Sacred Sound and Social Change

Description

Teachers, students, composers, performers, and other practitioners of sacred sound will appreciate this volume because, unlike any book currently available on sacred music, it treats the history, development, current practices, composition, and critical views of the liturgical music of both the Jewish and Christian traditions. Contributors trace Jewish music from its place in Hebrew Scriptures through the nineteenth-century Reform movement. Similar accounts of Christian music describe its growth up to the Protestant Reformation, as well as post-Reformation development. Other essays explore liturgical music in contemporary North America by analyzing it against the backdrop of the continuous social change that characterizes our era.

Sujets

• Rituals
• Hebrew
• Jewish Studies
• Jewish
• Religious
• contemporary
• Philosophie et théologie
• MUSIC
• América del Norte
• Jews
• Multiple signal classification
• General officer
• Protestant Reformation
• North America
• Judaism
• Hebrew language
• Religion
• General
• Practice
• Hébreu

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 1993
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268160579
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 20 Mo

Extrait

SACRED SOUND AND SOCIAL CHANGE: LITURGICAL MUSIC IN JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE
TWO LITURGICAL TRADITIONS
Volume 3
Sacred Sound and Social Change:
Liturgical Music in Jewish and Christian Experience
Edited by
L AWRENCE A. H OFFMAN
and
J ANET R. W ALTON
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
All Right Reserved
Copyright 1992 by University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sacred sound and social change: liturgical music in Jewish and Christian experience / edited by Lawrence A. Hoffman and Janet R. Walton
p. cm. - (Two liturgical traditions ; v. 3)
Took its origin from a conference held in oct. 1986 at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-268-01746-0
1. Church music. 2. Music-Religious aspects-Christianity. 3. Synagogue music-History and criticism. 4. Jews-Music-History and criticism. I. Hoffman, Lawrence A., 1942- II. Walton, Janet Roland. III Series.
ML2900.S2 1992
782.3-dc20
91-51120
CIP
ISBN 9780268160579
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
Contents
INTRODUCTION: North American Culture and Its Challenges to Sacred Sound Janet R. Walton
PART 1 RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST: SACRED SOUND FROM THE BIBLE TO REFORM
Introduction
Jewish Liturgical Music from the Bible to Hasidism Eliyahu Schleifer
Jewish Liturgical Music in the Wake of Nineteenth-Century Reform Geoffrey Goldberg
Christian Liturgical Music from the Bible to the Renaissance Margot Fassler and Peter Jeffery
Christian Liturgical Music in the Wake of the Protestant Reformation Robin Leaver
PART 2 EXPLORING THE PRESENT: SACRED SOUND IN NORTH AMERICA TODAY
Introduction
Catholic Prophetic Sound after Vatican II Miriam Therese Winter
Present Stress and Current Problems: Music and Reformed Churches Horace T. Allen, Jr .
The Hymnal as an Index of Musical Change in Reform Synagogues Benjie-Ellen Schiller
PART 3 COMPOSING SACRED SOUNDS: FOUR NEW SETTINGS OF PSALM
Introduction and Instructions to the Composers Lawrence A. Hoffman and Janet R. Walton
The Roman Catholic Tradition Nansi Carroll
The Methodist Tradition Don E. Saliers
The Jewish Tradition Ben Steinberg
The Episcopal Tradition Alec Wyton
PART 4 CRITIQUING SACRED SOUND: PERSPECTIVES ON THE SACRED AND THE SECULAR
Introduction
Sacred Music in a Secular Age Samuel Adler
A Petition for a Visionary Black Hymnody Jon Michael Spencer
Enculturation, Style, and the Sacred-Secular Debate Virgil C. Funk
CONCLUSION: On Swimming Holes, Sound Pools, and Expanding Canons Lawrence A. Hoffman
INDEX
Introduction
North American Culture and Its Challenges to Sacred Sound
J ANET R. W ALTON
What do we sing in a time when nations battle, when cultures clash, when races are at odds, when sexes struggle in the courts (and out of them), when religions revert to factitious holy wars ? Can we really be so bold as still to sing, God s covenant lasts forever ?
Over the centuries, liturgical music in synagogue and church has shaped communities faith. More persuasively than words alone, music expresses what we believe about God. It proclaims the terms of our relationships with each other. It connects our faith to the tangible concerns that confound our world.
Poignant illustrations of the power of music are strikingly exemplified in communities where those tangible concerns mean nothing less than the work of human survival. Jews on the brink of extinction in Nazi death camps are reported nonetheless to have sung Ani ma amin , I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, just as their forebears in eleventh-century Rhineland communities sang Alenu leshabe ach , It is our lot to praise the Eternal One, even as Crusaders were burning them alive. 1 No evidence assured them that their song could change their circumstances. Yet they persisted in singing. Song offered not only a public witness but also strength one to another.
Similarly, blacks in the midst of slavery sang,
My burden s so heavy, I can t hardly see,
