Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship

Eyes Wide Shut, or Not Seeing is Believing: Marketing “Authenticity” in Gospel Music
James Deaville, Carleton University

As performance studies scholar E. Patrick Johnson has observed, Gospel singing creates the expectation that its “audience” will hear an “authentic” voice, will perceive “the conviction, the expression of faith that fuels . . . gospel music in particular.” Gospel singer Christian-Charles de Plicque puts it more simply, “Gospel [music] is a prayer.” Individual artists may formulate their own descriptions of the Gospel experience differently, but they seem to be united in the belief that performing this music is an act of communion with God. Thus, performance and belief are inextricably linked in a genre that values above all else the musical expression of an inner spiritual life.

This paper investigates how Christian music publishers and recording companies draw upon such expectations of Gospel performance, through a systematic study of the cover illustrations for sheet music and recordings. Examining these images reveals how they play an important role in the marketing of Gospel, by evoking “authentic” performance. Whether photographs of Mahalia Jackson from the 1950s or Kirk Franklin in 2009, cover representations of African-American Gospel artists invariably focus on their heads or--for ensembles--upper bodies, captured in the act of praise and worship. Visual markers for inner spirituality in these performance shots involve a bowed or raised head and--above all--closed eyes. In contrast, covers that feature singers with open eyes rely upon non-performance publicity photographs to establish Gospel “authenticity” through an artist’s reputation (e.g. Aretha Franklin and Mary Mary) rather than a modeling of musical spirituality. The study of these illustrations should serve to remind us that “Christian” music is not immune from marketing considerations, even though the artists may have been complicit in the decisions behind the specific cover images.

A Rose from the Line of Judah: Ancestry and Imagery in Jena Universitätsbiblothek MS 22
Hannah Mowrey, Eastman School of Music

Acquired by Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, Jena Universitätsbibliothek MS 22 has long been distinguished as a rich anthology of masses by famed Hapsburg Burgundian composer Pierre de la Rue. In addition to splendid inked calligraphy and Ghent-Bruges borders, the choirbook contains a miniature of the Virgin Mary, who, surrounded by roses, stands on an upturned crescent moon. She appears in sole, as faint, though visible rays of light protrude from her. The image accompanies Jacob Obrecht’s Missa Sicut spina rosam. Despite much commentary about the mass itself, the sole miniature, placed unusually late--102 folios--in the manuscript, has been overlooked. This paper considers why Obrecht’s composition received the miniature, suggesting that correlating themes found in both image and chant serve as primary clues. My argument encourages a fresh examination not only of the subtle theological elements infused in aural and visual mediums of early sixteenth-century manuscripts, but also JenaU 22’s specific function within Frederick’s Alamire collection.

Obrecht’s chant model, Sicut spina rosam genuit Iudea Mariam, evokes two themes: first that the Virgin stood as a rose among thorns, a reference, as Jennifer Bloxam has shown, to the Song of Songs and second, that she--like Christ--descended from the line of Judah. Mary’s ancestry alludes to theological implications behind her nativity; sanctified through her lineage, she was immaculately conceived. Musicologists and art historians have both shown that in addition to images of Mary in sole on an upturned crescent moon (a reference to the apocalyptic woman in Revelation 12), emblems of ancestry, particularly representations of David, Solomon, and the ‘Tree of Jesse,’ often symbolized the Virgin’s Immaculate Conception. Thus, JenaU 22’s miniature reinforces not only erotic Song of Songs metaphors, but also the Immaculate Conception doctrine, as understood through Mary’s ancestry. Finally, considering parallel themes that permeate the music and correlating artwork in the elector’s remaining Alamire manuscripts, JenaU 22 may have served as a forerunner or “primer” to Frederick’s entire collection.

Christian Symbolism In Stravinsky’s Les Noces
Mark C. Samples, University of Oregon

Igor Stravinsky’s Les Noces (1923) is based on a typical Russian peasant wedding as documented in 18th- and early 19th-century ethnographic sources. In this ballet-with-chorus, a central link to folk weddings is the numerous and variable song texts that Stravinsky took from folk anthologies and pieced together to form the libretto of Les Noces. These texts describe pagan wedding rituals, including the bride’s lament over leaving her parents’ household, plaiting of the bride’s hair to signify her entry into married life, and the festivities after the wedding, at the end of which the bride and groom are led to their marriage bed. Naturally, much of the research on the symbolism of Les Noces has focused on describing and interpreting these pagan rituals, and their connection to the music (Mazo 1990, Taruskin 1996). One aspect of the Russian peasant wedding that Stravinsky did not include in the Les Noces scenario, however, is the wedding ceremony itself, which would have customarily taken place in a Russian Orthodox church. Because the marriage scene is absent, there have been no studies of Les Noces that explore Christian symbolism in the piece.

In this paper, I contend that even though the Orthodox ceremony is absent from Les Noces, its presence is felt, especially in the second tableau, “At the House of the Groom.” In the texts that Stravinsky chose for this tableau, there are a number of symbols that cannot be explained by a study of the pagan rituals. Some texts referencing the Holy Mother, for example, are conspicuously Christian while others, such as references to “crowns” and “crowning,” prove cryptic to listeners who may be unfamiliar with Orthodox wedding ceremony rituals. These latent Christian references are arguably the closest personal connection that Stravinsky had with the ethnographic sources, for although he probably never observed a peasant wedding, he would have been quite familiar with the Orthodox ceremony.

Since no scholars to date have connected an account of the Russian Orthodox wedding ceremony with Les Noces, this paper begins with an overview of the ceremony. I will demonstrate connections to the symbolism and poetic structure of Les Noces. The second tableau is already a peculiar part of the ballet: Stravinsky fabricated its scenario, creating for the groom rituals that were not a part of ethnographic record. In the same way that the groom’s rituals act as a complement to the bride’s, the concentration of Christian metaphors can be seen as a counterbalance to the pagan references in the first tableau. It is also in this tableau that Stravinsky intoned the music of the church, by including a melody based on traditional znamennïy chant. This dual religious nature--pagan and Christian--of the libretto and music
reflects a common worldview of Russian peasants, called dvoeveri, or dual faith. By understanding Christian symbolism in Les Noces, I intend to illuminate yet another surface of this many-sided composition.