Sacred Music in school curriculum?
  • mmeladirectress
    Posts: 1,100
    From a recent post >> Where have the sacred music courses gone? I was going to study one in melbourne straight out of school but it shut the year I applied.

    Some years ago, on a different music forum, posts started appearing from people in academia all around the US, saying that they were having to scratch the sacred music they'd planned to use that year, lest any students be "offended".

    Wondering - what is the general state of affairs now?
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Religious music (if it's explicitly Catholic) is verboten, unless it's a beautiful solo piece that grandma remembers.

    Gooey music is practically required.

    World music (especially if it involves a drum and has an African provenance and is about civil work toward a more just society) is obligatory.
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  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    When I was in a college music program at the local state university a few years ago (graduating 2015), sacred works were about half of the choral repertoire. E.g.: the Faure Requiem, the "Western Wind" Mass, Britten's "Hymn to the Virgin", a Martini setting of "Deus in adjutorium meum". On the other hand, these were concert performances, and students got no instruction there about these works as liturgical music.
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  • Carol
    Posts: 856
    My husband and I sing in a choir which has college students and community members. We often sing Mass settings and the conductor will discuss the meaning of the words when we go over Latin pronunciation and also when giving dynamics. He will give the meaning in English and then say something like "however this fits in to your belief system." We have sing the Faure and Mozart Requiems and others. Personally, I have found singing these to be profoundly religious experiences.
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