The Bible and Music

What makes up a hymn? We know that a hymnal is a collection of hymns, but why are Christmas carols not considered hymns? In class on Thursday, we discovered via Google that a hymn is “collective singing of a religious song or poem, typically of praise to God or a god”. I think this definition is broadly defined, however, because some Christmas carols to fall under this scope. But there is a different between Christmas music, and secular Christmas music. I would use different language in referring to these secular songs by a more exclusive name, such as holiday songs or winter songs, because I find that they are referring more to the winter season than a Church season. What is characteristic of a hymn, though not exclusive, is its use of imagery. Phrases such as “God of Angel Armies”, “Lord of Hosts”, and songs referencing the star under which Jesus was born are such examples.

We also asked how old to still qualify as Contemporary Christian Music? We concluded that “contemporary” is an arbitrary category. Something can be contemporary to something else, and songs hundreds of years old can still fall under the “Contemporary” Era. These songs include Great Is Thy Faithfulness, Be Thou My Vision, and Before The Throne.

Today was the scavenger hunt day. We were supposed to look for popular songs that referenced or alluded to the Bible. At first I found it very difficult to find songs. Then, I just turned on Pandora and started listening. All of a sudden one song referenced something from the bible. Then I looked that song up on youtube and looked at similar songs. Then I was able to find more songs that alluded to the Bible. I still think I can find more songs before class to add to my list.

Today I researched songs that had biblical allusions in them.  One song was by the Smashing Pumpkins called Pale Horse.  It references the four horsemen in the bible when the Apocalpyse occurs.  I found that a lot of different songs referenced this exact allusion.  I wonder why?

Hozier- Take Me to Church

My church offers no absolutes
She tells me “worship in the bedroom”
The only heaven I’ll be sent to
Is when I’m alone with you…

Last class we discussed hymns and where hymns fall in the overarching song category.  Much like the square and rectangle comparison, we settled on the fact the hymns are always songs, but songs are not always hymns.  However, there is a lot of overlap between hymns and other categories of songs.  For example, what’s the difference between a hymn and chant or a song and a carol.  Christmas carols and Christmas songs are two categories with significant overlap.  They both fall into the broad category of a song and they are about the same subject, but what pushes songs into the carol category?  In this case, I think the subject matter is the differentiator.  They are both about Christmas, but carols have the added religious factor.  If the song is focused on Santa, presents, and the season, then it is just a song.  But if the song focuses on the birth of Jesus, it gets moved over to the carol category.

This entire discussion made me think about the industry of Christmas.  Everybody knows that Christmas is celebrating the birth of Jesus, but this has been put on the back burner in favor of the commercialized idea of Santa.  Presents, elves, and reindeer are much more fun to think about and celebrate – it means that we all get presents for no reason and everybody wants that.  I am at fault for falling into this trap.  Christmas is my favorite.  But I think a big part of this Santa oriented Christmas is the music surrounding the season.  Most of my favorite Christmas songs have nothing to do with religion or Jesus.  Mariah Carey can be heard from my room all throughout December.  It’s one thing to listen to traditional Christmas music, but outrageous pop stars singing about the season is so much more fun.  I always knew that Christmas was moving away from its real meaning, but I didn’t think about the real impact that mainstream musicians had on this movement.  It leads to the obvious question – If pop stars stayed out of Christmas, would we be more focused on the religious component of the holiday?

What makes something a hymn? Are hymns just a fancy word for songs? What even is a hymn? According to the great reference known as google, a hymn is a religious song or poem, typically of praise to God or a god. So according to google, a hymn is a song. So are the songs I listen to on KLove hymns? My favorite band that is played on KLove is Needtobreathe. Needtobreathe makes songs that honor God, but are very catchy. But, songs that Needtobreathe make do not sound like what a hymn sounds like, or what I think hymns sound like. This then goes into the different genres of music.

