Devotional music

Se aborda el estudio y edición crítica de una extensa Salve Regina a cuatro voces conservada en la Catedral de Puebla, que ha sido atribuida a Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), pero que no  coincide con ninguna de las versiones publicadas de este autor. El autor considera que decir esto es posible porque el estudio de la circulación de la obra del compositor abulense, en fuentes manuscritas, ha permitido la identificación de nuevas piezas, nunca publicadas, que se añaden al catálogo de ese autor. Tras analizar distintas evidencias litúrgicas, estilísticas y contextuales, se cuestiona la atribución de esa Salve Regina a Tomás Luis de Victoria, dada por auténtica hasta ahora, y propone una nueva hipótesis que llevaría a considerar a Juan de Victoria, maestro de capilla de la Catedral de Puebla entre 1566 y 1569-1570, el verdadero autor de la obra.

For centuries, the songs of devotional poet-saints have been an integral part of Indian religious life. Countless regional traditions of bhajans (devotional songs) have been able to maintain their existence by adapting to serve the contemporary social needs of their participants. This dissertation draws on fieldwork conducted over 2014-2015 with contemporary bhajan performers from many different genres and styles throughout India. It highlights a specific tradition in the Central Indian region of Malwa based on poetry by Kabir and other Sants (anti-establishment poet-saints) performed by lower-caste singers. This tradition was largely unheard-of half a century ago, but is now a major part of Malwa’s cultural life that has facilitated the creation of lower-caste spiritual networks and created a space for those networks to engage in discourse about social issues. Malwa’s bhajan singers have also become part of India’s popular religious and musical life as certain performers have attai...

For centuries, the songs of devotional poet-saints have been an integral part of Indian religious life. Countless regional traditions of bhajans (devotional songs) have been able to maintain their existence by adapting to serve the contemporary social needs of their participants. This dissertation draws on fieldwork conducted over 2014-2015 with contemporary bhajan performers from many different genres and styles throughout India. It highlights a specific tradition in the Central Indian region of Malwa based on poetry by Kabir and other Sants (anti-establishment poet-saints) performed by lower-caste singers. This tradition was largely unheard-of half a century ago, but is now a major part of Malwa’s cultural life that has facilitated the creation of lower-caste spiritual networks and created a space for those networks to engage in discourse about social issues. Malwa’s bhajan singers have also become part of India’s popular religious and musical life as certain performers have attained celebrity status and been recognized at the national level as living bearers of the Sant tradition.

This dissertation follows performers and songs from Malwa into new contexts and explores the processes by which performers and audiences in diverse styles and contexts use Sant bhajans to construct understandings of the self. It further addresses the role of Sant bhajans in the formation of new communities comprising members from previously disparate social groups. It interrogates why Sant bhajans might be relevant and appealing to Indians from so many backgrounds and how these bhajans and their performers are relevant to major cultural, religious, and social discourses in India today. It describes and analyzes the various processes by which Sant bhajans are creating new arenas for artistic, spiritual, and social dialogue, and allowing previously marginalized voices to contribute to the formation of Indian culture.

This paper is part of a wider academic research, which aims to locate the Sikh musical tradition (Gurbani sangit) in the context of the medieval and early modern history of Indian music. In particular, this script focuses on kirtan, a genre of Gurbani sangit that entails the singing of the Sikh sacred hymns as a core part of the spiritual practice. Compared with other musical genres in vogue during the Sikh Gurus’ era (late fifteenth-early eighteenth century CE), Gurbani kirtan has been either neglected by past scholars, or, in more recent times, considered a subaltern expression of the better-known classical (darbari dhrupad and khyal) forms. Through the analysis of a coherent corpus of compositions set to peculiar ragas (modal melodies) and talas (rhythmic cycles), the present contribution explores the idea of an autonomous identity of the Sikh music tradition, suggesting that Gurbani kirtan evolved not as a stylistic variation of other coeval forms, but as a distinct genre with peculiar features that fit the Sikh philosophy, literature and devotional context. Please note that YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE ARTICLE FROM THE FOLLOWING LINK: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint//full

Este artículo explica el proceso mediante el cuál se produjo la supresión de los villancicos de Navidad y Reyes en el mundo Ibérico y su sustitución por responsorios concertantes. El proceso se inicia en Portugal bajo el reinado de João V. Su hija Bárbara de Braganza consigue suprimirlos de la Capilla Real española en 1750 y a partir de ahí se va extendiendo a otras capillas reales, la Catedral de México y finalmente a las catedrales españolas. El artículo demuestra que la encíclica "Annus qui hunc" (1749) del papa Benedicto XIV jugó un papel fundamental en el proceso de supresión del villancico religioso en España, quizás a instancias de los propios reyes de España.

