Author: Delaney Beh

In discussing the use of music in popular entertainment, it is impossible to not mention the work done by George Frideric Handel.  Handel is most well known for his plethora of oratorios, musical compositions akin to operas but without the acting.  Though he wrote many secular oratorios, his works based on biblical text have garnered… Continue reading Biblical Music in Popular Culture

Personally, I have a fair amount of experience writing my own music and working with various online softwares.  For my senior project in high school, I decided to write and record my own five song EP of sorts.  Though I cannot say I thoroughly enjoy all of the music I created during that period, the… Continue reading Musescore

Having been raised in a Christian household, and choosing to be religion major in college, I have read the Genesis creation narratives quite a few times.  Since I’ve read these texts as many times as I have, they’ve honestly lost their luster, becoming merely something I have written papers about, talking at length in seminars… Continue reading How Music Can Influence Our Perception of a Text

As someone who has experience songwriting, I didn’t anticipate the challenge of transposing a text from the Bible to popular music to be quite as difficult as it was.  To start, I thought that picking a text first would make the process easier, but this proved to not be the case.  Sure it was easy… Continue reading Transposing Challenge

I found our discussion of the practice of paraphrasing biblical passages when transforming them into hymns quite fascinating.  Surely, it makes sense to alter the text slightly to get it to fit into a metrical pattern, or to make it easier for an audience to understand, but sometimes I personally feel these paraphrases took too… Continue reading Paraphrasing

I was fascinated by the mention in class (on 8/31) that there was musical notion sprinkled within the Bible.  This idea certainly makes sense considering the Psalms in particular are best understood in a musical context, but when we are left in the present day to just read words on a page, the seemingly obvious… Continue reading Music Notation in the Bible