On the top of my head I can think of many different genres of music. Country, contemporary christian, hip hop, rap, R&B just to name a few. This led class to ask the question, how do we really distinguish music from different genres. Does music really have a set and stone genre? Music is more complex than just one genre, music can be and usually is placed in many different genres.

After Professor McGrath clarified conditions of the Scavenger Hunt taking place on April 4^th, I became interested in the relevance of the Bell Tower and the quotes that are engraved on it. While the Scavenger Hunt requires a Biblical allusion, I thought the Bell Tower would be a creative way to not only fulfill blog post requirements, but satisfy my own curiosities about the structure.

Upon further investigation, the Bell Tower is officially named the Mrs. James Irving Holcomb Memorial Carillon Tower. The Carillon Tower was created as a memorial to James Irving Holcomb’s wife, Musetta, who happened to have died in 1957. When Mr. Holcomb dedicated the Tower he said, “that in his estimation, Butler would never be the largest university in Indiana, but he knew of no reason why Butler could not be the most beautiful university in the Midwest.” Butler’s beauty is one of the reasons I personally chose to come here for my undergraduate. The Carillon Tower’s legend of kissing your sweetheart at midnight leading to your destiny for each other, as well as its striking music, is a sweet reminder of the Holcomb’s own love.

Mr. Holcomb might have dedicated the tower to the memory of his late wife, but concerning the quotes engraved on it, “[h]e intended for the tower to serve as homage to a college education, thus engraving it with quotations from well-known poets, authors and political figures.” There are a total of four different quotes on the pillars of the tower, marked on the six available sides of the three pillars which make it up. In order to make this post as accurate as possible, I visited the tower recently and recorded each of them. These quotes include:

“Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blessed skies.” –Tennyson

“How soft the music of those village bells falling at intervals upon the ear in cadence sweet!” –Cowper

“This is my father’s world and to my listening ears all / Nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.” –Babcock

“And the night be filled with music and the cares that infest the day shall fold their silent tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away.” –Longfellow

The Babcock quote extends onto two adjacent pillars, due to its length. I thought it was interesting all authors happen to be men, and the dedication was made to a woman. The juxtaposition was a bit puzzling to me, honestly. However, I was unable to find the exact reason J.I. Holcomb chose these particular quotes. Due to this lack of information, it could also be supposed they were some of Musetta’s own favorite artist.

When it comes to the tones which the tower is able to play, there happens to be a method behind this phenomena. While I had thought there were only three bells which rung from the tower, there actually are “three large outdoor bells visible from the ground, and several other smaller bells in a housing box on top of the tower.” The bells are not only able ring out different music due to an automated chime system, but also from a carillon located inside of it. A carillon is “a musical instrument contain[ing] at least 23 tuned bells” and “is played from a keyboard that allows expression through variation of touch. The keys are struck with the half-closed hand.” Butler’s own carillonneur, William Engle, who graduated in 1965, and has been controlling the bells for over forty years. To acquire the skill to play the carillon, Engle took a class over the course of four semesters here at Butler. Over the summers after he completed the requirements, Engle was given permission from his professor to perform concerts. Included at the bottom of this blog is the full story from The Collegian on Engle’s journey becoming and later being “[t]he man behind the bells.”

Even though there is not a direct reference to Christianity in the quotes on the Carillon Tower as I had originally thought, there is room for speculation in a few of them. Through this class, I have become more aware of the music that surrounds us on a daily basis, and to question the origin of it more often.

Works Cited and References:

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM9NDN_Holcomb_Carillon_Tower_Butler_University_Indianapolis_Indiana

http://legacy.butler.edu/media/2606542/16_named_spaces.pdf

https://thebutlercollegian.com/?p=11935

On Tuesday, we talked about passions, and as a second semester senior, the real world is quickly colliding with a job that I believe I am passionate about.  Ever since I was a little girl, I loved talking to people, even strangers.  I was fascinated by understanding how others tick and learning how to understand their point of view and get them to see my point of view as well.  I quickly knew that I wanted to be a marketing major and I wanted to better understand consumer decisions and analyze the way that consumers react to marketing campaigns.  Although I love marketing, one of my other passions is helping people.  I am passionate about making a difference, so that I why I want to work in the business side of healthcare. By working in healthcare, I know that I am making a difference by marketing medical instruments or pharmaceuticals that people need and I am on the forefront of personalized healthcare strategies.  I hope that when I enter the real world that both of my passions intertwine to create a long lasting and happy career.

