Musicology Commons^™

Annunciation And The Cross: The Marian Theology Of Incarnation In James Macmillan’S Music And Public Discourse, Joel Clarkson

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Many of Scottish composer James MacMillan’s most essential works are influenced by his Catholic faith, and thematically focused on a theological expression of Incarnation and suffering worked out through a dissonant musical style. MacMillan has developed a robust public discourse that includes statements about his faith and the way it informs his music, and his forthright demeanor has often provoked tension with various figures and groups. This article suggests that these two forms of conflict—discordance in his composition, and elements of conflict in his public dialogue—are both driven by a Marian theology of Incarnation that provides the impetus both for …

(Special Section) Translating Race: Mission Hymns And The Challenge Of Christian Identity, Philip Burnett

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

“Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race,” “The race that long in darkness pined,” “To heal and save a race undone,” and “Sanctify a ransomed race” are a few examples of many references to “race” that exist in English-language hymnody. Throughout the nineteenth-century, hymns containing lines such as these, were exported from Britain into mission fields where translators had to find new ways to conceptualize notions of race and, in effect, created new group identities. This requires asking critical questions about the implications of what happened when ideas of race, in the Christian sense, interacted with non-religious notions of race in …

Hearing Faith: Music As Theology In The Spanish Empire, Carolina Sacristán Ramírez

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Andrew Cashner, Hearing Faith: Music as Theology in the Spanish Empire. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 194. (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

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 …

Listening To Early Modern Catholicism: Perspectives From Musicology, Aaron James

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Daniele V. Filippi and Michael Noone, eds. Listening to Early Modern Catholicism: Perspectives from Musicology (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

The Function Of Hymns In The Liturgical Life Of Malcolm Quin's Positivist Church, 1878–1905, Paul Watt

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The publication of Auguste Comte’s positive philosophy in the 1830s and 1840s took the world by storm and has come to be regarded as one of the principal turning points in nineteenth-century intellectual culture. A particularly large number of disciples and imitators of Comte’s philosophy sprang up all over Europe, especially in the United Kingdom. They established churches and networks in Comte’s memory and wrote tracts, pamphlets and books on history, philosophy, aesthetics, literature, theology and the bourgeoning field of sociology based on Comte’s works. One such disciple was the musician Malcolm Quin. A singer, organist and hymn-writer, Quin was …

Singing As English Protestants: The Whole Booke Of Psalmes’ Theology Of Music, Samantha Arten

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The Whole Booke of Psalmes, first published in 1562, became the most visible symbol of English Protestant music-making through its immense popularity and its perceived Protestant authority and monarchical authorization, and the psalter was directly responsible for the formation of the Church of England’s musical culture. Through close reading of the hymnal’s words about music—the versified texts of the psalms themselves, particularly the paraphrases of those psalms that speak directly about music, singing, worship, and instruments, and also other material including the versified hymns and prefatory matter—I argue that the WBP promoted a particular theology of music in Reformation …

Liturgical Singing In The Lutheran Mass In Early Modern Sweden And Its Implications For Clerical Ritual Performance And Lay Literacy, Mattias O. Lundberg

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article postulates and analyses three distinct modes of performativity in Early Modern ecclesiastical music in Sweden, each linked to a specific repertoire of melodies, and each de facto (and sometimes also de jure) monopolized by the Church of Sweden. It is proposed that recognition and analysis of these three modes may provide further understanding of the interaction between singing, reading and speaking during the period under discussion. This sheds new light on what has in literacy research been termed “religious reading”, giving rise in some instances to a corresponding type of “religious singing” in a narrower sense: one …

Glimpses Into The Music And Worship Life Of A Victorian Colonial Cathedral: The Anglican Cathedral Of St Michael And St George In 1900 (Grahamstown, South Africa), Andrew-John Bethke

