Religious soundscapes: liturgy and music

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811064.018

16 - Religious soundscapes: liturgy and music

from PART IV - SHAPES OF A CHRISTIAN WORLD

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2010

Susan Boynton

Edited by

Miri Rubin and

Walter Simons

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Miri Rubin: Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
Walter Simons: Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire

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Summary

Music played a crucial role in the world of medieval Christianity. The performance and composition of music not only reflected surrounding historical and theological contexts, but also actively determined liturgical and devotional experience. In the High and Late Middle Ages, musicians continued to cultivate the traditional genres of chant and also created new kinds of music for performance both inside and outside the liturgy. The present chapter aims to show the place of these musical trends in religious culture.

In the period 1100–1500, sacred music took on an ever-expanding range of functions and contexts, including not only the worship of the regular clergy, and those services and processions that were attended by parishioners, but also votive performances specially commissioned by lay and clerical patrons, and communal singing by associations of laypeople. Guilds and other associations were increasingly involved in the patronage and performance of religious music, and the mendicant orders’ emphasis on spiritual instruction fostered confraternities of laypeople who sang vernacular songs. The performance of the liturgy remained the cornerstone of the corporate identity of those in religious orders.

Keywords

late-medieval chant early-fourteenth-century manuscript contemporary religious polemics Roman de Fauvel religious soundscapes late-medieval theology liturgical music medieval Christianity Latin rhythmic poems

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Christianity , pp. 238 - 253

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521811064.018 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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16 - Religious soundscapes: liturgy and music

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