scholarly journals J. S. Bach’s Church Cantatas and Church Music Today

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-152
Author(s):  
Carolien Eunice Tantra ◽  
Mark Peters

How do we as Christians today learn about worship and church music? How do we think about not only what music we will sing in Christian worship, but also the principles that should guide us in choosing and leading church music? Certainly, there are many different ways we answer that question: we study the Bible, we sing the words of the Scriptures, we read what theologians, worship leaders, and scholars of church music are writing today, we attend lectures and conferences by scholars and practitioners of church music. In this article, I offer and explore yet another example of how we live out God’s call in leading music for the Christian church: by studying the example of a faithful Christian musician from the past.  My particular example for this article is the German composer and church musician Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).  I want to clarify from the start that I am not arguing that J. S. Bach is the best example of a Christian church musician and certainly not that he is the only example.  But Bach does offer us one example of a musician who dedicated most of his life to creating and leading music for the Christian church and sought to do so faithfully, creatively, and skillfully.

Kurios ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Dewi Tika Lestari

Church music is an essential part of Christian worship. The primary source to create Church music is commonly from the Bible, Christian tradition, and believers' experience. Yet, in the church music of the Protestant Church in the Moluccas (GPM), there is harmony between some elements such as ethnicity, theology, and music. In ethnicity, there is some local cultural tradition derived from the old local religion, which Christianity contextualizes. Using a descriptive qualitative research method, the harmony of all elements, ethnicity, theology, and music result in a new perspective, namely ethno-theo-musicology, to analyze and understand the church music existence. This research found that the Protestant Church member in the Moluccas appreciates all church music substances, which led them not only to praise God but also to experience God in their cultural experience in Maluku. Abstrak Musik gereja merupakan salah satu unsur penting dalam peribadahan Kristen. Musik gereja umumnya diciptakan bersumber dari kesaksian Alkitab, tradisi atau ajaran gereja tertentu, dan pengalaman iman orang percaya. Namun, dalam nyanyian Gereja Protestan Maluku (GPM), musik gereja bersumber dari harmonisasi unsur budaya lokal, teologi, dan musik. Dalam unsur budaya lokal juga ditemukan proses kontekstualisasi narasi-narasi mistik dari kepercayaan asli masyarakat sebelum menjadi Kristen. Dengan penelitian deskriptif kualitatif, artikel ini menjelaskan adanya perpaduan unsur etnisitas, teologis, dan musik yang kemudian menghasilkan suatu pendekatan etnoteomusikologis dalam mengartikan suatu nyanyian gereja. Penelitian ini menemukan bahwa Warga Gereja Protestan Maluku sebagai pemilik dari Nyanyian GPM, sangat mengapresiasi pendekatan etnotheomusikologis sebab dirasakan bahwa musik gereja selain memuliakan Allah juga mengantarkan mereka mengalami kehadiran Allah di dalam pengalaman-pengalaman budaya yang mereka miliki


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Frederich Oscar Lontoh

This research is titled " The influence of sermon, church music and church facilities on the level of attendance”. The purpose of research is to identify and analyze whether sermon, church music and church facilities have influence on the the level of attendance. The target population in this study is a Christian church members who live in the city of Surabaya.. Sample required is equal to 47 respondents. Through sampling stratified Random techniques.These influence was measured using Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis, t-test and analysis of variance. Descriptive  analysis  were taken to analyze the level of attendance according to demographic groups.The hypothesis in this study are the sermon, church music and church facilities have positive and significant on the level of attendance. The results showed that collectively, there are positive and significant correlation among the sermon, church music and church facilities on the level of attendance  96,2%. It means that 96,2 % of level of attendance influenced by sermon, church music and church facilities and the other 28,9% by others. All of the variable partially have significant correlation to level of attendance.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Jodie Eichler-Levine

In this article I analyze how Americans draw upon the authority of both ancient, so-called “hidden” texts and the authority of scholarly discourse, even overtly fictional scholarly discourse, in their imaginings of the “re-discovered” figure of Mary Magdalene. Reading recent treatments of Mary Magdalene provides me with an entrance onto three topics: how Americans see and use the past, how Americans understand knowledge itself, and how Americans construct “religion” and “spirituality.” I do so through close studies of contemporary websites of communities that focus on Mary Magdalene, as well as examinations of relevant books, historical novels, reader reviews, and comic books. Focusing on Mary Magdalene alongside tropes of wisdom also uncovers the gendered dynamics at play in constructions of antiquity, knowledge, and religious accessibility.


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.


