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FOREWORDColloquium: Music, Worship, ArtsCultural and religious identities must navigate between traditions and new beginnings, finding their way through history, restoration, and renewal. The articles in this issue of Colloquium revolve around these tensions between past and present, sameness and otherness. All of them grew out of the work of the Institute of Sacred Music: the weekly Colloquium, the Liturgy Symposium, and public events like the Kavanagh and Tangeman Lectures. The eleven articles in this volume approach the problem of identity from different angles and with various guiding interests; the symphonic unity of these many voices represents one central aspect of our work in religion, worship, and the arts. A first group deals with liturgical renewal in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Keith F. Pecklers traces the development of Roman Catholic liturgies over the nearly half-century since the decree Sacrosanctum Concilium was issued by the bishops of Vatican II. Joanne M. Pierce compares liturgical realities to hopeful expectations for the liturgy over roughly the same time span, and scrutinizes the ways the 1960s envisioned the liturgy of the future—including a chapel on the moon, and the appropriate music for this venue. Some of these dreams have become reality, some turned out to be impossible, and others were superseded by new dreams and visions. Every reform and process of renewal must leave practices and texts behind. This process becomes more complicated if several traditions are involved. Maxwell E. Johnson’s thoughtful article studies the impact of the Roman Catholic Church’s recent revisions of liturgical texts on the process of ecumenical-liturgical convergence. Finally, Martin Stuflesser reconstructs the meaning of the term “paschal mystery” and its implications for the liturgy in both the present and the future. A second group of articles investigates the representation of the sacred in varied cultural circumstances. Jaime Lara shows how the “Liturgy of Human Sacrifice” (the Eucharist) was adapted by and for the Maya culture, employing, redefining, and thus superseding some of their religious metaphors and images. A different kind of negotiation between liturgy and culture (even though no less difficult) is discussed in Martin E. Marty’s essay in which he outlines the obstacles and odds of classical music in our churches today. A performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem was one of the musical highlights of the year 2006/07. The performance by Yale Camerata, Schola, and Glee Club was framed by two insightful lectures, given by our former colleague Lana Schwebel, and by Mervyn Cooke, a leading Britten scholar. Owing to her untimely death Professor Schwebel was not able to write for this journal; we decided, however, to reprint a short meditation she contributed for the ISM newsletter, Prism. The articles about the War Requiem trace the multilayered process of transformation and assimilation the ancient words of the Latin funeral liturgy underwent. This text was paired with poetry reflecting on the cruelty of World War I, then set by a composer after World War II, and finally performed and perceived by us with our memories of Vietnam, the wars in the Balkans, and daily news from Iraq and Afghanistan. Britten’s War Requiem is an expression of grief and hope for reconciliation that still speaks directly to listeners today. The final section of this issue focuses on Jewish music between tradition (or rather: traditions) on the one hand and revitalization on the other. Joshua R. Jacobson gives a fascinating glimpse into the world of Salamone Rossi and his compositions for seventeenth-century Jewish liturgy. The theological controversies around these works demonstrate the problems that occur when a liturgical tradition (and with it a religious identity) is confronted by the preferences of a dominant culture. Philip V. Bohlman explains the conception of a Jewish musical identity in the nineteenth century and the revival of Jewish music (or the reconstruction of an imagined past) in the late twentieth century. Mark Kligman, finally, explores the character and determining influences in the liturgical music of Middle Eastern Jews. The common thread in these papers is the dialogue, the conflict, and the merging of different cultures and liturgical and musical traditions. Creating and recreating a cultural language brings a past (real or imagined) into our own time. Markus Rathey |
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