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Words from Pope Francis
Words from Pope Francis
There are various fields of your apostolate: the composition of new melodies; promoting singing in seminaries and houses of religious formation; supporting parish choirs, organists, schools of sacred music, young people. Singing, playing, composing, directing and making music in the Church are among the most beautiful things for the glory of God. It is a privilege, a gift from God to express the art of music and to assist participation in the divine mysteries. Beautiful and good music is a privileged tool for approaching the transcendent, and often helps to understand a message even those who are distracted.
I know that your preparation involves sacrifice in terms of the availability of time to devote to rehearsals, to the involvement of people, to performances on feast days, when perhaps friends invite you to go for a walk. Many times! But your dedication to the liturgy and its music represents a way of evangelization at all levels, from children to adults. In fact, the liturgy is the first “teacher” of catechism. Do not forget this: the liturgy is the first “teacher” of catechism.
Sacred music also carries out another task, that of bringing together Christian history: in the liturgy, Gregorian chant, polyphony, popular music and contemporary music resonate. It is as though, in that moment, there were all the past and present generations praising God, each with its own sensitivity. Not only that, but sacred music – and music in general – creates bridges, brings people closer, even the most distant; it knows no barriers of nationality, ethnicity, or skin colour, but involves everyone in a higher language, and always manages to bring together people and groups even from very different backgrounds. Religious music shortens distances, even between those brothers and sisters who sometimes do not feel they are close. For this reason, in each parish the singing group is a group where one encounters availability and mutual help.
Address to the Schola Cantorum Gathering
Paul VI Audience Hall. Saturday, 28 September 2019
...a two-fold mission emerges which the Church is called to follow, especially through those who in various ways work in this area. On the one hand it calls for safeguarding and enhancing the rich and manifold patrimony inherited from the past, balancing it with the present and avoiding the risk of a nostalgic or “archaeological” outlook. On the other hand, it is necessary to ensure that sacred music and liturgical chant be fully “inculturated” in the artistic and musical language of the current time; namely, that they are able to incarnate and translate the Word of God into song, sound and harmony capable of making the hearts of our contemporaries resonate, also creating an appropriate emotional climate which disposes people to faith and stirs openness and full participation in the mystery being celebrated.
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO PARTICIPANTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SACRED MUSIC. Clementine Hall. Saturday, 4 March 2017
Singing elevates the soul to listen to the Spirit, making it more sensitive to the voice of the Spirit.
“Singing is a language that leads to the communion of hearts,” he said. “Crossing every boundary, you spread a message of peace and solidarity.”
Music and singing, he said, “are capable of transmitting the beauty and strength of Christian love.”
Address to the “Alumni of Heaven” Choir Association
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-11/pope-francis-alumni-heaven-music-spirit.html
Quotes for Thought and/or Discussion
Quotes for Thought and/or Discussion
“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
Sir Francis Bacon
Essays (1625) ‘Of Atheism’
"As far as possible, join faith to reason."
Boethius
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC.
Vonnegut, Kurt. A Man Without a Country (p. 53). Random House Publishing Group.
"There is music of heaven in all things and we have forgotten how to hear it until we sing."
Hildegard von Bingen
"However, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of thy Church at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved, not by the singing but by what is sung (when they are sung with a clear and skillfully modulated voice), I then come to acknowledge the great utility of this custom."
St. Augustine, Confessions, Book Ten, Chapter XXXIII. 50.
"How freely did I weep in thy hymns and canticles; how deeply was I moved by the voices of thy sweet-speaking Church! The voices flowed into my ears; and the truth was poured forth into my heart, where the tide of my devotion overflowed, and my tears ran down, and I was happy in all these things"
St. Augustine, Confessions, Book Nine, Chapter VI. 14.
https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/augustine/conf.pdf
Music Education Philosophy
Music Education Philosophy
Music is inherently beautiful when humans are connected to and embrace its experience.
Bennett Reimer - Aesthetic Philosophy
The arts offer meaningful, cognitive experiences unavailable in any other way, the are essential to our own humanness.
Our educational experiences with music can lead us to moments of pure aesthetic beauty that is ultimately indescribable for those who experience it.
Praxialism (David Elliot, Philip Alperson, Christopher Small, Thomas Regelski)
Process AND Product.
Music's value is in both the doing of it (process) and performance (product).
Flow (Mihály Csíkszentmihályi) [mee ha ee | chick sent mee ha ee]
“being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”
we are happiest when we are in this state, fully engaged and immersed in the task/experience, and nothing else matters.
Utilitarianism
Music's purpose is to help us do other things.
In Music Education, this is advocacy, not philosophy. Music does not exist to make us smarter in other areas of our lives.
Here. It may very well exist to connect us to the Trinity through prayerful singing and playing.
Additional Music Education Philosophical Viewpoints
Additional Music Education Philosophical Viewpoints
Rationalism, Empiricism, Idealism
Rationalism - Reasoning is the source of truth.
Empiricism - Knowledge comes from the senses.
Idealism - art is ultimately a product of the mind.
Referentialism
Music's value comes from what the music points to rather than the music itself.
Formalism ("Absolute Formalism")
Music's value likes within the music itself, and that it's primarily intellectual.
Expressionism (Expressivism)
Music can express the composer's, performer's, and/or audience's emotions.
Music may inherently express an emotion based on how it's put together.
Symbolism
Music's importance comes from what it could symbolize beyond itself.
Susanne Langer - "music can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail and truth that language cannot approach." [music can serve as an auditory semblance of a feeling, text]
Jean-Jacques Nattiez - "The border between music and noise is always culturally defined--which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely consensus."
Phenomenology
Focusing on the lived, bodily, in-the-moment experiences of engaging with music.
Pragmatism - "practical consequences"
One might think of this as the "scientific method" in our everyday lives.
"Thus, it is still in the human body that music becomes incarnate, but in a body disciplined by the instrument, obliged to submit to long training in order to become the instrument of an instrument." (Mikel Dufrenne)
Thomas Clifton
Music time is felt time, not clock time, it's temporality creates its own bodily lived experience of time.
Music space is inseparable from time.
Feeling is at the core of musical experiences and involves full possession and absorption into the musical experience. At the same time, there is a constant relationship between feeling and reflective understanding.
Eleanor Stubley
Listening to music is not necessarily the most important way to experience music.
Social Philosophy
Music's value comes from how various cultures create and/or interpret it.
Music helps us perceive and (eventually) understand the social and political world around us.
Postmodernism
There is no one pervasive truth... about anything.
"Whose reality do you mean?"
"Which truth do you mean?"
Additional Links and Resources
Additional Links and Resources
About the Presenter
About the Presenter
Jane M. Kuehne, Ph.D.
Director of Music (St. Michaels)
Associate Professor of Music Education, Auburn University
Ph.D. - Florida State University
M.M. and B.M.S. - University of Texas, San Antonio
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