scholarly journals Paying a Church Musician in the Nineteenth Century: Between Possibilities and Necessities

Menotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laima Budzinauskienė
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Gregorian Chant ◽  
Music Schools ◽  
Financial Situation ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Church

In Europe, the nineteenth century had its own kind of an impact on the development of church music: fellowships that looked over the repertoire of music played in churches and encouraged research into the sources of the old church music and the Gregorian chant started emerging in many different countries. In the middle of the said century, the Holy See released documents that repeatedly and strictly regulated music and especially the music played during masses. Bishops were ordered to establish new music schools, reinforce the existing ones, and form committees in charge of the repertoire, musical performance and care of musicians in dioceses. The salary of the members of church chapels depended on the length of their work and the level of their professionalism. Sometimes the best musicians earned as much as the chapel leader. The leader, who received a certain amount of money to be spent on salaries from the seniors of the church every quarter of the year, distributed it on their own accord, taking into the account the intensity and quality of the instrumentalists’ performance. Each choir singer received the same amount of money, and the salary of the organist depended on the number of masses. Gregorian chanters received smallest salaries. Often the musicians were paid in kind: in food, candles, clothes, footwear, vodka, beer, honey, and the like. Some church chapels even had a cook who prepared breakfasts and lunches specifically for the musicians. Unfortunately, at the end of the nineteenth century, the financial situation of church chapels the financial situation of church chapels changed for the worse much worse.

Goths and Romans: Daniel Rock, Augustus Welby Pugin, and Nineteenth-Century English Worship

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 289-319
Author(s):  
Judith F. Champ
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Harmonic Number ◽  
Gregorian Chant ◽  
Dead Weight ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Ancient Music ◽  
The Church

The Chant or music used by the Papal choir, and indeed in most Catholic cathedrals and abbey churches is, excepting in some instances, ancient. Gregory the Great collected it into a body and gave it the form in which it now appears, though not the author of it. The chant of the psalms is simple and affecting, composed of Lydian, Phrygian and other Greek and Roman tunes, without many notes, but with a sufficient inflection to render them soft and plaintive or bold and animating…. This ancient music which has long been known by the name of the Gregorian chant, so well adapted to the gravity of divine service, has been much disfigured in the process of time by the bad taste of the middle and the false refinements of the latter ages. The first encumbered it with an endless succession of dull unnecessary notes, dragging their slow length along, and burthening the ear with a dead weight of sound; the other infected it with the melting airs, the laboured execution, the effeminate graces of the orchestra, useless to say the least even in the theatre, but profane and almost sacrilegious in the church. Some care seems to have been taken to avoid these defects in the papal choir. The general style and spirit of the ancient and primitive music have been retained and some modern compositions of known and acknowledged merit, introduced on stated days and in certain circumstances. Of musical instruments, the organ only is additional in St Peters, or rather in the Papal chapel, and even then not always: voices only are employed in general, and as those voices are numerous, perfect in their kind, and in thorough unison with one another, and as the singers themselves are concealed from view, the effect is enchanting and brings to mind ‘the celestial voices in full harmonic number joined’ that sometimes reached the ears of our first parents in paradise, and ‘lifted their thoughts to heaven’.

Sacrosanctity or Duty? The Reception of Beethoven’s Fidelio in the Context of the Cultural-Political Situation in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century in Pressburg

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 81-97
Author(s):  
Jana Laslavíková
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Church Music ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Choral Societies ◽  
The Town ◽  
The Church ◽  
German Theater

Staging Beethoven’s Fidelio in the second half of the nineteenth century in Pressburg drew on a long- standing Beethoven tradition prevalent in the town. Also, it stood at the center of protests against the growing influence of Hungarian theater in the newly constructed theater building since Fidelio was performed always at a time when the renewal of an agreement with a German-speaking director was being decided on (1889, 1892, 1895). The opera was staged with the participation of the choral societies and musical associations of the town. Its performances were held close to the annual festive masses of the most well-known association of Pressburg, the Church Music Association of St. Martin’s Cathedral (Germ. Kirchenmusikverein bei der Dom-, Kollegiats- und Stadtpfarrkirche zu St. Martin, Hung. Szent Márton Pozsonyi Egyházi Zeneegylet), where Beethoven’s Missa solemnis was performed. This enhanced the efforts of the supporters of the German theater to call Beethoven’s œuvre a carrier of “true art” and humanism and use it as a symbol of cultural identity in the discussions led about preserving the German season in the Municipal Theater (Germ. Stadttheater, Hung. Városi Színház).

