Selected Topics (335-0-1)
Topic
Music and Religion
Instructors
Jesse Rosenberg
847/467-2033
j-rosenberg1@northwestern.edu
Specialist in 19th- and 20th-century Italian opera, with articles published on Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi; papers read at national and international conferences on opera and film music history. Research interests in musical aesthetics and the convergence of music with fields such as literature, poetry, and theology. Contributor, New Grove Dictionary of Opera (Macmillan, 1992), Pipers Enzyclopädie des Musiktheaters (Pipers, 1996), New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Macmillan, 2000). Outstanding Dissertation Award and Excellence in Teaching Award, New York University. Faculty Honor Roll, Northwestern University.
Meeting Info
RCMA 1-172: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
This course will focus on various intersections of music and religion in the Western tradition (although certain non-Western examples will be considered by way of comparison and contrast). The most obvious such intersection is that of musical settings of liturgical texts, typically, though not necessarily, resulting in music which is actually part of a worship service. But music hardly needs to set liturgical texts in order to take on religious meanings and associations. Many sacred texts are not liturgical at all, much music perceived as religiously meaningful is purely instrumental, and the rituals of concert-going and composer-adulating, as these have developed over the last two centuries, have often been compared to those of worship services. The topics we cover will be considered in the light of aesthetic theories put forward as to the relations between aesthetics, theology, and beauty.
The first half of the course will get under way through an examination of the many and varied musical references contained in the Bible. This will be followed by a critical examination of the two principal approaches to sacred music which have long been held up as the models most worthy of emulation: a cappella-style of vocal polyphony of the mature Renaissance in Roman Catholic lands, and medieval ("Gregorian") chant, which experienced a noteworthy revival of interest in the Romantic period. We will also explore the flip side of these models, i. e. the long history of condemnation of religious music perceived as falling short of the appropriate stylistic criteria. Music growing out of the various strains of the Protestant Reformation (such as the chorales of Martin Luther, the French psalm-settings of Claude Goudimel, and the choral works and passions of Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach), will be considered in terms of its embodiment of the ideals of that movement. Highly varied approaches to Jewish music (synagogal cantillation, the Chasidic "niggun," and the controversy over the use of organ in worship services) will complete this part of the course.
The second half of the course will focus on representative compositions seen as vehicles of religious meaning (whether "sacred" music or not, and whether the composers and audiences in question are "religious" or not). Some will be chosen among the numerous prayer scenes contained in operas both secular (Verdi's La forza del Destino) and religious (Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites) in nature. Choral examples may include Haydn's Creation, Bach's St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion, Mozart's Vesperae Solenne de Confessore and his Requiem Mass, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Requiem masses by Verdi and Fauré, Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, Mahler's Symphony #2; mystically-inspired music by modernists such as Schoenberg, Krenek, Webern, and Messiaen as well as recent "holy minimalists" like Tavener and Pärt and composers inspired by the sacred traditions of the East (Holst, Cage, Lieberson, Harrison), and the phenomenon of religious pop songs.
Evaluation Method
EVALUATION will be based on two written assignments of 4-5 pp. each (worth 20 pts. each) a research project culminating in a term paper worth 30 points, due for submission on the last day of class and serving in lieu of a Final Examination). This research project is divided into two tasks: 1) an oral presentation for the class including bibliography (5 points) and a submitted paper (25 points)
Class Attributes
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area