Religious Music in Education

Religious Music in Education

Estelle R. Jorgensen Indiana University

In his essay, "Art and Ultimate Reality,"1 Paul Tillich describes five types of religious experience evidenced in paintings with which he is familiar. I am interested in how his typology translates into musical experience, and if it holds for music, what we learn about the interrelation-

ship between music and religious experience-an interrelationship, Joscelyn Godwin suggests,2 that is vital to our understanding of the nature of music and religion. Especially interesting, is the vanishing point between music and religion, where music becomes or ceases to be religious, particularly, when, and in what sense, is musical experience religious? Beyond this question, what are the implications for music educators, especially choral conductors, who work with religious texts in a public school setting?

The idea that music is closely associated with religious and moral thought and practice is well-established in Western thought. In the Platonic tradition, Immanuel Kant recognized the affinity of the arts and religion and morals when he asserted that "the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good...."3 Susanne Langer posited that religion, myth, rite, and music among the other arts, share common unified roots.4 And contemporary writers in various fields, including Oskar Sòhngen, Jacques Attali, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Paul Minear, have supported a close connec- tion between religious belief and musical expression.5

Notwithstanding these commonly-held associations of musical and religious thought and practice,6 we should enter some caveats. First,

world religions take different approaches to music. Hindu thought embraces a unity between music and religion. Ravi Shankar, an eminent Indian classical musician, puts it this way: "Our tradition teaches us that sound is God-Nada

Brahma. That is, musical sound and the musical

experience are steps to the realization of the self. We view music as a kind of spiritual discipline that raises one's inner being to divine peaceful- ness and bliss."7 By contrast, certain elements of Islamic thought are hostile to music in sacred ritual,8 and various branches of Christianity and Buddhism are ambivalent to particular forms of sacred and secular musical expression.9

Second, in traditions as diverse as Venda music of South Africa, or northern Indian classi-

cal music,10 specific musical pieces and genres are typically associated with particular secular or sacred contexts, musicians are careful to perform certain works at particular times and places, and musical conventions are faithfully observed by the music's public. For example, it is considered taboo for menstruating Shoshone women of North America to enter the Sun Dance lodge and participate in ceremonial music making, because of the power and danger menstruation signifies. As Judith Vander puts it, in the view of the Shoshone people, "Music, ceremony, power, and health are an interrelated chain; mistakes court disaster."11

Third, sacred music-so-called because of its association with religious ideas and places-is not all of a piece. Its liturgical, devotional, or aesthetic functions affect the particular perspec-

© Philosophy of Music Education Review 1, no. 2 (Fall 1993): 103-114.

This content downloaded from ��140.182.74.18 on Mon, 01 Nov 2021 04:31:19 UTC��

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

1 04 Philosophy of Music Education Review

tives from which it is viewed and the associated

religious experiences, if any, it engenders. For example, only some musical settings of the Catholic mass in the Western classical repertory are acceptable liturgically. Some, like Schubert's Mass in G, are intended for liturgical use but fail for textual or other reasons; others, like Bach's Mass in B Minor and Bernstein's Mass, are composed for concert performance, for devotional and/or aesthetic rather than liturgical ends. And these varying functions suggest a corre- sponding array of religious experiences.

The similarities between religion and music are partly explained by the fact that the symbol systems on which they are based share common characteristics. Regarding religion and music as symbol systems allows us to see that religion and music are similar because the symbol systems on which they are based share common characteristics. These similarities include qualities such as those Nelson Goodman12 associates with artistic

symbols, namely, syntactic density (i.e., an infinite array of structural elements typical in non-linguistic systems), semantic density (i.e., an infinite array of possible meanings or interpretations), and syntactic repleteness (i.e., richly articulated structural elements.) They call, as Goodman puts it, for "maximum sensitivity of discrimination" along more dimensions than linguistic symbol systems, illustrate "an insatia- ble demand for absolute precision/'13 and are grasped imaginatively and intuitively as well as rationally.14

Nonetheless, musical and religious symbol systems also differ in important ways. In exploring some of these differences from a religious perspective, Iris Yob suggests that when students of art and religion approach the study of artistic works, they ask different questions; "Religion wants to know... what meaning this work has for us. Art wants to know... how this work gains whatever meaning it has for us/'15 In making this conceptual distinction, and I underscore its importance,16 Yob leaves us in a practical dilem- ma. As musicians, when we study and perform

musical works, these questions seem to fuse; the what becomes part of the how and vice versa. We inevitably confront issues that touch music's deeper import; the text (and its musical setting) may directly evoke religious or spiritual ideas, and the complexity and design of an instrumental piece may prompt an intuitive sense of "otherness" and spirituality that seems extraordinary.

