Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship

Program
[Listed are only the preliminary paper sessions suggested by the Program Committee. A complete program will follow soon. As in the past, the meeting will begin Friday morning and conclude after lunch Saturday.]

Music and Theology
Bennett Zon, Durham University: “Spiritual” Selection: Joseph Goddard and the Music Theology of Evolution
James Jirtle, Durham University: A Kantian Framework for Music-Theology
David Breckbill, Doane College: Perceiving the Essence: Thoughts on Hermeneutical Parallels Between Musical and Biblical Interpretation

Musical Drama and Oratorio in the 19th Century
Charles S. Freeman, University of Kansas: Horatio Parker, Charles Ives, and the Musical Demographics of Heaven
Eftychia Papanikolaou, Bowling Green State University: The Religious Impulse in Schumann’s Scenen aus Goethes Faust
Ireri Elizabeth Chávez Bárcenas, Yale University: Jesus von Nazareth, a Poetic Draft in Five Acts: Wagner’s Libretto and the Beginnings of the Historical Jesus Research

Cultural Renewal in Christian Communities
Robin Harris, University of Georgia: The Epic Song/Poems of the Sakha in Siberia: Telling the Old Stories in New Ways
Edith Haverkamp-Wesslink, Master of Arts University Utrecht, the Netherlands: “Singing Nuns”--The Culture of Music of Contemplative Convents in the Netherlands
Alla Generalow, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary: “Renewing Ourselves”:  Serbian Orthodox Christian Identity, Religious Folk Songs, and Reconstruction of the Djurdjevi Stupovi Monastery

Music and Society
Joanna Smolko, Independent Scholar: “The Government Loves Me, This I Know”: The Social Gospel in Virgil Thomson’s Score to The River
Alexa Woloshyn, University of Toronto: Bluegrass, Religion, and Tradition in the Hands of a Skeptic: Musical and Lyrical Analyses of The Punch Brother’s “The Blind Leaving the Blind”
Timothy H. Steele, Calvin College: Zoltán Kodály’s Genevan Psalm 50: The Composer as Prophet in the Midst of National Crisis

Music and Meditation
Robert Noscow, Independent Scholar: Contemplation and Fifteenth-Century Polyphony
William Peter Mahrt, Stanford University: St. Augustine’s Time And Eternity In Medieval Music
C. Jane Gosine, Memorial University of Newfoundland: Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Méditations pour le Carême as Reflections of Ignatian Spirituality

Reformation andLutheranism
Patrick Gilday, Jesus College, University of Oxford: Music and Meaning in German Reformation Controversies
Carl Bear, Yale Institute of Sacred Music: No Need of Much and Elaborate Singing”: Another Look at Martin Luther’s Theology of Music
Joshua Waggener, Durham University: Schütz’s Interpretations of the Jubilate

Images and Symbols
James Deaville, Carleton University: Eyes Wide Shut, or Not Seeing is Believing: Marketing “Authenticity” in Gospel Music
Hannah Mowrey, Eastman School of Music: A Rose from the Line of Judah: Ancestry and Imagery in Jena Universitätsbiblothek MS 22
Mark C. Samples, University of Oregon: Christian Symbolism In Stravinsky’s Les Noces

Keynote speaker: Carl P. Daw, Jr., Curator of Hymnological Collections, Adjunct Professor of Hymnology, Boston University School of Theology

Scholarship for Enhancing the Church’s Song: Prolegomena to a Hymnal Companion

Conference concert
On Friday evening, a concert of organ and sacred vocal music will take place in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, 1400 Washington Street in the historic South End of Boston. The concert will feature the Chamber Choir of Mount Holyoke College directed by Miguel Felipe and organist Andrew Shenton playing the famous 1875 Hook and Hastings organ Opus 801. This instrument comprises 101 ranks over 3 manuals and pedal. Among the more notable features of this instrument are imported reeds from Zimmerman of Paris, bold mixtures, cornets and a Tuba Mirabilis made in the Hook factory. This instrumant exists in a mechanically altered state having been electrified, however; it largely remains tonally original. Conference attendees will have a chance to see and play the organ in the gallery after the concert. When finalized, the program will be available at the FMCS web site.