Mass Setting based on Shaker Chant
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    The hymns and songs of the Shakers have had a huge influence on American church music, particularly white Protestant spirituals and secular art music.
    But did you know that they chanted?

    Certainly the chant literature of the Shakers is more like other American folk-songs and spirituals than it is like Gregorian and other European chant repertoires.

    But I find it an interesting style for liturgical use: it retains the simplicity that Americans have come to expect (demand?) from church music, while bearing some (not all) of the qualities that make Gregorian chant so intrinsically suitable for prayer. Also, the melodic formulae of Shaker music developed in an English speaking community, which means that the style is, in some ways, more suitable for English text than Gregorian formula.

    Anyway....

    I can already imagine the conversation about why this musical style is intrinsically/extrinsically suitable/unsuitable for liturgical use. I've thought about posting my defense first, but I'll just let that unfold on its own.

    The whole work isn't done. But here is the Sanctus.
    sanctus-missa-sakanala.pdf
    134K
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    BTW
    The name of the work is "Missa Sakanala: Mass of the Holy Angel"


    The Shakers believed that none of them "composed" music, but rather "received" it through divine inspiration.
    "Sakanala Vilna" is the name of the Angel who delivered the tune used in the Sanctus to the man (I think) who "wrote it."

    No, I do not subscribe to Shaker theology or cosmology.
    But I do like their music.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Nothing wrong with the "spoils of the Egyptians".

    I'm not really clear why people insist on calling them "Shaker chants", though. I mean, a capella vocal music in unison is the default music of all times and places (unless you want to argue a rhythm, an instrumental, or a whistling default). I've got me a big CD from those Shakers up at Sabbathday Lake or someplace (if I recall correctly), and it always sounds like ordinary British Isles/US balladsinging and hymnsinging, to me. (Although I suppose one could argue that the more spieled out sean nos and the stuff from up in the Catholic Highlands is heavily influenced by chant.)
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    The Shakers themselves divided their music into songs and chants.
    Chants are unmetered and declamatory, as opposed to songs, which have a pulse.
    They danced to songs, they listened to chants.
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