If music is in some sense spiritual, however, does this necessarily mean that it is also religious? Do the words "religious" and "spiritual" mean the same thing?17 If I say that a series of London performances by Alfred Brendel of the Beethoven piano sonatas elicited spiritual experiences for me, or that I intuitively and imaginatively glimpsed "the Other" in Brendel's exposition of Beethoven's ideas, were these also religious experiences? If so, what sort(s) of religious experiences were they?

Reflecting on these questions, rather than referring to musical and religious experiences monolithically, it may be helpful to focus on their particularities and varieties, while also recognizing their unifying elements. In the Western classical music tradition, Roger Sessions observes, composers, performers, and listeners experience music differently because their various roles place them in different relationships to the musical event than other actors.18 Consider-

ing the plethora of world musical traditions, each with its distinctive beliefs and practices, this diversity of musical experiences is even more pronounced, and it is necessary, as John Shepherd points out,19 to specify whose music one is talking about. Moreover, the sophistica- tion with which individuals approach particular musical events depends on their musical exper- tise. Peter Kivy's example of E. M. Forster's characters in Howard's End is a case in point. Mrs. Munt taps "surreptitiously" when she hears Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Helen sees "heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood," Margaret "can only see the music," and Tibby "is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the score open on his knee."20 Notwithstanding



Estelle R. Jorgensen 105

evident differences in their musical backgrounds and listening skills, however, Mrs. Munt, Helen, Margaret, and Tibby each have, according to Kivy, intrinsically musical experiences of the Symphony. They may imagine music variously, and construct "sonorous images" differently,21 but they share the experience of more-or-less focusing on the music or some aspect(s) of it; each more-or-less imaginatively, intuitively, and holistically knows the music. Likewise, as William James, Gerardus Van

der Leeuw, and Joachim Wach show,22 varieties of religious experiences are united in their distinctively religious symbol systems or ways of knowing, expressed and enacted in sacred (as opposed to secular) times, places, and rites. My present choice of Paul Tillich's classification of religious experience derives not from a belief that his is necessarily better than these others, but because his particular focus on the connec- tion between religious and artistic experience invites an extension into the realm of musical

experience. Tillich's ideas provide a useful way of exploring the question, when, and in what sense, is musical experience religious!

Types of Religious Experience Exemplified Musically

Mythical Experience. The first of Tillich's five types of religious experience expressed in and evoked by art is the "sacramental" or what I prefer to call the "mythical" religious experience, that characteristic of animistic and totemis-

üc religions, in which the "Ultimate reality" appears to be present in all kinds of objects, things, persons, and events, and everything is infused with the hand of this mysterious, powerful "Other." Like Tillichfs observation of art, some music seems consistent with mythical experience; it, too, has magical and numinous qualities that are believed to change the natural world. Attali calls such music a "similicrum of

sacrifice;"23 it is believed to have the power to make people forget the general violence around them, and it reassures them in a seemingly capricious and chaotic world. Whether it be the

Ga song, "Awo, Awo, Awo," a call for rain, connecting the congregation with the supreme being who causes rain to fail, seed to germinate, a successful harvest to ensue, and peace to prevail,24 the Australian aboriginal Songman singing face-to-face with his student, and breath- ing spiritual life as well as musical knowledge into his pupil,25 or the playing of Javanese gongs and keris believed to be sacred objects inhabited by spirits,26 music serves an instrumen-

tal purpose in the mind of the believer for manipulating divine will.

In Carmina burana, Carl Orff-like other Western classical composers whose musical compositions are rooted in mythical ideas- evokes an erotic, primitive "spectacle," and creates a work of "powerful pagan sensuality and direct physical excitement."27 His musical setting of these medieval texts conveys an immediacy grasped emotively, physically, and cogniti- vely. Throughout, the sacred and secular inter- mingle. Orff incorporates medieval plainchant, dance tunes and driving rhythms. In Carmina burana's tripartite structure, hope of renewed spiritual and physical life, depicted by the annual coming of spring, is lost sight of in the tavern, but eventually recaptured in the physical aban- donment of the lovers to each other. Hope is ultimately rewarded or frustrated by fate. In the apostrophe to Fortune (O fortuna) which frames the work and provides a key to Orffs cosmolo- gy, the ever turning wheel of fortune brings evil as well as good to hapless human beings who are powerless to control their destiny.

