The Crisis and Insipid Music- any connection?
  • jcr
    Posts: 141

    we are uncertain, of course about what the music of Jesus' time was like. However an interesting thing shows up in the record set used in Music History classes for many years called HAM (History of Music in Sound). In the examples of Jewish music, there is a cantor singing a Psalm 8 ("O Lord, Our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth...). In the section on Plainsong there is an example of a Psalm 8 and it is unmistakably the same melody (no doubt filtered through a Roman ear). Food for thought. If anyone has access to HAM, check it out.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    JCR, it's been known for quite some time that a good deal of Chant was 'lifted' from Temple chants.
  • Another correspondence is the tonus perigrinus, which to this day is associated with In exitu Israel both in the Catholic Church and a variety of Jewish communities throughout the world, including an ancient and isolated community in Yemen.
    (The Lutherans, on the other hand, associate it with the German Magnificat.)
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  • Josef Pieper on music and hell (referencing CS Lewis): "MUSIC AND SILENCE: these are two things which, according to C. S. Lewis, cannot be found in hell. ... as far as music is concerned, it is not difficult to imagine that in the Inferno its place is taken by noise, “infernal noise”, pandemonium. But then, almost imperceptibly, another aspect of the issue emerges, namely, that music and silence are in fact ordered toward one another in a unique way. Both noise and total silence destroy all possibility of mutual understanding, because they destroy both speaking and hearing. Did not Konrad Weiss aptly remark that it is precisely in the midst of an age of loudness that an unbounded muteness can reign? In the same way, to the extent that it is more than mere entertainment of intoxicating rhythmic noise, music is alone in creating a particular kind of silence, though by no means soundlessly. ... It makes a listening silence possible, but a silence that listens to more than simply sound and melody.

    (As a basic condition, anyone must be quiet who wants to perceive sound, whether the patient's heart-beat or a human word.)

    Far beyond this, music opens up a great, perfectly dimensioned space of silence within which, when things come about happily, a reality can dawn which ranks higher than music."

    And re: Trent

    "Many organists too frequently cause profane organ melodies to resound in the churches, nay, even frivolous and sometimes wicked melodies; of this sort are those which they call Baxae and Altae and other ditties which the mob knows are base, obscene, and passionate. This is manifestly sinful, especially when they do this thing when the divine offices are in porgress, both on account of the irreverence which thus occurs in a sacred place and because of the occasion that is given for turning minds away from attention to divine and spiritual matters and directing them to frivolous and wicked temporal matters. Moreover it is the reason why in many places, the Credo and Gloria are neither sung nor heard by the people on festal days, on which they are ordered not to be sung so that reeds and harmonies may be heard instead . . . Moreover many organists, in order to make a display of their skill and be heard at greater length, pound away so long ... that sometimes they draw the Mass out a whole hour longer than is proper.” (footnote number 12 in article by KG Fellerer, “Church Music and the Council of Trent”, in The Music Quarterly, vol 39 no. 4 1953)
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,478
    What are 'Baxae and Altae'?
    'draw the Mass out a whole hour longer than is proper' Wow, why did people stay? Was it just regarded as a concert?
  • JCR, I happen to have a CD called La Musique de la Bible Revélée (on the Harmonia Mundia France label) which attempts to recreate ancient Hebrew music. The liner notes describe the work of Suzanne Haik Vantoura and her argument that "the Hebrew Bible is in its entirety an immense vocal score; the musical signs are indeed notated on either side of the Hebrew text, but these signs had become as hermetically sealed as Egyptian hieroglyphics before the work of Champollion....she revealed the significance of the musical signs and finally revived and transcribed in modern notation the music which was revealed to her following methodical deciphering...."

    It makes sense to me that ancient (pre-literate) ritual texts would have been composed to melody as a way to better memorize them. Homer was probably the most famous of these poet-historians.
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,478
    The work of Suzanne Haik Vantoura is certainly interesting, here for an 8 minute talk on NPR. Obviously her work is no more definitive than that of Dom Guéranger.
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  • I found her premise believable. Her mode selection seemed arbitrary, though.
  • IMO it’s reasonable to suppose that the historical Christ would have spoken Latin to some appreciable degree. Given an interest in “current affairs” I’d think it’s not unlikely that he’d have endeavored to learn something of the language of his people’s oppressor.
  • Felipe is correct. It is very unlikely that a person of that time and place was not, due to the circumstances of that time and place, to some extent conversant in Latin, e'en though, as has been pointed out, it was Greek that was the Lingua Anglicanorum of the day.
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    As concerns WillWilkins' very informative comment just above: I have commented on another thread that it is highly likely that when Jesus quoted scripture, as he did throughout his life, including on the cross, he would have chanted or cantillated it. Singing or chanting was not only a mnemonic, but a sign of great reverence. A good Jew of Jesus' time would have been thought guilty of gross disrespect, if not sacrilege, if he had delivered the scriptures in the merely spoken voice. (How far we have fallen! - and how we do presume!)
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    I read the Lesson at mass at Walisingham this morning. As I stood at the lectern I found myself thinking what pitch I wanted to begin on and was very near to singing it as I would have done were today a solemnity. As I drew in a breath and began to utter the first word a little bird rushed to tell me to read it, not sing it. Such is human nature to sing the sacred.
    Thanked by 2hilluminar Elmar
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    Felipe, I hope that you are not distinguishing the 'historical' Christ from some 'other' Christ. And by the way, He didn't have to study up on Latin. Being a Member of the Trinity has its perks, ya'know.
  • Elmar
    Posts: 506
    I hope that you are not distinguishing the 'historical' Christ from some 'other' Christ

    I understand it as meaning 'human nature of Christ', which is as real as His devine nature.
    And it seems reasonable to assume that mastering the vocabulary and grammar of a language involves the former, and therefore, study.
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  • MarkB
    Posts: 1,089
    Although not a matter of Church doctrine, it is probable theological opinion that Christ's human mind had perfect infused human knowledge. Esteemed doctors of the Church, such as Augustine and Aquinas, have held the opinion that Christ's human mind always had perfect human knowledge by virtue of his being a divine person and the union of the divine and human natures hypostatically.

