On Music, Liturgic and Popular

What Music Would Jesus Choose for Mass?
Brian Holdsworth, 15 Sept. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV4r1w6xvIo

What music did Jesus sing the psalms?

Jews don't just say the psalms, they sing them.

Did you know that a cousin* of a famous physicist, who was himself music historian, started out the music of the western world by noting that Gregorian psalmody is basically synagogal psalmody, but with less rhythmic variety?

It would arguably be:
A Short History of Music, translation of Geschichte der Musik, 1937, rev. 1938, 1947

I read a Swedish translation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Einstein

* from the article:

"While one source (1980) lists Alfred as a cousin of the scientist Albert Einstein,[2] another claims (1993) that no relationship has been verified.[3] Some websites claim they were both descended from a Moyses Einstein seven generations back, hence they were sixth cousins.[4] In 1991, Alfred's daughter Eva stated that they were not related.[5] On the other hand, she wrote in 2003 that they were fifth cousins on one side, and fifth cousins once removed on the other, according to research by George Arnstein. They were photographed together in 1947 when Albert Einstein received an honorary doctorate from Princeton, but they did not know that they were distantly related.[6]"

It shows how overrated the physicist is, that this passage gets 5 footnotes, and his actual work in music only gets one.

1:42 Pharisees and Disciples would actually BOTH be the kind of background that now counts as middle class.

The Aristocrats in Jewish society would often enough have been Herodians.

(Some argue, Herodians were not just friendly with Herod, but in the case of Herod the Great backers of his claim to Messianity ...).

Jesus was foster son of a carpenter, an entrepreneur in building. Four at least of his disciples were involved in fishing, also as entrepreneurs, not employees.

That's a somewhat different story, involving the politics known as Distributism in English and as Propriétisme in French, not totally unrelated to Crédit Social in Québec (the one in certain anglo-states was Antichristian, since pro-eugenics, that's another issue).

However, there actually was a kind of degree of dissimilarity of background, but it was more about region, Galilee means country bumpkins, who are perhaps less familiar with using Hebrew in the everyday discourse than Jews of Judaea, which is partly where Jesus had runins with Pharisees.

Either way, when singing the psalms, I'd say the Synagogue of Capharnaum like any Synagogue in Jerusalem would have sung the psalms in Hebrew and in a musical style going back to King David and getting on to both Gregorian and modern Synagogal (Alfred Einstein arguably overdid the extent to which ancient Synagogal was identic to modern Synagogal).

As for listening to Classical music, in Vienna some people go to a cheap Opera house and stand up (or sit on stairs) during the performance, I highly doubt this means they are aristocrats .... I suppose the thing is somewhat similar to the situation in Milan, but I have never lived there or even visited.

Another type of Aristocrats, Cohanim and Levites, certainly included one of the Twelve, St. Matthew, and probably, if Fr. Jean Colson was right, another disciple, the author of the Johannine corpus and the one to whom Our Lord confided His Mother.

2:46 If you like Kumbaya, it is probably OK to sing it outside Mass (given the meaning, which actually parallels EO prayers, where kyrie eleison is said instead of kumbaya, it should perhaps still be in Church, like when the priest is coming in for Eucharistic adoration with the host in a monstrance) ....

3:11 "nobody spoke liturgical Hebrew"

Not quite true, in Judaea they actually did.

A certain Cohen Gadol was called (in Greek transscription, which is where a nominative -s comes in) Kaiaphas, arguably in Hebrew. His father in law a few weeks after he had crucified Our Lord recognises another Cohen Gadol - the one named by Jesus - as "unlearned" because for his name he had answered in Aramaic "Kephas" ....

4:05 I suppose this is where the publicity break comes in for Dubliners or Angelo Kelly and Family?

5:35 It may here be noted:

• the first mass production of anything intellectual or artistic was not the vinyls of either Decca or anywhere else, it was in fact Gutenberg's press that was Mass producing Bibles and Missals and Breviaries;
• and while the texts in these are a a closed set, apart from new three prayers and one martyrology reading per new saint's day, basically, Classical music was certainly mass produced in the artistic sense. Tommaso Zillio considered the composer of the Baroque era as "a human version of a jukebox" ... and the words of Johann Mattheson (1681–1764) in his "Der vollkommene Capellmeister" gives very "unsensitive" advice on how to compose a sonata : 1) take an already existing sonata, 2) keep the bass line and write a new melody for it, 3) if you want to be really, really original, keep your new melody and write a new bass line for it.

Classical music, very unlike "modern Classical music" was not "l'art pour l'art" without any kind of commercial view in sight. Johann Mattheson, singing Opera, was an employee. Leopold Mozart was an employee of the archbishop of Salzburg. His son Wolfgang became a partner to Opera houses, the kind which promoted singers like Johann Mattheson.

Opera in the day (and to some in Vienna still this day) was what Hollywood and Broadway have become in the US.

In fact, associating Classical Music, Opera and Ballet with specifically aristocrats probably comes from Russia and the Bolshoi Theatres in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Especially in Moscow, probably, that very Western music never caught on, and Rimski-Korsakov never became the full equivalent of Classical, so Classical became associated with Aristocrats. And as for performers probably with homosexuality. Since a certain Revolution, as foretold in Fatima, Russia has spread its errors (including erroneous perspective on Classical music) over the world.

6:30 When I commented on Alfred Einstein, I was wondering whether this was going to be brought up - yep. Dr. Peter Kwasniewski didn't miss that one.

7:03 Indeed. I missed on that one ...
believer : worshipping God = courtier : serving/petitioning his king

As Charles A. Coulombe mentioned "God is a monarchist" .... now, before you go off to pledge allegiance to an Anglican, recall, so is the devil. Simius Dei and all that.

11:33 It may be noted, popular music has increasingly been divorced from Church music since the Church hierarchy were getting annoyed with the Vaganten.

More and more of the cadences from psalmody and motets were being forbidden to these popular music performers, and therefore they were forced to look in another direction.

If you want any music made by non-Church-musicians that sound otherworldly, it is probable that some Satanist rock actually comes closest to Church music.

I think Rammstein made one hit with some Satanist lyrics, anyway it exists, and I was a guest so could not quite escape the occasion, and the music is very close to Church music, except it is more violent.

Since hearing that, and recalling (perhaps wrongly) it was by Rammstein, I am officially not a fan of Rammstein ...