Mystical Experience. Tillich's second type, the "mystical" religious experience, is related to the mythical, while going beyond it radically; it "tries to reach ultimate reality without the media-

tion of specific things."28 This is evident, musically, in the Hindu and Buddhist monastic chants from the East, and the Roman chant from the Western Christian tradition, in which a common search for the "Other" is fulfilled not magically, and instrumentally through objects or events, but in contemplation of the "Other." In corporate ritual, such music represents order, divine power, and mystery. It provokes people to believe in an




order that already exists, or as Attali states, "a consensual representation of the world/'29 For this reason, Roman plainchant, for example, functions socially as well as mystically, to weld monastic life.30 Such music has profoundly intellectual appeal; it is multilayered in its symbolic import, and progressively understood By contrast to mythical music-making that values such qualities as immediacy, eroticism, holistic experience, and egalitarianism, mystical music- making is formally complex, intellectually ap- pealing, objectified, and hierarchically organized.

In her antiphon, "0 splendissima gemma," from her morality play Ordo Virtutum (The Play of the Virtues), Hildegard von Bingen sets a richly metaphorical and ambiguous text to a musically symbolic melodic line (heard above drone and accompaniment) Studying this antiphon in its context yields progressively deeper understanding of its religious and musical meanings. Among other things, the divine one is described as a "most radiant gem" (splendissima gemma), "serene glory of that sun which is infused in you" (et serenwn decus solis, qui tibi infusus est), "fountain leaping from the Father's heart" (fons saliens de corde Patris).31 For Hildegard, sacred music constitutes a bridge between humanity and life. As Carol Neuls- Bates observes,32 Hildegard believed that the same breath that God breathed into human

beings at Creation is employed in the singing and playing of music; by participating in sacred music, we come into contact with the divine

through breath which is life. For the mystic, rather than an instrument for manipulating divine will, music constitutes a means of access, or a vehicle through which human beings come to know the "Other."

Prophetic-Protesting Religious Experience. Tillich's third type, the "prophetic-protesting" religious experience, criticizes institutionalized religious systems. It suggests that issues such as social justice should be concomitant with person- al piety, and it repudiates the inequities and infidelities that religious systems have brought

on the world. Rather than forming the center of life and society, as in mythical religious experience, prophetic-protesting religious experience serves a critical function of addressing social and political as well as spiritual issues.33 Music exemplifying these characteristics is realistic, in the sense that truth is valued more than beauty, its function is of greater interest than its form, and its texts reflect perceived actualities rather than mythical pasts or fanciful futures.34 As "a thing and a tool to be used," it subverts the status quo and energizes the believer to action. Tone is the vehicle for text, and musical mean-

ing resides primarily outside the music within the religious-moral-political statement to which it refers. Such music may be characteristically simple and functional in its composition, inclu- sive and communal in its emphasis on congrega- tional singing, familiar in its frequent use of popular melodies, and often masculine in its metaphors.

Within Christian hymnody, Martin Luther's chorale Eine feste Burg (in Bach's Reformation Cantata BWV 80 setting) constitutes a classic Protestant statement, multilayered in its textual symbolism, yet musically accessible for congre- gational and choral singing alike. Its metaphors are warfare, confrontation, conflict, defiance, and

conviction of triumph. Rather than gloss over contemporary moral problems, it confronts them boldly. In this tradition, Anna Coghill's nineteenth-century hymn, "Work for the Night is Coming," musically couched (in Lowell Mason's setting) in square march-like rhythms and simple harmonic structures,35 proclaims the Protestant work-ethic, in which Christian is urged to labor on, despite the beauties and distractions of nature-the sparkling dew, "springing flowers," and bright sunshine-in the urgent belief that time will soon run out. And twentieth-century hymns, such as Erik Rouüey's "All who Love and Serve Your City" and Fred Kaan's "Sing We of the Modern City,"36 grapple with the problems of urban society, cognizant of the "nameless people" in the "urban wilderness," but hopefiil




that God will bring peace, joy, and glory to the city.

Prophetic-Critical Religious Experience. Tillictís fourth type, the "prophetic-critical" religious experience, represents the voice of "religious humanism," in which, Tillich notes, God is in human beings, and they in God. Human perfection can be attained presently, through spiritual development. And hope, the "anticipation of future perfection," inheres in its criticism. Musical idealism expresses this vision. For example, in his Concord piano sonata and preceding essay, Charles Ives represents Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the soul of Humanity knock- ing at the door of Divine mysteries, radiant in the faith that it will be opened-and the human become the Divine!"37 Likewise, Gustav Mahler's profoundly hopeful Second Symphony (The Resurrection) musically captures the pros- pect of the immortality of the human spirit, and inspires performers and listeners to a shared hope in this ideal.

