The Bible and Music

The Old 100th seemed like a very formal and proper ceremony from what I saw in the video. People were all dressed very modestly, of course, and it was a very emotionally charged ceremony. Hundreds of people were there, watching this ceremony. I feel inspired to go and research more about the Old 100th and how it originated, where, when, and why!

Today in class we had to present our songs to the class and it was very nerve wrecking.  I struggled with singing in front of the class and our words were a little difficult to hear.  If we do an activity similar to this I will be sure to practice more so I feel more comfortable when it comes time to present.

Our groups in class today continued in our attempts to set various Psalms to tunes we already knew. My group set Psalm 125 to Joy to the World. We quickly discovered that in order to make it work, some liberties had to be taken with the text. The words can be changed and slowly the meaning changes too, some people have really strong opinions about changing what they perceive to be the true words of the Bible, even though the English words we see are translations already, and has been adapted many times from language to language, and although many languages have words that overlap, they don;t mean exactly the same thing. There are a lot of challenges in setting words to music, whether or not the words or music are in existence first.

Another topic we started exploring today in class is the Baroque era in classical music, J.S. Bach specifically, and how he was ground breaking with sounds in his time. Now, when we listen to Bach we find it dull, not exciting, maybe it even puts us to sleep, but back in his time, Bach was revolutionary. We didn’t have much time to explore this further, but we have some listening to do and I expect to uncover new things through it.

Today’s class, was filled with experiences that I wouldn’t expect would happen. To start class, we continued working in our groups to match a Psalm to a song we know. We matched Psalm 125 to Joy to the World. I expected that it was going to be challenging, but it really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We did what we needed to do and it worked out okay. It actually went smoothly.

We then started to learn about Bach and the type of pieces he did. The time frame, when he was composing music, was known as the Baroque era. The definition of this means that there isn’t harmony or smooth sounds in the music. This surprised me because I feel that when I listen to Bach, the music sounds great and put together. I was shocked to hear that the time period was known for poor sounding music. I am curious to learn more about this time frame and why it was known for this.

The main activity in class today was forming groups and attempting to collaborate two forms of music. We were given the freedom to paraphrase, rhyme, or even eliminate certain words in the music that we were comparing. My group chose Psalm 125 and Joy to the World. In the beginning of attempting to get this music on the same beat, we found it easy to sing along. Our goal was to sing the entire Psalm 125 to the melody of Joy to the World. As we went along, we hit a few barriers and had to take action to make the music flow better. We decided to paraphrase a few words to craft the melody and we even eliminated a whole sentence for syllable purposes. I thought that this process would be extremely difficult, however I learned more about paraphrasing and even substituting words to fit another piece of music.

Monday morning Dr. McGrath showed us multiple psalms which he then set to music.  I found this very interesting as I had never thought about psalms having a musical aspect before.  I really enjoyed the group work that we did in class as well.  I am excited to see what everyone put together for class tomorrow for our individual songs.

Monday in class, Dr. McGrath brought in his guitar and showed us how several melodies that we know as one piece can actually be used to portray other parts of the Bible. He started off with Amazing Grace and at first I was surprised that a psalm could fit into the melody before remembering that most of the psalms were written as musical pieces. The most interesting part of the class was when we started choosing songs and changing the lyrics to psalms. I think it will be really interesting to see how other students adapted the songs and which psalms they chose to pair with them.

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity along with my classmates to go and see a performance of Stravinsky’s Psalms. The talk before the concert was pretty cool. I liked that I was able to gain some background information regarding the performance, including the historical context of the pieces that were performed but also the sentimental importance that it had for the conductor, Dr. Stark. In my opinion, the first half of the show was full of more somber and depressing music. It was clear that Stravinsky wanted the music to be in this tone but for me it was just to serious to be a piece that was used in worship. The second half however I felt was much more animated and had happier undertones in it. The soloists did an incredible job and I loved that the words Dona Nobis Pacem were repeated. The phrase, meaning God grant us peace, was actually something I knew beforehand having performed a song with these words in it back in high school. Overall, I was very impressed with the show and thoroughly enjoyed it.

On Wednesday we had a guest speaker come in and talk to us about what it’s like to be a cantor. Not being of the Jewish faith myself, I found the lecture to be very interesting and learned a lot of cool things about religious singing in a different religion. I loved that he knew what he wanted to be from a very young age because that doesn’t happen in many cases, and it was clear that he loved his career. The most interesting thing that the cantor talked about was how a Jewish composer actually made several musical pieces for the Catholic church. It was interesting to me because it was a very progressive move that I didn’t think really happened in history until we were told about it.

Personally, I was quite surprised at how many pop songs can be rearranged into religious music. I was particularly fond of “Jack and Diane” because that is one of my favorite songs. However, I don’t know how effective it would be to set Christian music to popular tunes because for most people a pop song is so iconic that it can’t be heard as anything else. In a church setting I think that could detract from the focus on worship. They were fun for parodies in class but I have a hard time picturing them being incorporated into a church, especially Catholic. Although churches aren’t necessarily using pop songs contemporary Christian music has switched to a much more pop sound with heavy accompaniment. This ties back into Giora’s lecture on the role of music drawing people into the religious service.