Liturgy and Worship Commons^™

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 …

Aesthetic Meaning In The Congregational Masses Of James Macmillan, Stephen Kingsbury

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Examines the interconnetions between MacMillan’s congregational masses and other works by the composer. The compositional and philosophical commonalities between paired compositions deepens the philosophical and aesthetic meaning of both works. An understanding of these parallels and the manner in which they are worked out in practice provides an important insight into the composer’s intentions, making the performance of the masses within the context of the worship service more relevant to the spiritual experience of the congregant and provides insight into the interconnectivity of MacMillan’s compositional output.

“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.

A Musical Homiletic: Drawing On The Sonic Dimensions Of The Word And Spirit, Thomas H. Troeger

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The article begins by addressing two primary areas of concern: 1. Can music communicate meaning, and if so, how? 2. Can theological realities be expressed through music and other artistic forms whose primary medium is not language? The author then lays out a schema featuring four different aspects of developing a musical homiletic, starting with the simplest and moving to the most complex. (1) Preachers can speak in a way that captures the musicality of human conversation: its sonically engaging use of inflection, volume, pace, and timbre. (2) Preachers can interpret the theological and poetic meaning of the texts that …

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 …

Psalms In Our Lamentable World, Don Saliers

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Where are worshipers in Christian communities to go with their experiences and observations of violence, injustice, and other forms of suffering? Historically, a central source of realistic faith-based responses to tragedy has been the Psalter, broadly defined as a set of biblical psalms arranged by date to be individually and collectively read, sung, and prayed. Recent scholarship on psalms has focused on lament and complaint, and questions regarding the presence of trauma and violence in religious traditions have shown such psalms to be particularly relevant to contemporary culture.

This article examines three “psalms of lament,” Psalms 13, 42/43, and 88, …

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 …

Restoration Or Invention? Archbishop Cisneros And The Mozarabic Rite In Toledo, Susan Boynton

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

As archbishop of Toledo from 1495 to 1517, Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros carried out a multifaceted campaign of support for the Mozarabic rite, which had been preserved in the Middle Ages by Christians living in Toledo under Muslim rule. Although the Roman rite was introduced into the cathedral in 1086, the Toledan Mozarabs had continued to follow their ancient liturgy in their parishes. By the end of the Middle Ages, however, the rite was rarely celebrated. Fearing that it might become obsolete, in 1501 Cisneros endowed a chapel in his cathedral for the Mozarabic rite and established a clergy of …