scholarly journals Opactwo Solesmes – pierwszy ośrodek ruchu liturgicznego

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Janusz Mieczkowski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Gregorian Chant ◽  
Liturgical Movement ◽  
Liturgical Year ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Formation ◽  
The Church

The nineteenth century liturgical movement was the work of the Benedictines. It was beginning from the monastery of Solesmes, where lived and worked the first abbot Prosper Guéranger (1805-1875). Monks of the Order of Saint Benedict rediscovered the significance of the mass liturgy as a source of renewal of the life and teaching of the Church. Guéranger was determined to create a new Christian institution for the time. On 11 July 1833 he started living the Benedictine life with six other monks. The papal letter of 1837 clearly stated that Solesmes was “to revive pure traditions of worship”. So Guéranger initiated liturgical renewal. He determined that the role of Solesmes would not be direct intervention in parishes but perfection of the rites and intellectual formation of the monks. They did it for all history of the abbey to give to the Christian people an example by perfect liturgical celebration, theological reflection, historical research and publications (the most famous Guéranger’s publications were Institutions liturgiques and Liturgical Year). Special place in this work was discussion over restoration of Gregorian chant.

The Rediscovery of Ferdinand Christian Baur: A Review of the First Two Volumes of His Ausgewählte Werke

1964 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-215
Author(s):  
Peter C. Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Theological Study ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
Critical Theology ◽  
The Church

The appearance of the first two volumes of a reprint edition of some of Ferdinand Christian Baur's most important writings marks an important event in contemporary historical theology: the rediscovery of a man whom Emanuel Hirsch has called “the greatest and at the same time the most controversial theologian to be produced by German evangelical Christianity since Schleiermacher.” Baur's greatness consists in his recognition of the radically historical quality of the Christian Church and Christian faith, and in his concomitant development of an historical method appropriate to a critical and theological study of the Church and its founding events, a study which he understood to be an intrinsically proper and necessary theological discipline. The controversy over Baur has been generated partially with respect to the extent of his alleged “Hegelianism,” and partially with respect to the validity of his attempt to discover the “truth” of Christianity by means of historical-critical theology. Criticism of him has arisen more often out of misunderstanding, but sometimes precisely out of recognition of what he was trying to achieve theologically. This new edition of some of his major works will help to base both acclaim and criticism on the latter rather than the former ground; and it surely will enhance our appreciation of the greatness and originality of this strangely neglected man, who stands as such an essential link between Schleiermacher at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the Ritschlians at the end, but who belongs to neither.

Confidence in the Church and its Impact on the Quality of Life

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Jessica Avenido ◽  
◽  
Sandy Valmores ◽  
Roberto Cabardo ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
The Church

Songs of the spirit from Dufftown

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54
Author(s):  
Shelagh Noden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Church Music ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Liturgical Music

Following the Scottish Catholic Relief Act of 1793, Scottish Catholics were at last free to break the silence imposed by the harsh penal laws, and attempt to reintroduce singing into their worship. At first opposed by Bishop George Hay, the enthusiasm for liturgical music took hold in the early years of the nineteenth century, but the fledgling choirs were hampered both by a lack of any tradition upon which to draw, and by the absence of suitable resources. To the rescue came the priest-musician, George Gordon, a graduate of the Royal Scots College in Valladolid. After his ordination and return to Scotland he worked tirelessly in forming choirs, training organists and advising on all aspects of church music. His crowning achievement was the production, at his own expense, of a two-volume collection of church music for the use of small choirs, which remained in use well into the twentieth century.

The Township, the Pregnant Girl and the Church: Community Dynamics, Gender and Social Control in Early Nineteenth-century Scotland

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-67
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Church Discipline ◽  
Sexual Offences ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Community ◽  
The Church ◽  
Unmarried Girl

In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth. The baby died. The legal precognition permits a forensic, gendered examination of the internal dynamics of rural communities and how they responded to threats to social cohesion. In the Scottish ‘parish state’ disciplining sexual offences was a matter for church discipline. This case is situated in the early nineteenth-century Gàidhealtachd where and when church institutions were less powerful than in the post-Reformation Lowlands, the focus of most previous research. The article shows that the formal social control of kirk discipline was only part of a complex of behavioural controls, most of which were deployed within and by communities. Indeed, Scottish communities and churches were deeply entwined in terms of personnel; shared sexual prohibitions; and in the use of shaming as a primary method of social control. While there was something of a ‘female community’, this was not unconditionally supportive of all women nor was it ranged against men or patriarchal structures.