Author(s):  
Nicholas Owen

Other People’s Struggles is the first attempt in over forty years to explain the place of “conscience constituents” in social movements. Conscience constituents are people who participate in a movement but do not stand to benefit if it succeeds. Why do such people participate when they do not stand to benefit? Why are they sometimes present and sometimes absent in social movements? Why and when is their participation welcome to those who do stand to benefit, and why and when is it not? The work proposes an original theory to answer these questions, crossing discipline boundaries to draw on the findings of social psychology, philosophy, and normative political theory, in search of explanations of why people act altruistically and what it means to others when they do so. The theory is illustrated by examples from British history, including the antislavery movement, the women’s suffrage and liberation movements, labor and socialist movements, anticolonial movements, antipoverty movements, and movements for global justice. Other People’s Struggles also contributes to new debates concerning the rights and wrongs of “speaking for others.” Debates concerning the limits of solidarity—who can be an “ally” and on what terms—have become very topical in contemporary politics, especially in identity politics and in the new “populist” movements. The book provides a theoretical and empirical account of how these questions have been addressed in the past and how they might be framed today.


Author(s):  
Martha Vandrei

This chapter and the following both draw the reader into seventeenth-century understandings of the past, and of Boudica in particular, and makes clear that in a time before disciplines, writers of ‘history’ were erudite commentators, immersed in political thought, the classical world, and contemporary ideas, as well as in drama, poetry, and the law. Chapter 1 shows the subtleties of Boudica’s place in history at this early stage by giving sustained attention to the work of Edmund Bolton (1574/5–c.1634), the first person to analyse the written and material evidence for Boudica’s deeds, and the last to do so in depth before the later nineteenth century. Bolton’s distaste for contemporary philosophy and his loyalty to James I were highly influential in determining the way the antiquary approached Boudica and her rebellion; but equally important was Bolton’s deep understanding of historical method and the strictures this placed on his interpretive latitude.


Author(s):  
James W. Watts

Bibles and parts of bibles are themselves used as ritual objects in Jewish and Christian worship. Their display and manipulation, oral performance, and semantic interpretation have been ritualized by synagogues and churches since antiquity. The origins of these practices are rooted in the Bible itself. Their influence has shaped every Jewish and Christian tradition and reaches beyond them to Muslims, Manicheans, and other religious communities. This chapter and its companions in this volume on Christianity and Islam focus mostly on how the iconic dimension of scriptures gets ritualized, because the iconic dimension has received less scholarly attention than the ritualization of scripture’s oral performance, artistic illustration, and semantic interpretation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-648
Author(s):  
Kobi Peled

A striking feature of Palestinian oral history projects is the extensive use that interviewees make of direct speech to communicate their memories—especially those born before the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. They do so irrespective of whether or not they participated in or actually heard the dialogues they wish to convey. This article seeks to characterize and explain this phenomenon. In the interviews conducted by the author—an Arabic-speaking Jew—as well as in other projects, this mode of speech is marked by ease of transition from character to character and between different points in time. It clearly gives pleasure to those engaged in the act of remembering, and it grades readily into a theatrical performance in which tone of speech and the quality of the acting become the main thing. This form of discourse sprang up from the soil of a rural oral culture and still flourishes as a prop for supporting memory, a vessel for collecting and disseminating stories, and a technique for expressing identification with significant figures from the past.


1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
James K. Pollock

In presenting my valedictory to this distinguished Association which has honored me by selecting me as its President, I should like to point out by way of introduction what has happened to this office, and therefore to me, during the past year. I have heard of one of my distinguished predecessors some twenty-five years ago who had little else to do as President of this Association than work all year on his presidential address. This was important work and I have no word of criticism of it. But the Association has changed, and today it leaves to the harried wearer of its presidential toga little time to reflect about the status of political science and his own impact, if any, upon it. An active Association life, now happily centered in our new Washington office, is enough to occupy the full time of your President, and universities as well as this Association might well take note. Therefore, in presenting my own reflections to you this evening in accordance with the custom of our Association, I do so without the benefit of the generous time and scholarly leisure which were the privileges of some of my distinguished predecessors.Nevertheless I do base my presidential address today upon my own active participation in the problems of government, as well as upon my scholarly experience. I have extracted it in part from the dynamics of pulsating political life. It has whatever authority I may possess after having been exposed these twenty-five years to the cross-fire of politics, domestic and foreign, as well as to the benign and corrective influences of eager students and charitable colleagues.


1943 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-34
Author(s):  
Kenneth Scott Latourette

A strange contrast exists in the status of the Christian Church in the past seventy years. On the one hand the Church has clearly lost some of the ground which once appeared to be safely within its possession. On the other hand it has become more widely spread geographically and, when all mankind is taken into consideration, more influential in shaping human affairs than ever before in its history. In a paper as brief as this must of necessity be, space can be had only for the sketching of the broad outlines of this paradox and for suggesting a reason for it. If details were to be given, a large volume would be required. Perhaps, however, we can hope to do enough to point out one of the most provocative and important set of movements in recent history.


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