swain j. historical dictionary of sacred music

[...]... versus those of artistic creativity, is an eruption of a tension inherent in the art of sacred music Sacred music is music, after all, a fine art, and therefore requires artists, not mere craftsmen, who by nature want to create beauty, not merely replicate it, through music and who by training are equipped to do it But sacred music must also be sacred For some religions this has meant that the music received... distinction? THE DISTINCTION OF SACRED MUSIC Despite great variety in culture and creed throughout the world, a fundamental conception of the character of sacred music is held largely in common: it is chant All the religious traditions seem to have some form of it, though there are distinctive traditions to be sure Its sound is iconic of religious music In most types of chant, three musical qualities combine... accenting of such beats that is the essence of meter If the substrate of a sacred music tradition is its chant, the development, complication, flowering, and enrichment of that tradition—in short, its history—comes from modifying one or more of these three critical features of chant The history of Western sacred music, with significant correspondences in other traditions, can be conceived as processes of adding... ideal of congregational singing and kept sacred music in the hands of trained professional singers, at least of cially But by insisting on certain key elements of the musical language— voices only, melodies without chromaticism, and polyphonic texture— they also managed to keep their sacred music apart from the world, maintaining that critical sacred/ secular distinction at the very moment European music. .. services And music for congregations must be very simple Sacred music of the highest artistic standards generally demands a highly trained class of musicians, who resist abandoning their long years of training and simplifying their art for the sake of the commoner They ask, ‘‘Should not the highest, most sublime form of praise be offered to the divine?’’ The last kind of dispute, the interests of tradition... history of sacred music in the West are four The first was this allowance of change in sacred chanting and new compositions that could be admitted to liturgy This relaxed conception of sacred music made possible everything that followed The second key event was the invention of polyphony about A D 1000 Not only is the sounding of simultaneous and coordinated melodies the foundation of all Western art music. .. use the same music as a sign of religious unity, or should indigenous musical traditions, which often attract converts, play a role in rituals? The pendulum swings back and forth throughout the history of sacred music in the West, with periods of intense local invention countered by a pruning from a central authority, often signaled by new liturgical books A second kind of dispute, typical of older traditions,... context, what counts as ‘ sacred music ’ is not simply a matter of the music heard in a church or synagogue The category appears to admit of degree—works can be more or less sacred The most sacred would be liturgical music, music explicitly required as part of a ritual, such as a sung mass, a psalm in a vespers service, or a required proper hymn Next would come devotional music apart from liturgy,... century was the first in the history of Western music that showed a clear demarcation between the sound of art music for the churches and art music for the courts, salons, intellectual academies, and other secular locales One can speak of a Renaissance secular musical language, or at least a dialect, distinct from the reigning language of sacred music in which every musician was trained Naturally, as... emulate the music of the secular world It is impossible to say when this change of attitude came about, but it is certain that Christian communities were composing new hymns, that is, non-Biblical texts to be sung, by the fourth century Whatever the explanation, the dissociation of the sacred semantic in music the sense of what is holy in music from the Biblical text itself is what allows sacred music in . the purpose of this Historical Dictionary of Sacred Music, which focuses both on the common theme and many of the vari- ations. Most of the dictionary entries are inevitably devoted to music in the. permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Swain, Joseph Peter. Historical dictionary of sacred music. state of scholarship may be assessed in the Bibliography. Another third of the e ntries concern themselves with the various genres, or types of sacred music (e.g., cantata, mass, songs of the hajj). Something