Theology and Music:
Languages that Shape the Soul
Music as a Theological Discipline

Saturday, November 1, 2003
Yale Institute of Sacred Music and
Maquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School
409 Prospect St. New Haven

Music is a theological discipline in numerous ways: it forms a fundamental basis for the study of the past and the ways communities in the past were formed and worshipped; it is central to practical theology; it is of major importance to understanding the ways theologians from many epochs have understood beauty and the arts; and it has ever been the bedrock for teaching, from learning psalms and hymns, to teaching about and defining the relationships between human beings and God. Our program offers representatives from several theological disciplines and practices. All presenters are teachers who use the art of music in their work.

Our panelists center upon Christian practices and the ways in which music shapes them and the several theological disciplines within that sphere. But many of the ideas raised here would be useful for other faith traditions as well. The discussion session at day’s end will engage with these ideas, and push toward broader understandings of music at the intersection of religion and contemporary culture.

PRESENTERS

Institute of Sacred Music Great Hall

8:45 am Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:20 Welcome: Guy Martin, ARC Fellow and Director, and symposium chair

9:30 Ancient Musical Practices and Models of Community in Work and Pray: Living the Psalms with the Nuns of Regina Laudis. Margot Fassler, Robert S. Tangeman Professor of Music History

10:30 Coffee break

10:45 Johann Sebastian Bach's Chorale Cantatas as Hymn-sermons: Markus Rathey, Assistant Professor of Music History, and Simon Carrington, Professor (Adjunct) of Choral Conducting, with the Yale Schola Cantorum

12:15 Lunch

Marquand Chapel

1:30 The Improvising Organist: Thoughts on Dancing in Church, the Holiness of Work, and Practiced Spontaneity: William Porter, Lecturer in Organ Improvisation, and students

2:30 Ain't Dat Good News? Teaching Faith and Heritage through the African American Spirituals: Yolanda Y. Smith, Assistant Professor of Christian Education, and Jason M. Richardson with the Marquand Gospel Choir

ISM Great Hall

4:00 Responses & Discussion led by Guy Martin

Responders: Geoffrey Fairweather, Mark Harvey, Allen LeVines, and Richard Wohlschlaeger

5:00 Reception

Registration information:

Members/Fellows $45
Non-Members  $50; Students $15
Fee includes continental breakfast, lunch and reception.
($5.00 extra at the door.)

To register
 please contact Charles Henderson
chashenderson@mindspring.com or 
Tel: 212-870-2544

To discuss this or other ARC programs, please check our message board

ARC Message Board

More about ARC
including membership information

From time to time the Board of Directors elects as Fellows individuals it identifies as having made a distinguished contribution to their respective fields. The list of Fellows elected over a period of nearly four decades thus exemplifies what the Society understands as the necessary and vital connections between art, religion and culture.

ARC Fellows

PROGRAM ARCHIVE

Spring 2003
Theology and Poetry:
Languages that Shape the Soul

Winter 2003
Tracing the Garden

Fall 2002
Drawing on the Human
Spirit

Spring 2002
MoMA's PAPA:
Alfred Barr and
the Religious Dimension of Modernism

Winter 2002
A Theology of Beauty

Fall 2001
Lifting the Veil

May 2001
Utopia/Dystopia

February 2001
Antigone
Performance and Symposium

November 2000
Illuminations & Transformations:
Cross-Cultural Spiritual Dynamics 
in Music, Text, Dance and Film

May 2000
Alternative Readings: 
Sacred Text Embodied in Visual Art

February 2000
The Meaning of Myth

November 1999
Myth, Ritual and the Mediation of Violence

May, 1999
Writers' Ways with Loving and Dying

February, 1999 
The Divine Image
Implications for a changing image of God.

October, 1998 
Uneasy Constellations of Meaning
Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth Century Europe &
The Religious Art of Andy Warhol

May, 1998 Meeting
AYNI: The Andean Concept of Reciprocity

Webpage design courtesy CrossCurrents
Charles Henderson, Executive Director