    If that is the case, Christ would have known Latin, indeed all languages, and been able to write and speak any language fluently by virtue of infused knowledge. Yes, even Klingon. Even emoji.

    Having perfect infused human knowledge in his human mind wouldn't diminish Christ's human nature in the least: it would be the perfection of human nature, which would be fitting for the New Adam as well as an incarnate divine person, the head of the Body of Christ.
  • Elmar
    Posts: 506
    Thanks, Mark, for your explanations - especially the references to Augustine and Thomas in this respect. Still to my simple mind (no study of theology) it sounds odd to me, in view of how 'living-on-Earth-Jesus' is presented in the Gospel.

    Having perfect infused human knowledge in his human mind wouldn't diminish Christ's human nature in the least

    I doubt this; a natural human brain develops, and needs to acquire knowledge from the surroudings.
  • MarkB
    Posts: 1,089
    Again, this is all theological speculation, not Church doctrine, but it's interesting to ponder and study.

    A brain is a biological, physical organ but the intellect/mind is an immaterial reality and is the actual seat of cognition, not the brain. Human immaterial minds interact with their brains and, apart from infused knowledge, depend on sensory experience of the world filtered through the brain to inform their intellects. If Jesus had perfect infused human knowledge, his intellect would have known all things possible for a human being to know without having had to use sense experience to acquire that knowledge.

    The Gospel of Luke affirms that the child Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and men (2:52) and the Church has dogmatically defined that Christ's humanity was fully, really, truly human in all respects.

    If you want to read what Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote on this matter, look at the Summa Theologiae, Part III, Questions 9-12.

    In summary, Aquinas argues that it was fitting that the human nature assumed by the Word should not be imperfect. But the human intellect is imperfect if it does not know all things it can know. Therefore for Christ's intellect (not his brain) to be perfect, it had to have known all things possible for a human to know via infused knowledge.

    Your intelligent doubt and the Gospel of Luke imply that Jesus did acquire knowledge in some fashion because he was human, and Aquinas affirms that besides his perfect infused human knowledge, Jesus also acquired knowledge.

    Though it seems contradictory to state that Jesus had perfect knowledge and also acquired knowledge, Aquinas gets around that by arguing that although infused perfect knowledge was present in Christ's human mind from the very beginning of the existence of his soul, such infused knowledge known abstractly is not (if I may be permitted to grossly simplify for the sake of brevity) the same as knowing how or when to apply or use that knowledge. This is stated in detail by Aquinas in ST III, Q9, A4 and in ST III, Q12, A2, in which he says that the human intellect has two habits: passive and active. The passive intellect would have been infused with perfect human knowledge; the active intellect would have formed knowledge to apply to concrete life situations as they arose in life experience (again a gross simplification for brevity). Christ wasn't following a computer program or algorithm robotically even though he had perfect knowledge: he genuinely, humanly, personally, authentically responded to people and events as he lived his life, and in that genuine human response he grew in knowledge by applying what he already knew perfectly in the abstract to his actual life from moment to moment.

    I hope I haven't done Aquinas a disservice by simplifying things that way for brevity's sake.

    To exemplify the distinction using the aforementioned question of Christ's knowledge and use of Latin: by virtue of infused perfect knowledge, Christ knew everything about Latin abstractly; he did not have to study Latin to learn the language. When he encountered someone who spoke Latin to him or to whom he wanted to speak in Latin, he formed (grew in) new applied knowledge (as opposed to abstract knowledge) in that moment about what specifically to say because it was an authentic human encounter, not a memorized script as if it were a play being acted on a stage.
    Thanked by 2dad29 Elmar
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    @MarkB, another possible example: with His infused knowledge of carpentry, he could have built a Trump tower...but he 'learned' the applied knowledge from Joseph and used it to build chairs/tables, stables....
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    I understand it as meaning 'human nature of Christ', which is as real as His devine nature.


    The term 'historical Christ' is a Bultmann-ism. Careful when and how you use it!
  • Elmar
    Posts: 506
    Thanks a lot, Mark, for your explanations! I guess that I understand a bit better what you mean. I still have doubts about your statement about the brain-intellect relation, but I am not an expert (my background is physics).
    I hope I haven't done Aquinas a disservice by simplifying things that way for brevity's sake.

    I hope so too - otherwise the only conclusion would be that everyone who has not studied theology better shut up in a discussion like the present one.
    The term 'historical Christ' is a Bultmann-ism. Careful when and how you use it!

    Dad29, this sounds like something very bad ... I've no clue but in view of the tone of this statement, I am inclined not to ask further questions.
  • NihilNominisNihilNominis
    Posts: 1,024
    'Psalm' and 'hymn' are pretty much synonymous in New Testament translations.


    "loquentes vobismetipsis in psalmis, et hymnis, et canticis spiritualibus..."

    "Speaking to one another in psalms, psalms, and psalms." [/purple]