Leonard Bernstein's Mass epitomizes this religious experience. It metaphorically illustrates the triumph of good over evil, life over death, faith over unbelief, and peace over strife.38 The Celebrant has desecrated the sacrament and altar,

and died, shattering the chalice on the stage. All the participants fall to the floor. There is a long, telling silence. Death reigns supreme. And then we hear a single flute playing the line taken up by the boy soprano, "Lauda, Laudé," a "secret song of praise" to God. One by one participants touch each other and rise, singing the mounting canon, "Lauda, Laudé." And so death becomes life, evil is transformed into good, disbelief becomes belief, and there is peace at last. Bernstein's idealistic vision of the human spirit transcends a realistic one, which might have left Celebrant and participants on the floor, while an Evangelist or boy soprano sang a reflective text of comfort or even hope that we might not suffer the same fate as they did. Not so. The entire Mass points toward, and is climaxed in, this final movement, in which the soul not only hopes, but these hopes are metaphorically realized in the

resurrection of Celebrant and participants to new Ufe.

Ecstatic-Spiritual Religious Experience. Tillich's fifth type, the "ecstatic-spiritual" or "expressionistic" religious experience, is, he notes, anticipated in the Old Testament, present in the early Christian church, and evident in early Protestantism and religious Romanticism. Capturing and recapturing the mythic roots of hope at the core of Christian belief invites jubi- lant expression. As Harvey Cox puts it, "Chris- tian hope suggests that man [or woman] is destined for a City... where injustice is abolished and there is no more crying. It is a city in which a delightful wedding feast is in progress, where the laughter rings out, the dance has just begun, and the best wine is still to be served."39 Utopian faith arouses the emotions to ecstatic outpourings in song, dance, and trance. We see the musical manifestation of this experience in the early Methodist campmeeting songs, Shaker spirituals, Negro spirituals, and contemporary gospel songs, especially those used in charismat- ic Evangelical services. Such songs share the qualities of emotional outpourings, arousing to high states of excitement and emotional feeling. Their popularity derives partly from the simplici-

ty of their form, their emphasis on egalitarian relationships and a sense of community, their roots in the common life, their inclusiveness and

participatory emphasis, and their celebration of future hope.

This celebratory and emotive religious experience is exemplified in the spirituals of the African- American people, in which, evocative of the mythical religious experience, distinctions between sacred and secular are blurred, and

prophetic hopes are celebrated.40 The spiritual has an ecstatic quality, encompassing a wide variety of emotions, and conveyed through its freely improvised character, richly ornamented melodies, and distinctively vocal quality. Some songs, such as "Oh, What a Beautiful City" and "In that Great Getting up Morning," capture the uninhibited excitement of anticipating future paradise. Others, like "There is a Balm in Gilead," express the pathos of suffering yet an




assurance of healing for body and soul. Jessye Norman's and Kathleen Brattle's rendition of

"Oh, What a Beautiful City," for example, evidences the childlike faith, unabashed sensuos- ity, delight in play, and ecstatic hope so characteristic of the spiritual, and particularly, expressed in womenfs music-making.41

Musical experience may be religious when it depicts, represents, expresses, and otherwise evokes religious experiences. As we have seen, though, musical experience may be "religious" in different ways. We are less clear, however, about when the descriptor "religious" ought to be applied to musical experience. Should we include all music within these categories, or only some music? If only some music, which music? We are left, it seems, to wonder whether describ-

ing musical experiences as "spiritual," in the sense of pertaining to the human spirit, may be one thing, and describing it as "religious," may be another. Do we need more stringent criteria for applying the label "religious" to musical experience than those we might use in labelling it "spiritual"? If so, what might these criteria be?

Religious or Spiritual Experiences Through Music

Clearly, our interpretations of the musical examples I have cited above are guided explicitly by text, title, or program. Indeed, it may be argued that instrumental music is ambiguous in its religious reference, except as it is designated such by text, title, program, or association in common practice. For example, Charles Widorfs Toccata is frequently performed as an organ postlude in religious services, and may be associated with those settings in the minds of congregation and clergy alike because of the function it serves. In the absence of textual, titular, or programmatic referents, the most that can be said

is that it is only religious in the sense of its association with religious services. It may, however, be spiritual in the expressive qualities it suggests, the profundity it evokes, and the

sense of awe, even mystery, it arouses in the minds and hearts of performer and listener alike. Certainly, its impact on the performer and listener may be like religious feeling, even confused with it by the participants in the event.

I am suggesting that a more stringent set of criteria applies in specifying musical works as religious as opposed to spiritual in import.42 To be religious as opposed to spiritual, musical works must pertain to religion, that is, they must

denote, represent, express, or explicate, among other ways, certain beliefs and practices pre- scribed or acknowledged by religious groups or institutions to be religious. Or they must constitute a part of specified religious rituals, performed as such with all the concomitant beliefs

and practices that comprise those particular rites, within the context of the particular rituals for which they were designed-be they a celebration of a Mass in a cathedral (e.g., Palestrina's Pope Marcellus Mass) or concert hall (e.g., Bernstein's Mass). To be religious as opposed to spiritual, such music must have specific religious references as opposed to simply artistic and aesthetic connotations.