How are musical pieces distinguished from one another? How are different songs divided into groups and separated? Music is commonly grouped according to genre.  A “genre” is a “a category of artistic composition…characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.” Most genres consist of songs that are similar in regards to pitch, amplitude, key, tempo, and how often the piece repeats certain phrases. Still, there is some disagreement when trying to categorize these songs. Religious music is far-harder to categorize than rock, rap, country, or pop. This is due to the fact that religious music can be composed with regards to either of (but not limited to) these genres. So if a song is composed with biblical references, but has similar characteristics to other rock songs, what is the genre? Is this a christian song or is this a rock song? Can this song be both? When we categorize a song incorrectly, are our ears playing tricks on us, or is it possible that we are still correct, because a single song can be categorized as more than one genre. There is actually a program that was recently created by “a group led by Arijit Ghosal of the Neotia Institute of Technology Management and Science” that will use pitch analysis to categorize different songs into different genres. The software will analyze common pitch features, tempo, amplitude variation patterns, and beats per minute using specific mathematics algorithms, and will compare the results to other songs within a specific genre. This seems to work well, but the only issue with the software, that I noticed (unless I was misinformed), was that the software did not analyse the lyrics of the song that it was trying got categorize. This is an issue, because the only aspects that make Christian rock songs “Christian” are the lyrics. For this reason, I feel that some genres tend to overlap. When trying to categorize a song, it seems as if you have to place a song along a spectrum rather than in a distinct category. Religious music seems to be where this is more common. Contemporary Christian songs would be good examples of pieces that this software could not distinguish, especially because Contemporary Christian Music is considered to be modern. Over time, the term “modern” changes. For this reason, and many others, religious music is difficult to categorize into a single genre, and is instead is typically sub-categorized.

http://newatlas.com/automatic-music-genre-classification-system/38240/

I really enjoyed preparing for today’s class. I am a fan of and frequently listen to contemporary Christian music. Someone made a comment in class that all Christian music sounds the same. I respectfully disagree with this statement. Over the course of several years, I have compiled a playlist of contemporary Christian music on spotify with the title “How He Loves Us”.  I borrowed the playlist title from the title of one of  my favorite David Crowder song’s. From this playlist, I conducted some research on some of my favorite Christian songs. Phil Wickham’s song “At Your Name (Yahweh, Yahweh)” expresses the sentiment of Psalm 66:1-3, “Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth! Sing out the honor of His name; Make His praise glorious. Say to God, ‘How awesome are Your works! Through the greatness of Your power Your enemies shall submit themselves to You”, and Psalm 81: 1, “Sing aloud to God our strength; Make a joyful shout to the God of Jacob”.  Christ Tomlin’s famous song “I will follow” alludes to Ruth 1:16, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God”. I found that the opening lines of “There is Power” by Lincoln Brewster allude to Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them”.

One of my favorite Christian songs, “I am not alone” by Kari Jobe references one of my favorite bible verses, Deuteronomy 31:8, “it is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed”.

I would challenge individuals who claim that all Christian music sounds the same to listen to “Won My Heart” by Chris Quilala. The rhythm of this song sounds like something that would be played on a popular music station. I would also encourage individuals who are skeptical of contemporary Christian music to listen to some of the music of Hillsong United. This Australian group has produced incredibly creative and innovative music. I would recommend “Here Now (Madness)”, “Relentless”, and “Even When it Hurts (Praise Song)”. Rend Collective similarly represents a unique branch of contemporary Christian music. Their music sounds very folksy due to their use of acoustic guitar, banjo, and the fiddle.