Keywords: Villancico, responsorio, cantata, Navidad, Fernando VI, Ilustración, música

Straipsnyje tiriamos naujosios katalikų laidotuvių giesmių melodijos Lietuvoje. Pasitelkus retrospekcijos ir tipologijos metodus siekiama atskleisti
būdus, kuriais atsinaujina ir kinta giesmių repertuaro melodijos. Prieinama prie išvados, kad šiuolaikinės laidotuvių giesmių melodijos,
prisišliejusios prie seniai susiklosčiusio tradicinio repertuaro, yra kultūriniai hibridai, jos brendo ilgai ir pamažu, paklusdamos universaliems
folklorinės prigimties dėsniams.

The melodies of the new Catholic funeral songs in Lithuania are examined in this article. The aim of the investigation is to find, through
the methods of retrospection ant typology, the ways and means by which the melodies of the repertoire of funeral songs are renewed and
changed. The main conclusion to be drawn from this investigation is that the melodies of contemporary funeral songs, which have become
part of the long-established traditional repertoire, are cultural hybrids. They matured very slowly and over a long time under the influence of
the universal laws of folkloric nature.

Katalikiškos giesmės, gyvai giedamos šiandienos kaimelių, miestelių ir netgi miestų gyventojų laidotuvėse ir priskirtinos liaudiškojo pamaldumo formoms, yra rašto ir žodinės kultūros, bažnytinio meno ir folkloro samplaikos produktas. Jų tekstai paprastai plinta raštu, o melodijos – tradiciškai, t. y. daugiausia iš lūpų į lūpas. Taigi tekstas yra gerokai stabilesnis giesmės dėmuo, tačiau labiau "pasiduodantis" įvairiems norminimams, aprobavimams, o melodija – žymiai paslankesnis, labiau prisitaikantis prie vietos tradicijų, tačiau sunkiau reguliuojamas įvairiais nutarimais ir potvarkiais.
Šis straipsnis yra Lietuvos lenkų laidotuvių giesmių (užrašytų 2011–2012 m.) antologijos įvado dalis. Jame žymimos giesmių melodijų istorijos gairės, pateikiama stilistinė giesmių melodijų analizė.

Pieśni katolickie, do dziś śpiewane na żywo na pogrzebach we wsiach, miasteczkach,
a nawet w miastach oraz zaliczane do form pobożności ludowej, są zbiorowym wytworem
kultury oralnej i pisanej, sztuki kościelnej i folkloru. Ich teksty rozpowszechniane
są zazwyczaj w formie pisanej, melodie zaś tradycyjnie – przekazywane najczęściej z
ust do ust. Tekst zatem jest znacznie bardziej ustabilizowanym komponentem
pieśni, aczkolwiek łatwiej „poddającym się” różnym zabiegom normalizacji
i aprobacji, melodia zaś odznacza się większą dynamicznością, łatwiej dostosowuje się
do lokalnych tradycji, z większym trudem jednak daje się regulować na mocy różnych
postanowień i nakazów...

Biografía del compositor Francesco Corselli, nacido en Piacenza (Ducado de Parma, Italia) en 1705 y muerto en Madrid en 1778. TRas una brillante trayectoria como compositor en Parma y Venecia se trasladó a España donde ejerción como maestro de la Capilla Real durante 40 años. Fue un brillante compositor de ópera y música religiosa.