Most problematic, of course, is the concert Mass, with its unabashedly secular context In what respect can this setting be held to be religious? Taking our example of the Bernstein Massy not only does the text and its musical vehicle point specifically to religious ideas (e.g., Tillich's "prophetic-critical" religious experience), but its staged setting within the concert hall, with all the concomitant rituals that comprise concert attendance, becomes, at least figuratively speaking, a religious place, in which musical and religious experiences combine for performers and listeners. The audience becomes the "congregation," as the mass is enacted before them, on their behalf. Nor is Bernstein content

for the people to be unmoved. He creates a powerful statement in which the resurrection metaphor, the juxtaposition of classical, folk, and popular idioms and musical forces breaks apart the neat classifications of religious and secular,




and anticipates a future in which good triumphs over evil. And one can make the same argument for concert performances of Orffs Carmina burana, and spirituals, among many other musical works. In a pervasively secular age, the concert hall may constitute, at least figuratively, a religious place replete with specific religious references and rituals, and the possibility of religious experiences. It is such only occasional- ly, when textual and programmatic references are explicitly religious. At other times, it can better be said to be associated with spiritual experiences, that is, pertaining to the human spirit, be they aesthetic, artistic, or whatever. In the case of such liturgical works as

Palestrina's Pope Marcellus Mass, Bach's Reformation Cantata, Bloch's Sabbath Service composed for specific religious contexts, in which the practice of particular religious rituals is the centerpiece to which the music contributes, taking music out of its intended religious setting, be it church or synagogue, and performing it in the concert hall, changes its religious quality. It can no longer be said to be religious in the same way as it was when performed in the setting for which it was created, because its meaning derives partly from its religious associations. A Sanctus sung in the concert hall stripped of its dramatic element as an accompaniment to the ritual of the host, and the religious ideas and beliefs associated with the host as the Body of Christ, broken (crucified) for the sins of the world, if a mystical religious experience before, now becomes more like the prophetic-critical religious experience associated with religious humanism. Its focus may also change from that fixed upon religious ideas to a spiritual experience focused on aesthetic and artistic among other aspects. Of course, it is possible that an individual may recall the specific mystical association with that Sanctus heard on a previous occasion in its cathedral setting. For the most part, however, performing or hearing this music may occasion either a different sort of religious experience or one that may more properly be identified as spiritual as opposed to strictly religious.

Importantly, to perform a piece of music that may be judged to be religious as a conse- quence of either its textual reference or its liturgical function, is not necessarily to have a religious or spiritual experience, or to engage in a religious or spiritual act at all. Music may open the possibility for such experiences but it does not guarantee them. Religious acts may be performed perfunctorily, without conviction; musical performances of religious music may be given with other than religious objects in mind. And religious music may be studied in a de- tached manner with a view of understanding its structural features rather than opening oneself to its religious or even spiritual import

Implications for Music Education

I shall briefly sketch two sets of implications-the first group relating broadly to music education, the second relating more specifically to music teachers in public schools where the separation of church and state is constitutionally mandated First, given that religious experience is not monolithic, but of various types, each of which can be exemplified musically, music educators ought to explore this diversity, valuing similarities and differences among musical works, and understanding them contextually as well as formally. Students need to come to grips with the nature of the religious ideas explored in the texts, programs, and titles of such works, or implied in their associated liturgical functions as part of grasping the import of these works. They should understand the many ways in which human beings make sense of that which seems to lie beyond the ordinary and prosaic, arousing a sense of awe, mystery, otherness, transcendence, or whatever, and the ways in which people express these beliefs and feelings musically. Studying these things involves tapping into the roots of human culture; without them, general education is deficient. Practically speaking, this necessitates that teachers take a profoundly relativisuc position to religious music and deal dispassionately with a variety of religious-musical repertoire, respecting each piece for its



1 1 0 Philosophy of Music Education Review

particular characteristic features and underlying value systems, thereby opening a world of religious and musical experiences to the student.43

Also, given the ambiguity between religious and spiritual experiences, and the fact that musical works open the possibility of such experiences, music educators are inevitably dealing with a mix of possible experiences that may be variously described as musical, spiritual, and/or religious.44 It is likely that these experiences intersect, often in surprising ways, and teachers can contribute importantly to their students' grasp of similarities and differences among them. Music education is not necessarily about musical as opposed to spiritual or religious experiences. More likely, it includes them all, at one time or another. Understanding these intersections between the musical, spiritual, and religious, among other things, helps people grasp their respective cultures more holistically, and better understand themselves as spiritual beings interde- pendent with others. As such, it offers a correc- tive to an unduly fragmented world view and a means of enriching society by fostering a greater sense of community.

