Music
2002 Reston, Virginia
2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002
Convener 2002
Kathleen Harmon (music director for programs of the Institute for Liturgical Ministry in Dayton, Ohio)
Seminar Participants 2002
Robert Batastini, Carol Doran, Victor Gebauer, Fred Kimball Graham, Kathleen Harmon, Kenneth Hull, Martin Jean, Marie Kremer, Ronald Krisman, Fred Moleck, Mary Alice O’Connor, Frank Quinn, Scott Weidler, Gloria Weyman, Anne Yardley
Seminar Report 2002
The seminar discussed Kenneth Hull’s working paper, “The Well-Gathered Assembly: What Role Can Music Play?” Hull suggests that music plays a crucial role in enabling the gathering rite to achieve its purpose of preparing the congregation for worship. He identifies a well-gathered assembly as open to encounter with God and engaged in healthy, reciprocal relationship with self, God, and one another. He describes four movements typically involved in the process of becoming well-gathered: presence, incorporation, recollection, and invocation. Using representative and contrasting musical examples from non-Western and Western sources, he then demonstrates how each of these movements is facilitated by specific musical styles and structures.
Carol Doran led discussion of Frank Burch Brown’s Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life. Brown raises the critical issue of how one defines taste and how one evaluates the relationship between taste and religious experience. He suggests that taste is comprised of three interactive components—apperception, appreciation, and appraisal—and argues that to evaluate the capacity of a given artistic/musical work or style to invoke religious experience one must first be able to perceive and appreciate the work in its own right, i.e., contextually, culturally, historically, etc. He calls for a critical pluralism that acknowledges the multiplicity of good taste and good religious art and music while also recognizing that not all kinds of good art and music are equally good for worship.
The group discussed working papers submitted by a sub-group aiming to articulate the various theologies of music for worship operative in different denominational traditions. The goal of this sub-group is to publish a resource which will facilitate better theological understanding of music’s relationship to worship. Anne Yardley presented “Lex cantandi, lex credendi: The Theology of Music in Methodist Worship”; Jim Brauer shared “Lutheran Theology of Liturgical Music”; and Carol Doran itemized “Principles Governing the Use of Music in the Episcopal Church.” Seminar members offered critical responses to what has been written so far and helped to clarify the purpose of the project and the content which needs to be included.
The seminar held a joint session with the African-American Liturgical Traditions Seminar to examine GIA’s new African American Heritage Hymnal. Bob Batastini presented the hymnal’s history and process of development, Helen McConnell delivered a critical review, and James Abbington led a sing-through of various representative pieces.