In modern times scant attention has been given to the spiritual music of the 16th and 17th centuries, in spite of the fact that so much music was composed by some of the greatest figures of the period (they range from Palestrina to Marenzio, de Monte, Lassus and Monteverdi). Indeed until very recently it was very difficult to get ones bearings in a poetic-musical repertoire that is not only large, but also interwoven in many different ways with the cultural and spiritual life of a period that was “intensely consoled and lacerated by the religious idea” (G. Pozzi). Although the last few years have witnessed the publication of more and more ‘close-up’ historical-analytical studies (at times of very high definition), we are now conscious of the need for a new overall picture that can make sense of the fragmentation, outline fresh lines of interpretation and restore fluidity to the processes. It was reflections of this kind that generated the ‘centripetal’ itinerary proposed in this book, which moves inwards from a geographical and cultural location (Rome) first to consider one of the most influential and original spiritual and artistic environments in the post-Tridentine Catholic world (the Oratorio of St Filippo Neri), then to examine a specific poetic-musical collection: the Selva armonica (1617) of Giovanni Francesco Anerio. Taking its cue from certain general features of the cultural history and from a strong focus on the theatre of events, this work first examines the theoretical background to the relationship between music and spirituality (from Augustine to the ‘musical’ mystics of the Middle Ages), then verifies its resonance in the post-Tridentine era – a period that distinguished itself for the ways in which it united singing with catechesis, art with prayer, and literature with mysticism. The attention then gradually concentrates on the exemplary histories of the composer, the poet and the collection (G.F. Anerio, Agostino Manni and the Selva armonica) that form the main, though not exclusive, object of close analysis. The Selva is in fact an excellent point of observation, for it is where many of the trends of turn-of-the-century Roman musical culture intersect. Blended together, thanks also to the possibilities opened up by monodic-concertato writing, are the rhythmic and colouristic dynamism of the minor genres (the canzonetta, and naturally also the lauda), the harmonic maturity and linear elegance of the Roman late madrigal and the natural contrapuntal mastery of the post-Palestrinian maestri di cappella. At the same time this variegated forest (‘selva’) is also founded on a perfect balance between the needs of docere, movere and delectare, while the expressive experimentation gladly allows itself to be ruled by rhetorica divina.

Facsimile and Critical Edition by Luigi Collarile.
ISBN 978-88-271-3055-1

L’analisi di un’edizione musicale conservata oggi in un unico esemplare senza data e luogo di edizione, ha permesso di identificare una raccolta prodotta dall’editore veneziano Alessandro Vincenti. Tra il 1650 e il 1651, egli diede alle stampe due importanti raccolte postume di Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). Ad esse va ora aggiunta una terza edizione. Essa contiene quattro mottetti mariani, tre dei quali ancora completamente sconosciuti.

Il presente volume contiene un’introduzione storica, un’edizione critica dei mottetti e il facsimile della stampa musicale originale.

Reviews:
- Il Giornale della musica n. 291 (avril 2012), p. 32 (Fiorella Sassanelli)
- Early Music 41 (2013), p. 161-163 (Noel O’Regan)

Dentre os documentos referentes à história das religiões, talvez os mais negligenciados pelos pesquisadores são aqueles que dizem respeito, em sentido estrito, à oração individual e comunitária. Esses, contudo, nos remetem a questões que tocam o âmago da experiência do homem religioso no mundo. Essa lacuna é ainda mais grave em se tratando dos estudos dos cristianismos orientais, antigas experiências eclesiásticas que, de um modo geral, ainda são praticamente desconhecidas cá entre nós. A coletânea organizada pelos Professores Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony e Derek Krueger sobre a oração na experiência cristã no Mediterrâneo Oriental da Antiguidade Tardia e do Medievo é uma boa introdução ao tema, que pode nos ajudar a romper esse silêncio.

In 1581, Philippe de Monte, chapel master of Emperor Rudolf II and one of the leading composers of the time, dedicated his first book of spiritual madrigals to the newly elected Superior-General of the Society of Jesus, Claudio Acquaviva. In the dedication letter, he mentioned having received the Italian texts he set to music from a young Jesuit, a former pupil of his in the Imperial chapel. Starting from here, and travelling through Rome, Florence, Vienna, Munich, and Prague, I will show how the Jesuits and their networks played a crucial role in the production and dissemination of devotional music across Catholic Europe in the late sixteenth century. In this discussion, some distinctive traits of the Jesuits’ way of proceeding will become apparent: the international and cosmopolitan nature of their networks; their eagerness to test and adapt pastoral methods in different locales; and their ability to handle and experiment with a diverse range of cultural artifacts (in this case, from simple catechetical songs to the highest genres of contemporary poetry and music).