Second, where the separation of church and state is mandated, in the Establishment clause of the First Amendment of the United States Con-

stitution, music educators may be concerned about their rights and responsibilities as teachers in the public schools. Some of the keenest supporters of the separation of church and state in the United States come from the ranks of Christian conservatives. Their more extreme

protagonists would argue that participating in performances of sacred music in the public school is unconstitutional because the act of

sacred music making or listening is tantamount to a religious experience and to inculcating certain religious ideas and practices, and such experiences lie properly outside the purview of the public school. Where such views predomi- nate, music teachers may feel compelled to perform only secular repertoire, yielding instead to secular humanist ideals, to which Christian

conservatism is also, sometimes vehemently, opposed, and leaving a large corpus of sacred musical repertoire unexplored.

Music educators need to understand that

such positions not only misunderstand the nature of, and interrelationship between, musical, spiritual and religious experiences, but misinterpret the intent of the Establishment clause of the First

Amendment. This clause prevents the establishment not the study of religion, an important distinction that allows the study of religious music as a field of inquiry in the public schools. This being the case, Abraham Schwadron insist- ed that sacred music ought to be studied contextually, and religious differences as well as com- monalities (with their concomitant musical understandings and practices) merit understanding 45 He held that, as with other things, it is possible to study such music "without parochiali- stic attitudes and sectarian points of view."46 Notwithstanding their religious connotations, participating in concert performances of the Palestrina Pope Marcellus Mass or Bloch Sabbath Service is a defensible part of a choral student's experience. Each work can be studied as much for its religious and spiritual, as its musical, insights.

In this light, music educators need to consider that failing to provide students with divergent musical and religious perspectives gained from a study of such repertoire, precludes them from properly understanding their own musical, spiritual, and religious viewpoints. When self-knowledge is limited, and people do not have access to the knowledge they need to make informed and responsible decisions, per- sonal and corporate freedom is undermined.47 A democratic society, construed idealistically, depends on the presence of such freedoms. Ironically, when music educators capitulate to their critics, and exclude the study of sacred music from their curricula, they are serving the interests of those who would undermine the very freedoms which the First Amendment is presum- ably there to protect.




On the other hand, studying sacred music in its various manifestations and understanding its place as an important aspect of human living provides spiritual insights that are meaningful in the lives of teachers and students alike. Explor- ing answers to the spiritual questions with which they grapple through a study of this literature enriches their knowledge of themselves, others, and whatever lies beyond Understanding those with backgrounds, beliefs, and practices different from one's own also contributes to self-knowl-

edge, by throwing into greater relief one's per- sonal beliefs and actions.48 Articulating the contribution of musical to religious and spiritual experiences, and vice versa, and the enriching possibilities these understandings have for human life and living, explores an area of human exis- tence understood imaginatively and intuitively through myth, ritual, and art, among other things.

These understandings are especially important today, where international and global understandings are called for, and technology and science have significantly impacted people's lives. And exploring the broadly spiritual dimensions of life not only gives point and meaning to other school subjects,49 but contributes importantly to the quality of lived experience, individually and corporately.

If sacred music is a legitimate field of inquiry in public schools, is the performance by a public school ensemble of a sacred work in its religious or liturgical setting, be it cathedral or synagogue, also defensible? In other words, what is the particular role of context in justifying a given performance of religious music? Sorting through this issue, we might, for example, distin-

guish a concert performance of a mass in a cathedral and a sung mass as part of a religious service. On first glance, the former might be defended on the grounds that the cathedral offers

an acoustical space and other properties that enhance the performance of the mass construed as musical work; the latter may seem to require specific religious commitments that violate the Establishment clause of the First Amendment.

But the matter is not this simple. My earlier distinction between performances of

religious music and the religious and spiritual experiences that may be associated with them suggests that the specific context in which a performance takes place alters the nature of the particular religious experiences possible within those settings. Also, singing a mass in a religious service need not require students to believe in the particular religious sentiments being expressed. Musicians have historically taken a broad-minded approach to such matters and have often been employed by religious institutions whose particular beliefs and practices they do not personally share. Further, musicians who do not hold the particular religious beliefs and practices of the Catholic mass, for example, may experience the mass in ways that are, at least in some respects, unauthentic, especially seeing that the music of the mass serves a supportive role to its central religious drama, and is understood differently by the believer and unbeliever.

In spite of this nest of problems, public school music teachers wishing to expose their students to a variety of religious perspectives may still value performing certain religious works in their liturgical as opposed to concert settings. Practically speaking, where they draw the line between concert performances of sacred music, whether in religious or secular venues, and participating musically in religious services, is one of the sensitive issues that must be decid-

ed in the context of the particular circumstances in which they work. In any case, the onus is on them to defend their positions and educate their constituencies.

