were intended to be performable by everyone. Some editions had explicitly liturgical designs, but most were intended …

"No Human Ever Made A Cathedral Such As This": Scoping The Ecology Of The Carols By Candlelight Effect In Australia's Open-Air Environments, Robin Ryan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

During Australia’s dry December, traditional and popular forms of caroling shape the sight and sound of the key Christian festival of Christmas. Creative connections between belief, place, and music are characteristically manifest in focused open-air environments of beach, bushland or park. Reasoning from gospel belief that the very first “Christmas carol” emanated from a heavenly host of angels singing to an audience of shepherds in a field, caroling alfresco is an appropriate activity. How, then, do Australian caroling venues become conducive to environmental spheres of sound and influence? While the annual mass Carols by Candlelight concerts televised from Melbourne and …

Physicality And Devotion In Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’S Rosary Sonatas, Roseen Giles

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The Rosary Sonatas of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644–1704) for solo violin were likely composed in the late 1670s, and were dedicated to the composer’s patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg Maximilian Gandolph von Kuenburg. The sonatas in this remarkable set of fifteen are preceded by copperplate engravings, each depicting one of the mysteries of the rosary. The pieces display Biber’s extensive use of scordatura, an unusual “discordant” tuning, notated with a semi-tablature in which the visual contours of the notation on the page are at odds with the audible contours of the phrases. Biber’s sonatas are intentionally enigmatic, revealing …

Singing The Sermon: Where Musicology Meets Homiletics, Emmett G. Price Iii

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

From the beginning of the Christian Church, singing and preaching have served as major tools of communication. In fact, they remain the most utilized methods of articulating and explicating personal and communal theologies across the diverse and expansive expressions of Christianity.

From the life, ministry, and legacy of Jesus Christ through the teachings of the Apostle Paul, the roles and functions of singing and preaching are well known but not well studied as a unit. From the foundational writings of the early Church Fathers through the various theses of the reformers, the acts of singing and preaching have been studied …

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 …