Scottish Missionaries, ‘Protestant Hinduism’ and the Scottish Sense of Empire in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century India

2007 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Constable
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western India ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

This article examines the Scottish missionary contribution to a Scottish sense of empire in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Initially, the article reviews general historiographical interpretations which have in recent years been developed to explain the Scottish relationship with British imperial development in India. Subsequently the article analyses in detail the religious contributions of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church Missions to a Scottish sense of empire with a focus on their interaction with Hindu socioreligious thought in nineteenth-century western India. Previous missionary historiography has tended to focus substantially on the emergence of Scottish evangelical missionary activity in India in the early nineteenth century and most notably on Alexander Duff (1806–78). Relatively little has been written on Scottish Presbyterian missions in India in the later nineteenth century, and even less on the significance of their missionary thought to a Scottish sense of Indian empire. Through an analysis of Scottish Presbyterian missionary critiques in both vernacular Marathi and English, this article outlines the orientalist engagement of Scottish Presbyterian missionary thought with late nineteenth-century popular Hinduism. In conclusion this article demonstrates how this intellectual engagement contributed to and helped define a Scottish missionary sense of empire in India.

Primary education students' experience of the expressiveness of authentic modes in Gregorian chant

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tihomir Prša ◽  
Jelena Blašković
Keyword(s):  
Primary Education ◽  
Fourth Grade ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Gregorian Chant ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Education Students ◽  
School Year ◽  
Second Grade Students ◽  
Fourth Grade Students ◽  
The Church

Expressiveness of the church modes is reflected in their character and association of certain states with a specific mode or single Gregorian composition which possesses unique expressiveness. An important characteristic of Gregorian chant on the tonality level is diatonic singing based on scales without chromatics, using only one semitone in the tetrachord whose musical structure reflects the expressiveness of Gregorian chant. Such expressiveness achieves character specificities which each mode respectively reflects. Various modal material in the form of typical melodic shifts in a certain composition conditions the expressiveness of Gregorian music and influences the listening impression and assessment of individual Gregorian tunes. The goal of this work is to examine primary education students' experiences of the expressiveness of Gregorian modes and explore if today's auditory sense accustomed to two tonality genres, major and minor, recognises what has been stored in the heritage of Gregorian chant repertoire for centuries. The research was conducted in the school year 2018/2019 with students of first, second, third and fourth grade of primary school (N=100). The results have shown that first and second grade students express higher auditory sensibility in recognizing specific characteristic of authentic Gregorian modes. Third and fourth grade students are audibly less open and perceptive considering tonal character differences in the authentic Gregorian modes. Key words: Gregorian chant; modality; old church scales; students in primary education

The “individual” in Johann Friedrich Overbeck’s and Franz Liszt’s Seven Sacraments

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-356
Author(s):  
Dolores Pesce
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Franz Liszt ◽  
Individualized Treatment ◽  
Sacred Art ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Voice ◽  
Emotional Effects ◽  
The Church

In the preface to his Septem sacramenta (1878–1884), Franz Liszt acknowledged its stimulus — drawings completed in 1862 by the German painter J. F. Overbeck (1789–1869). This essay explores what Liszt likely meant by his and Overbeck’s “diametrically opposed” approaches and speculates on why the composer nonetheless acknowledged the artist’s work. Each man adopted an individualized treatment of the sacraments, neither in line with the Church’s neo-Thomistic philosophy. Whereas the Church insisted on the sanctifying effects of the sacraments’ graces, Overbeck emphasized the sacraments as a means for moral edification, and Liszt expressed their emotional effects on the receiver. Furthermore, Overbeck embedded within his work an overt polemical message in response to the contested position of the pope in the latter half of the nineteenth century. For many in Catholic circles, he went too far. Both works experienced a problematic reception. Yet, despite their works’ reception, both Overbeck and Liszt believed they had contributed to the sacred art of their time. The very individuality of Overbeck’s treatment seems to have stimulated Liszt. True to his generous nature, Liszt, whose individual voice often went unappreciated, publicly recognized an equally individual voice in the service of the Church.

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