Many questions remain. The boundaries between music and religious experiences and their implications for music education are problematic. Nevertheless, Tillichfs analysis provides us with a starting point for studying the ways music, religion, and education might intersect, and exploring their impact on music education thought and practice.




NOTES

1. See Paul Tillich, "Art and Ultimate Reality/' in Art, Creativity, and the Sacred, ed., Diane Apostolos- Cappadona (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 219-235.

2. See Joscelyn Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth: The Spiritual Dimensions of Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1987).

3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, trans., James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), sect 59.

4. See Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3rd. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957).

5. See Oskar Sdhngren, "Music and Theology: A Systematic Approach," in Sacred Sound: Music and Religious Thought and Practice, ed. Joyce Irwin. Journal of the American Academy of Religion Thematic Studies (50/1) (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 1-19; Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapo- lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 30; Jaroslav Pelikan, Bach Among the Theologians (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986); Paul Minear, Death Set to Music: Masterworks by Bach, Brahms, Penderecki, Bernstein (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987).

6. For a discussion of the interrelationship of music and religious ritual, see Edward Foley, Music in Ritual: A Pre-Theological Investigation (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1984).

7. Ravi Shankar, My Music, My Ufe (New Dehli: Vikas, 1969), 17. This holistic experience is encap- sulated in the idea of nada which signifies, according to Lewis Rowell ["The Idea of Music in India and the Ancient West," in Essays on the Philosophy of Music, eds. Veikko Rantala, Lewis Rowell, and Eero Tasti, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 43, 323-342], athe rise and discharge of vital, continuous, inner sub- stance: born of mind, activated by heat energy, tracing a spiral pathway along the channels of the human body..., and finally emerging in the form of uttered syllables, pitches, and time durations, con- trolled by symbolic gestures that imply a distant origin in sacred ritual, and manifesting cosmic process- the process of continuous creation.*'

8. See Henry George Farmer, "The Music of Islam," in The New Oxford History of Music, vol. 1, Ancient and Oriental Music, ed., Egon Wellecz (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 421-477.

9. On the Theravada Buddhist tradition of Sri Lanka, see John Ross Carter, "Music in the Theraváda Buddhist Heritage: in Chant, in Song, in Sri Lanka," in Irwin, ed., Sacred Sound, 127-147. On the Chris-

tian tradition, see David A. Martin, "Music and Religion: Ambivalence Toward 'the Aesthetic'," Religion 14 (1984): 269-292. A seminal statement of this ambivalence can be found in Augustine's Confessions (see F. J. Sheed, trans., The Confessions of St. Augustine [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943], chs. 27, 33, pp. 236, 242^4.)

10. On Venda music, see John Blacking, How Musical is Man? ([1973]; repr., London: Faber and Faber, 1976), 42. Even though many Hindustani musicians are Muslims, they observe many of the historical conventions of raga (musical melodies or modes) performance while substituting alternative ideas for those typically associated with polytheistic beliefs. See Walter Kaufmann, The Ragas of North India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974); Bonnie C. Wade, Music in India: The Classical Traditions (Englewood Cuffs, New Jersey: Prentice- Hall, 1979), 19.

11. Judith Vander, Songprints: The Musical Experience of Five Shoshone Women (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 87.

12. See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to the Theory of Symbols, 2nd. ed. (India- napolis: Hackett, 1985).

13. Ibid., 252, 253.

14. See Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, ch. 8. 15. Ms M. Yob, "The Symbols of Religion: An Analysis

of the Ideas of Paul Tillich, Mircea Eliade and Janet Soskice for Religious Education," Doctoral disserta- tion, Harvard University, 1990, 82.

16. Ralph Ross with Ernest van den Haag, Symbols and Civilization: Science, Morals, Religion, Art (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1962), 28, notes that "art is not religion, although the differences between the two are sometimes blurred."

17. Contra Dwayne E. Huebner, "Spirituality and Knowing," in Learning and Teaching the Ways of Knowing, 84th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part n, ed., Elliot Eisner (Chicago: National Society for the Study of Educa- tion, 1985), 159-173, who recognizes definitional problems inherent in the words "spirit" and "spiritual" yet applies them to the religious domain.

18. See Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener (New York: Atheneum, 1962).

19. See John Shepherd, Phil Virden, Graham Vulliamy, and Trevor Wishart, Whose Music: A Sociology of Musical Languages (London: Latimer, 1977).




20. Peter Kivy, Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience (Ithaca and Lon- don: Cornell University Press, 1990), vi.

21. Aaron Copland, in Music and Imagination (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, 1952], ch. 2) calls these images "sonorous images" as they refer mainly to sound and are made aurally.

22. See William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature ([1902]; repr., Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985); Gerardus Van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology \ trans., J. E. Turner (New York: Macmillan, 1938); Joachim Wach, Types of Religious Experience Christian and Non-Christian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).