By Claudio Bacciagaluppi and Luigi Collarile.

Publikationen der Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft – Serie II, 51

Open Access:
https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=psm-001%3A2009%3A51

Di Carlo Donato Cossoni (1623-1700) sono conservate diverse migliaia di pagine autografe. Questa eccezionale circostanza rappresenta il punto di partenza di questo catalogo, pensato come uno strumento per studiare più a fondo i contesti nei quali il musicista è stato attivo: in particolare, la cappella del Duomo di Como, quella di S. Petronio a Bologna, quella del Duomo di Milano.

Contents: Preface Introduction Dapha from past to present Temporal order: time, music and rhythm The singing community: dapha and the social order Melody and raga Encounter with the divine: dapha and the sacred order Songs and meanings Conclusion: music and meaning Bibliography Index.

Lisanne Vroomen compares vernacular devotional songs form the manuscript SBB-PK mgo 185 with prose originating from the same female religious environment. This comparison is based on innovative techniques such as a functional analysis and Digital Humanities. The songs are associated with the emotional guidance of the religious individual. This becomes clear by the expressive language acts used in the songs, but also by the use of nouns suchs 'heart'  and 'love'. Devotional prose texts are associated with moral guidance of the religious individual and the religious group. The collations provide advice and exhortations: directive language acts. Biographies are mostly informative: the lifes of the deceased sisters function as a example for the living sisters. Lisanne Vroomen shows that each genre has his own specific vocabulary, while meanwhile being an integral part of a larger devout textual culture.

In the early years of Edward VI's reign, Thomas Sternhold published a pocket-sized collection of English-texted metrical psalms, inspiring reformers to experiment with versifying other scripture, often meant—like Sternhold’s psalms—to be sung. This paper examines three such books: William Baldwin's Canticles or balades of Salomon (1549), William Samuel's The abridgement of goddess statutes in metre (1551), and Christopher Tye's The Actes of the Apostles (1553). As these publications demonstrate, Edwardine reformers created Biblical song that diverged significantly from Sternhold and his colleagues' more-or-less direct translations: Baldwin expanded the Song of Songs into an interactive dialogue, while Samuel offered a summarized Pentateuch for his users’ edification; Tye, meanwhile, set his translations of Acts to four-part harmony. Yet these creators were nevertheless united by a common theme: to provide what Sternhold called “holye songes of veritie” that would ensure lay instruction in the Word of God.

The heterogeneous repertoire and obvious Milanese origin of Gaffurius’ choir books have fascinated musicologists ever since the late nineteenth century. Some questions concerning the compilation and use of the music remain nonetheless unanswered, such as why a
significant quantity of the music does not conform to the Duomo’s ceremonial, but to the Roman rite.
Building on Knud Jeppesen’s initial survey from 1931, and in close collaboration with Martina Pantarotto, this paper looks for answers within the Libroni. Codicological and palaeographic observations evaluated from a musicological perspective will help to reconstruct the production process of these manuscripts, to highlight the concept behind the individual books, and to give new insights as to the possible use of the music. Acknowledging existing archival and musical arguments, as well as palaeographic concordances, our common findings will merge into a reviewed dating hypothesis.

Le composizioni che più hanno attratto l’interesse degli studiosi, nel variegato corpus trasmesso dai Libroni gaffuriani, sono senza dubbio i cicli di motetti missales. Nati, si presume, nell’ambito della cappella di corte sforzesca, per l’insolita fattura testuale e musicale, l’ambiguo status in rapporto alla liturgia, e non ultima la loro stessa presenza nei codici del Duomo pongono a chi li studia problemi non meno ardui che affascinanti. Per quali occasioni furono scritti? In che misura sono espressione della cultura liturgico-devozionale ambrosiana o, invece, derivano da fonti e modelli d’Oltralpe? Davvero dovevano “sostituire” i brani del Proprium e dell’Ordinarium missae? Come si spiega il loro apparente isolamento nel panorama della musica sacra della prima età moderna? Ed esiste realmente il “Milanese style” di cui si dice essi siano l’espressione primaria? In una sorta di visita guidata al cantiere scientifico del progetto Motet Cycles (c.1470-c.1510): Compositional design, performance, and cultural context, questo intervento riassumerà lo stato delle ricerche sui missales, metterà in luce le novità più significative emerse nel corso del progetto, e additerà alcune future possibilità di indagine.

