L
Londoner
Guest
Following on from another thread, I am wondering exactly how secular music is defined. Sometimes it’s clear whether music is sacred of secular. The Monteverdi Vespers are sacred music; the overture to the Marriage of Figaro is secular music. But in between those there is a lot of room for nuance.
Does sacred music need originally to have been composed for the liturgy? Take Schubert’s Ave Maria. The music was originally composed for Adam Storck’s translation of part of Walter Scott’s poem The Lady of the Lake. The first performances were in a secular setting. Only later was it adapted as a primarily religious work. Gounod’s Ave Maria is similar: originally, the music was composed as an improvised melody based on Bach’s 1st prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Later the tune was set to a poem by the French deist poet Alphonse de Lamartine. Only after this was the Ave Maria fitted to the tune. Do these two pieces therefore count as sacred or as secular?
Another category would be settings of religious texts for the concert hall rather than church. For example, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Verdi’s Requiem, Berlioz’s Grande Messe des morts and Te Deum, Dvořák’s Requiem, and Brahms’s German Requiem are all essentially secular works for the concert hall, albeit based on liturgical or biblical texts. Nonetheless, extracts of some of these works are sometimes used in the liturgy (e.g. the Libera me from Verdi’s Requiem was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales). Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang (2nd symphony) could also potentially fall into this category. Of course, this category would rarely arise, as the works cited require a symphony orchestra, chorus, and soloists, and cannot normally be staged in most churches, but parts could be used in very grand services such as a royal wedding or state funeral.
Yet another category would be sacred music used as a relatively small part of an otherwise secular work. For example, the Easter Hymn from Cavalleria rusticana. I have heard this performed by a chapel choir in the context of the liturgy. How far could this be taken? For example, could the Salve Regina from Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites be used in the liturgy? Again, I see practical difficulties, such as finding singers of necessary standard, an orchestra, and a guillotine, but in principle, could something like this be considered sacred music? An easier example would be the Five Negro Spirituals from Tippett’s A Child of Our Time. These are unequivocally sacred texts that belong to a long tradition of African American sacred music and can very easily be performed by any choir of moderate quality, and yet they are taken from a secular work by a non-religious composer. The same could go for parts of Bernstein’s Mass.
What about instrumental music? We tend to assume that organ music is inherently sacred, simply because the place most of us hear the organ is in church. But much organ music of course was originally composed simply as music, not with any sacred function in mind. The most obvious example is Widor’s Toccata, which is commonly associated with liturgical use, but is in fact a movement from a symphony.
Does sacred music need originally to have been composed for the liturgy? Take Schubert’s Ave Maria. The music was originally composed for Adam Storck’s translation of part of Walter Scott’s poem The Lady of the Lake. The first performances were in a secular setting. Only later was it adapted as a primarily religious work. Gounod’s Ave Maria is similar: originally, the music was composed as an improvised melody based on Bach’s 1st prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Later the tune was set to a poem by the French deist poet Alphonse de Lamartine. Only after this was the Ave Maria fitted to the tune. Do these two pieces therefore count as sacred or as secular?
Another category would be settings of religious texts for the concert hall rather than church. For example, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Verdi’s Requiem, Berlioz’s Grande Messe des morts and Te Deum, Dvořák’s Requiem, and Brahms’s German Requiem are all essentially secular works for the concert hall, albeit based on liturgical or biblical texts. Nonetheless, extracts of some of these works are sometimes used in the liturgy (e.g. the Libera me from Verdi’s Requiem was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales). Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang (2nd symphony) could also potentially fall into this category. Of course, this category would rarely arise, as the works cited require a symphony orchestra, chorus, and soloists, and cannot normally be staged in most churches, but parts could be used in very grand services such as a royal wedding or state funeral.
Yet another category would be sacred music used as a relatively small part of an otherwise secular work. For example, the Easter Hymn from Cavalleria rusticana. I have heard this performed by a chapel choir in the context of the liturgy. How far could this be taken? For example, could the Salve Regina from Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites be used in the liturgy? Again, I see practical difficulties, such as finding singers of necessary standard, an orchestra, and a guillotine, but in principle, could something like this be considered sacred music? An easier example would be the Five Negro Spirituals from Tippett’s A Child of Our Time. These are unequivocally sacred texts that belong to a long tradition of African American sacred music and can very easily be performed by any choir of moderate quality, and yet they are taken from a secular work by a non-religious composer. The same could go for parts of Bernstein’s Mass.
What about instrumental music? We tend to assume that organ music is inherently sacred, simply because the place most of us hear the organ is in church. But much organ music of course was originally composed simply as music, not with any sacred function in mind. The most obvious example is Widor’s Toccata, which is commonly associated with liturgical use, but is in fact a movement from a symphony.