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article documents one year (1900) in the musical life of a colonial Anglican cathedral in Grahamstown (Cape Colony, South Africa), during the British colonial period. The source material for the music-lists is drawn mainly from the Saturday editions of two local newspapers: Grocott’s Penny Mail and the Grahamstown Journal. The author analyses the musical trends of the cathedral by exploring the content of the cathedral’s musical repertoire and relating it to the choir’s size and competency; commenting on the preference for certain composers and what this might imply about local musical taste; examining the precentor’s hymn choices and …

The Rogationtide Processions Of Wilton Abbey, Alison N. Altstatt

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The Benedictine convent of Wilton Abbey was among the wealthiest women’s religious communities in medieval England and home to an elite school for noble women. Until recently, a late thirteenth-century manuscript processional from Wilton was known only from a hand copy made circa 1860 at the Abbey of St. Pierre de Solesmes. The original manuscript was presumed lost. The recent identification of thirty-seven leaves of the original manuscript processional offers primary sources for the study of Wilton’s liturgy, and offers a means by which to assess the reliability of the nineteenth-century copy. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct …

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 …

Whitefield's Music: Moorfields Tabernacle, The Divine Musical Miscellany (1754), And The Fashioning Of Early Evangelical Sacred Song, Stephen A. Marini

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Evangelical hymnody was the most significant form of popular sacred song in eighteenth-century Anglo-America. John and Charles Wesley built their Methodist movement on it, but little is known about the music of their great collaborator and eventual rival, George Whitefield (1714-1770). The essential sources of Whitefield's music are the development of ritual song at his Moorfields Tabernacle in London, his Collection of Hymns for Social Worship (1753) prepared for that congregation, and a little-known tunebook called The Divine Musical Miscellany (1754) that contains the first and definitive repertory of music known to be sung at Moorfields. This essay recovers Whitefield's …

“And Can It Be”: Analysing The Words, Music, And Contexts Of An Iconic Methodist Hymn, Martin V. Clarke

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This paper interrogates the iconic status of Charles Wesley's hymn "And can it be" within British Methodism. It examines words, music and context, arguing that it is the combination of these that is crucial to understanding the hymn's status, and that such an approach may be more widely useful in hymnology. Through examination of the literary characteristics of the text, the musical settings associated with it throughout its history, and the ways in which it has been used within British Methodism, it reflects upon the hymn's peculiar place in the spiritual life of the denomination, and how this reflects upon …

Music In The South African Anglican Diocese Of Cape Town From 1900 To The Present: Toward A History Of Anglican Music In The Anglican Church Of Southern Africa, Andrew-John Bethke

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article provides a succinct history of Anglican cathedral and parish music in the Western Cape Province and the city of Cape Town. Within these parameters the author explores the musical trends in different strands of Anglicanism (Anglo-Catholic, Broad Church and Evangelical), documents the development of choirs and music groups and gauges the musical consciousness of South African Anglicans. The article begins at the turn of the twentieth century and extends to 2010. The earliest history (from 1750 - 1900) has been documented in a previous article by the same author.

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 …

Preaching About Pipes And Praise: Lutheran Organ Sermons Of The Seventeenth Century, Joyce L. Irwin

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The seventeenth century was a grand era for organ building, and as new organs were installed in Lutheran churches in Germany, there were services of dedication at which a sermon was preached to explain the theological basis for using organ music in worship and to extol the value of instrumental worship for the praise of God. In some respects these sermons were all alike: scriptural passages, predominantly from the Old Testament, were cited to remind the congregation of ancient musical practices; opponents of church organs from Zwingli through Calvin to Voetius and Grossgebauer were chastised as misguided or worse; the …

The Reformation Of Preaching: Transformations Of Worship Soundscapes In Early Modern Germany And Switzerland, Barbara Pitkin

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The evangelical sermon was the Protestant Reformation’s central ritual event and the catalyst for a host of other changes, ranging from the abolition of the Mass to acts of violent iconoclasm. In promoting the sermon, reformers in Germany and Switzerland were in continuity with trends in medieval preaching, but at the same time the new centrality given to the preached word fundamentally altered the worship experience, particularly the aural experience. The present investigation traces the contours of the preaching landscape in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, outlines the innovations in sermonizing in Reformation Switzerland and Germany, and, by …

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 …