Seems like everybody is down on me,
An that s all right, I don t worry,
Oh, there will be a better day. 2
The blues style of this song-both its music and its text-gave voice to the reality of utter pain but a refusal to be conquered by it. 3 In their singing, blacks identified and solidified their determination. Their color would not destine them to be demeaned forever. There will be a better day.
Music s capacity to express emotion as well as conceptual insight makes it a primary vehicle for the worshiper to identify with the deepest core of his or her faith. When a community or an individual sings about suffering, joy, or determination, what might otherwise be perceived as experience inchoate receives a name, and then can be shared in both heart and mind. In that sharing is power, participation in the fresh stuff of faith 4 that makes belief matter.
Liturgical music has always functioned this way, linking experience to faith in an atmosphere of emotional commitment. But standing now at the close of the twentieth century, we find religious communities asking new questions of their worship. Knowing that a succession of wars, economic upheavals, and the denial of basic human rights mark their world, people are demanding liturgical experiences that enable them to make their faith matter, in the sense that it will carry over to the ordinary and the not-so-ordinary choices that contemporary circumstances foist upon them. Such an expectation challenges all liturgical leaders, but invites composers and performing musicians in a special way. The rapidly changing-some would even say, deteriorating -situations featured on the nightly news quickly make yesterday s worship appear utterly irrelevant. Old texts and sounds come under attack as thoughtful and committed people ask, What does it mean to sing God s covenant lasts forever in the face of senseless deaths, pervasive violence, differences settled only by war? What sounds and words do we use to call upon God? What are the terms of this covenant? As traditional music is thus subjected to careful scrutiny, new music is emerging to express a spectrum of responses. Never in the history of the church, says Robin Leaver, have so many new hymnals been published within such a short time. Never has there been more activity in the writing of new texts and tunes. Leaver is quite correct! He estimates that between 1984 and 1994, forty-five new hymnals will be produced, thirty as official hymnals for church denominations. 5
Driving this unprecedented musical output are both theological and sociological developments. Theologically speaking, we have come to recognize what ought surely to have been evident long before: as a cursory glance at religious history discloses, a human understanding of the nature of God is uncontainable in any single set of metaphors. No words identify God adequately. No image suits every generation equally. Each age seeks knowledge of God through its own favored tropes that emerge as privileged because they make God real in the light of the circumstances that each age faces. Particularly now, therefore, as we recognize God s uncapturable essence, we find ourselves engaged in continuous attempts to identify the many manifestations of God s unfolding among us. Our search opens up aspects of God that have been lost or overlooked for centuries, even entire eras! Such metaphors as God as mother or lover , for example, correct the tradition that has excluded all but patriarchal divine/human expressions. We find ourselves probing the entire gamut of human experience to discover where God is present, thereby to name God differently from what we might otherwise have imagined, were we to limit our religious vocabulary to the set of divine imagery most familiar to us.
The issues of consequence occasioned by our world crisis fuel our theological search; we discover the inadequacy of the conventional set of texts and sounds to express the terms of the covenant as that covenant unfolds in our day. What promise of faith should guide our choices about life and death? How does covenantal awareness affect our responsibility to care for the earth, to feed the millions of people dying from hunger, to eliminate illiteracy, to narrow the gap between rich and poor?
Surely the challenges implicit in social change are not entirely new as critical factors shaping sacred sound. Perhaps what is different, however, is a sociological phenomenon: the growing self-empowerment of congregations-at least in some denominations-whereby congregants themselves wish to decide what they will sing. The right hymns, songs, and chants are no longer merely givens dictated by authorities. Exposed to a broad spectrum of musical styles, both within and beyond church and synagogue, worshiping communities have a sense of what they find banal and what they find compelling. They know what moves them beyond themselves as well as into solidarity with each other. No longer is the choice of music the sole responsibility of professional musicians or liturgists. Professional musicians play the essential roles of exposing worshipers to the breadth of musical possibilities and of insuring qualitatively good performances, but congregations are becoming active partners in the final selection of what will or will n