> On Mar 14, 2012, at 3:58 PM, Edward Mast wrote: > >> A very sad state of affairs, Chris. I never understood the church's - >> catholic, protestant, or otherwise - desire to revise its music programs to >> reflect what is going on musically in society; to appear to be more >> "relevant". >
On Mar 14, 2012, at 8:07 AM, Mark Wheeler wrote: > Wasn't it terrible when that damn Monteverdi start writing all that modern > stuff, how could he :) My thoughts exactly. I don't think Monty (as such), caught flak for polluting traditional church music (as opposed to Artusi's complaint that he was corrupting music generally), but here's a fairly well-known excerpt from "History of Church Ceremonies in Saxony" (1732) by Christian Gerber, often taken to refer to one of Bach's passions, although there's no reason to think it's specifically about Bach: > [over the last 50 years] the Passion story, which had formerly been sung in > simple plainchant, humbly and reverently, began to be sung with many kinds of > instruments in the most elaborate fashion, occasionally mixing in a little > setting of Passion Chorale which the whole congregation joined in singing, > and then the mass of instruments started in again. When in a large town this > Passion music was done for the first time, with twelve strings, many oboes, > bassoons, and other instruments, many people were astonished and did not know > what to make of it. In the pew of a noble family there were many Ministers > and Noble Ladies, who sang the first Passion chorale out of their books with > great devotion. But when this theatrical music began, all these people were > thrown into the greatest bewilderment, looked at each other, and said, What > will come of this? An old widow of the nobility said, God save us, my > children! Its just as if one were at an Opera Comedy. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
