Author: lpennington

This week has been a neat experiencing in learning about both Biblical creation and musical creation, and also how the two go together. As we learned on Tuesday, creation is a process that is unique to each person and to each project. Creation can start in many different places: we could start from scratch, we… Continue reading Creation

Today I read a very interesting academic essay by Casey Cep titled, “What We Can and Can’t Learn From a New Translation of the Gospels.” This essay made me think about the discussions we’ve been having in class, and it also made me think about my own discomfort when it came to translating/paraphrasing scripture last… Continue reading Translation

Today in class as we sang the same lyrics to different melodies, I found it very interesting to experience how melodies affect lyrics and vice versa. As we learned today, common meter gives us the ability to sing different lyrics to the same melody, but is this something we should do? Does changing the melody… Continue reading How does melody impact lyrics?

Today in class Dr. McGrath asked the question, “What is the oldest song you know?” Most people probably had no idea, but don’t we all know Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the alphabet song? As Dr. McGrath mentioned, Mozart did work with the melody, but it is suspected that the melody originated 20 years before… Continue reading Musical Evolution

Today in class as we observed some scriptures from Psalms, we came across superscripts at the beginning of a couple of the chapters. One of these superscripts, belonging to Psalm 22, reads, “To the leader: according the The Deer of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.” This caught my attention. How did this translation come… Continue reading Musical Instruction in the Psalms