23. Attali, Noise, 26. 24. See Marion Kilson, Kpele Lola: Ga Religious Songs

and Symbols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 118.

25. See A. P. Elkin, "Arnhem Land Music," Oceania 24 (1953): 93.

26. See Margaret J. Kartomi, "Music and Trance in Central Java," Ethnomusicology 17 (1973): 174.

27. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 13, 708.

28. Tillich, "Art and Ultimate Reality," 226. 29. Attali, Noise, 46. 30. This is true especially of medieval monastic ufe.

See Henry Raynor, A Social History of Music from the Middle Ages to Beethoven ([1972]; repr., New York: Taplinger, 1978), ch. 2.

31. Translation by Barbara Thornton. See jacket notes, Hildegard von Bingen, Ordo Virtutum (Sequentia, Ensemble fur Music des Mittelalters, Harmonía Mundi 19-9942-3, 1982).

32. See Carol Neuls-Bates, ed., Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 17.

33. Harvey Cox, The Secular City (New York: Macmill- an, 1966) sees religion historically moving from a mythical to a functional phase, from a unified world view, in which religion plays a central role, to a fragmented world view, in which religion constitutes just one of many disparate and discrete ways of knowing.

34. As Carl Dahlhaus, Realism in Nineteenth-century Music, trans., Mary Whittall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 121, notes, the concept of musical realism is fraught with difficulty.

35. The Church Hymnal: The Official Hymnal of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1941), 446.

36. Eric Routley, "All Who Love and Serve Your City" (London: Galliard, 1969); Fred Kaan, "Sing We of the Modern City" (Carol Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing Co., 1968).

37. Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata, in Three Classics in the Aesthetic of Music ([1929]; repr., New York: Dover, 1962), 133.

38. See Minear, Death Set to Music, 158, 159. 39. Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools: A Theological

Essay on Festivity and Fantasy (New York: Harper and Row, 1969). 193.

40. Likewise, influenced by their leader, "Mother" Ann Lee, the Shakers sometimes accompanied their spiritual singings with movement and communal, sometimes ritualized dance. The Shakers "prized songs that bore the 'feeling' of being 'given or matured under a heavenly sensation or spiritual impulse'- in other words, ones deceived* by divine inspiration" (Daniel W. Patterson, The Shaker Spiritual [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979], 32). Whether it be the strophic song "Heav- en, Heaven is the Residence" (resembling "Lady Campbell's Reel"), or Issachar Bates' through-composed anthem, "Mount Zion," these spirituals convey a simple, folk-like quality, beautifully captured in the well-known "Tis a Gift to be Simple."

41. See Heide Gòttner-Abendroth, "Nine Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic," in Gisela Ecker, Feminist Aesthetics, trans., Harriet Anderson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 81-94. Also, for a discussion of the role of women in gospel music, see Wilfrid Mellers, Angels of the Night: Popular Female Singers of Our Time (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 95.

42. For a broader philosophical discussion of the distinctions between the religious and the spiritual, see Iris M. Yob, "Music Education and the Spiritual Lives of Children," unpublished paper presented at the School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington, 19 November 1993. Available from the author, P.O. Box 6595, Bloomington, IN 47407.

43. Herein lies an important difference between indoctrination and education. Indoctrination is absolutist in the sense that teachers seek to inculcate a particular set of religious and musical beliefs and practices without regard to students' opinions and desires; education is relativist in the sense that teachers seek

to open a world of various religious and musical expressions in a pluralistic world. The objectives of indoctrination are clear in expecting students to arrive at a predetermined set of beliefs and practices, and students are not entrusted to explore divergent or conflicting positions along the way; the objectives of education are much less clear, and its methods necessitate students sorting through a plethora of beliefs and practices in enriching their own understandings. This problematical distinction needs much more work, especially in fleshing out the role of religious and musical values and the teacher's respon- sibility to the student in guiding decision making.

44. Notwithstanding that their position is, philosophically and practically speaking, indefensible and problematical, I suspect that many music educators, like Charles Hoffer, Teaching Music in the Secondary




Schools (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1964), 20, believe that they can neatly separate musical, spiritual, and religious experiences, and focus on one or another as they wish.

45. Abraham Schwadron, "On Religion, Music and Education," Journal of Research in Music Education 18 (1970): 157-166.

46. Ibid, 166. 47. Alfred North Whitehead, Aims of Education and

Other Essays (New York: Free Press, 1929), 14, goes so far as to suggest that when "attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice."

48. See Israel Scheffler, In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Education (New York: Routledge, 1991), 109.

49. Ibid., 134, offers this argument with respect to the arts in the school curriculum.



Documents

Religious Music in Education