Roundtable expectations

Choose two examples in which people in Europe and its colonies used musical performance to embody their fundamental beliefs about the world. For each example, discuss the following questions. Write one paragraph about each example.

1. What kind of community created and used this music?
   • This might include such distinctions as Catholic or Protestant, wealthy or poor, royal/noble or common, gender, ethnicity, geographical location, etc.
   • Highlight one core value (or belief, or doctrine) of that community that this musical example demonstrates and discuss how the music expresses, embodies, or promotes that value, paying attention to a few specific details of the musical sound and structure.
2. What do you think we can learn from studying religious music of this period that would be valuable for our societies today? (1-2 paragraphs)
3. List one or two questions you would like to discuss with the class.

Music in communities of belief: Roman Catholic

• In Europe: Reform movements, conflict with Protestants
  • Use music to demonstrate power of the church and make the gospel attractive
    • “Gospel” = connection to Christ by belonging to the church
  • Traditional genres of Latin liturgical music continue
    • plainchant, faburden and other kinds of improvised parallel/simple polyphony
    • imitative solemn polyphony a la Palestrina
  • New styles develop, many in tandem with theatrical music
    • monody/recitative in sacred concertos
    • polychoral motets
    • in 18th century, concerted masses and motets (multiple movements with recitatives, arias, and choruses)

Roman Catholic, continued

• Outside Europe:
  • “Outer circle” where Europeans were in minority (China, Japan, South Asia)
    • Jesuit missions with small followings, attempts at cultural accommodation and fusion, many unsuccessful or with unintended outcomes
    • Use music (especially speculative music theory) to find common ground with learned elite (China)
  • “Inner circle” where Europeans were a dominating force (Spain in Mexico, Peru, Paraguay/Bolivia, Philippines; Portuguese in Angola, Brazil; French in Canada, Louisiana, Haiti)
    • Colonization and church-building went hand in hand (“building a Christian civilization”)
    • Dispossession of indigenous peoples’ land base and forced relocation into missionary settlements
    • Enslavement and trafficking of African people (as well as Native American and Asian people)
    • Use music to build Catholic civilization, focus on cathedrals, monastic communities/convents
    • Chaotic and colorful contestations of cultures in public processions and festivals, e.g., Corpus Christi

Music and Catholic worldview

• Cosmic harmony: music on earth reflects and enacts the order of creation, can bring harmony to human body and align everything with the music of the spheres and with God’s own nature
  • Boethius: music instrumentalis (played/sounding music), musica humana (body/soul, society), musica mundana (spheres, natural world)
  • Augustine: listening to earthly music but straining to hear a higher spiritual music; everything points beyond itself to God
  • God works through material elements: bread, wine, bodies of saints, special places (shrines, churches), musical instruments
• God works through hierarchy: Christ, Mary, saints, pope, bishops, priests, down to common people; everyone has a divinely ordained place in that hierarchy, including enslaved people (at the bottom)
  • used to justify slavery, genocide, abuse
• God speaks through tradition to the whole community (via hierarchy): must preserve old forms like chant while grafting new forms like galant orchestra music on top of them
  • The congregation does not speak for itself; the choir (including instruments like organ) speaks for it most of the time

• Music used to teach doctrine but more to cultivate affective devotion (heartfelt experience of God and commitment to the church)
• Special place of hearing as the sense most favored by faith, but also the weakest and most easily deceived: spiritual “ear training” necessary
• Music is an offering to God; many people paid for music or performed music as a form of penance (in hopes of earning forgiveness of sins) or supplication (praying for rain, relief from plague, end to war); especially via music devoted to Mary and the saints

Protestant communities: Lutherans

• (“right wing”) Lutheran
  • saved by grace alone, by faith alone, through Christ alone, as taught by Scripture alone
  • what is not forbidden may be permitted
  • music promotes the advancement of the Word
  • commitment to teaching in church, home, and school
  • Musical forms:
    • chorales/hymns and chorale-based instrumental and choral music
    • Spruchmotette, sacred concertos
    • cantatas, passions
  • music as declaration of personal faith together with rest of believing community
  • music as form of doctrinal teaching, connection to preaching
  • “New Piety” movement in 17C advocating intense personal, emotional relationship with Jesus rather than just pure doctrinal belief (partly response to 30 Ys. War, 1618–48)
  • examples: Schütz (complex choral and solo music), Crüger (simple hymns reinforced with choral arrangements), Weckmann and Buxtehude (preaching from the organ)

Other Protestants

• (“left wing”) Reformed/Calvinist/Presbyterian
  • like Lutherans but more radical, stricter
  • predestination, election, self-policing community, in or out
  • what is not commanded must be forbiddent
  • only vocal music, metrical psalms in church
• (“middle way”) Anglican/Episcopalian
  • compromise tradition
  • mostly like Catholicism but in English
  • parish churches more like the Reformed with psalm singing
  • Musical forms:
    • Anglican chant, anthems, organ voluntaries
• (“radical left”) (Ana-)Baptist, Quakers
  • radical freedom and anti-traditional, all the way to absolute silence, no ceremony for the Quakers

J. S. Bach (1685–1750)

• Musical family
• Career:
  • Arnstadt: hotshot Lutheran organist
  • Cöthen: Calvinist, so focused on instrumental music (Brandenburg Concertos)
  • Leipzig: Kantor (= choir director) for three churches in rotation, teacher in Latin school
• Output at Leipzig:
  • Cantatas for every week of the year, at least three cycles (many lost)
  • Passions, concerted motets (e.g., Magnificat)
• Style and outlook
  • Conservative contrapuntal tradition (Palestrina) + Vivaldi + stirrings of galant theatrical music
  • Music as testament of faith and monument to posterity
  • Teaching, Übung, edification, personal devotion/exercise/discipline
• Passions:
  • choruses, recit/aria pairs, chorales
  • action and reflection