Musicology Commons^™

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 And The Power Of Music: A Dialogue Between The Pulpit And Choir Loft In 1689, Markus Rathey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

During the ecclesiastical year 1689-90 the Lutheran superintendent in Leipzig, Johann Benedict Carpzov, and his cantor, the composer Johann Schelle, embarked on a collaboration of unusual scale. In the previous year, Carpzov had preached a cycle of sermons based on well-known hymns from the Lutheran tradition. In 1689-90 Carpzov gave a short summary of the earlier hymn sermons, while Schelle composed for each Sunday a cantata based on the very same hymn. The result is a unique collaboration between preacher and musician, pulpit and choir loft. Only a few of Schelle’s compositions have survived; however, the extant cantatas together with …

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 …

Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Bwv 248, And The Jews, Daniel R. Melamed

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

It has been recognized since the nineteenth century that most of the poetic arias and choruses in J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 are parodies of music composed to other texts. In the early twentieth century it was claimed that at least one gospel narrative chorus was also derived from extant music, a hypothesis subsequently expanded to include several such movements said to be parodies as well. The claims are flimsily argued and are unlikely on source-critical grounds, but they have stuck, persisting in scholarly writings, reference works, and popular literature.

The origin of this idea is a 1916 …

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 …