"Dāphā, or dāphā bhajan, is a genre of Hindu-Buddhist devotional singing, performed by male, non-professional musicians of the farmer and other castes belonging to the Newar ethnic group, in the towns and villages of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. This culture is of unique importance as an urban South Asian society in which many traditional models survived into the modern age. The study focusses on the town of Bhaktapur, in which many dāphā groups still perform.

The book opens with a Preface, setting out the reasons for undertaking the project, and its aims and methods. This is followed by an Introduction, briefly introducing the historical, musical, social and religious contexts of dāphā in Bhaktapur, and outlining a theoretical approach to the analysis of music in context based on ideas from music cognition and cognitive anthropology.

In order to integrate musical and contextual analysis and allow cross-domain perspectives to emerge, chapters on music—rhythm, melody, repertoire—alternate with chapters on the historical and ethnographic context. Chapter 2 traces the likely origins of dāphā in pan-South Asian traditions of religious song, its development at the courts of the Malla kings in the 17th-18th centuries, and its subsequent re-location in the farmer community.

Chapter 3 examines how dāphā performance collaboratively constructs the experience of time, from the individual song with its complex pattern of responsorial repetitions and intricate percussion accompaniment, to the two-hour daily singing session, to the weekly, monthly and annual cycles of  religious rituals and agricultural seasons. This chapter shows how the system of metres (tāl) underlies both the sequence of songs sung in a session, and a division of the repertoire of songs that reflects its origins in the music of the Malla courts.

Chapter 4 discusses the context of dāphā in the society of Bhaktapur, in relation to neighbourhood communities, the caste system, and the system of guthi (societies), arguing that the musical organization of dāphā performance, unlike its social organization, articulates complementarity rather than hierarchy, and is designed to active the "flow" psychology typical of participatory performance genres, in South Asia and elsewhere.

Chapter 5 turns to the melodic structure of dāphā songs, especially modal organization, with reference to the historical South Asian concept of rāga. I argue that  rāgas in dāphā are melodic models underlying song melodies, and that knowledge of these models, though shared by different groups, is largely implicit, embedded in memorized repertoire rather than verbally expressed.

Chapter 6 explores the religious function of dāphā as a structured encounter with the divine, as shown by the purposes explicit in song texts, the benefits of singing according to singers themselves, the transmission of musical knowledge as a form of esoteric sacred power, and the role of Nāsaḥdyaḥ, god of music and dance, as the source of that power. The chapter ends by arguing that dāphā is a form of concerted religious effort, analogous to the many other socially constructed ritual undertakings that characterise Newar life, and showing how it forms an integral component of Bhaktapur’s major religious festival, Biskāḥ.

Drawing on the foregoing chapters, Chapter 7 analyses a selection of 10 dāphā songs and performances, with notation, text, translation and commentary, showing how each embodies multiple layers of cultural meaning.

Chapter 8 draws together the main themes and findings of the book, and reflects on what can be learned from dāphā about the meanings of music in a traditional South Asian society.

"

Despite the relative lack of scholarly attention, the use of vernacular songs to teach the catechism was one of the most prominent sonic features of early modern Catholicism. The method was employed, in countless variants, from Sicily to Brazil, from Castile to Japan, in a longue durée from the first decades of the sixteenth century to the end of early modernity (and beyond). Its essential mechanics is not difficult to explain: the doctrine was condensed into uncomplicated formulas, set to easy tunes, and taught by means of repetition; the learners (chiefly “youngsters, children, ignorant and unrefined people, countrymen, and women”) were able to memorize the doctrine and further spread it without too much effort. Although simple and aesthetically unassuming, these musical practices are interconnected with some of the most stimulating issues of contemporary Catholicism. As I will try to show, their study has much to reveal about problems as diverse as the working of local and international Catholic networks (most notably that of the Jesuits), the role of sound and media in interconfessional encounters, and the interplay between pastoral experiences in Europe and in non-European missions.