As you know if you follow this blog, UD is about to teach a course on beauty. She has assigned, among other texts, this Oxford anthology.
As she thinks about this course, she’s writing a series of blog posts about art, aesthetics, ethics. Here are a couple of sample entries.
**********************************
The George Washington University School of Engineering, the Elliott School of International Affairs, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences — her students in this course come from all over.
**********************************
UD has also been gathering news articles of interest to people interested in beauty. There’s the Council Bluffs sculpture controversy, generating coverage from as far away as Australia. There’s the Vogue oil spread.
The wee story of the Wee Frees in Scotland isn’t about the visual realm. It involves efforts on the part of some congregants of this austere Presbyterian denomination to change the way they sing in church.
Which is acapella. And only the psalms. No hymns. No musical instruments. Just the Old Testament psalms, in unison, or sometimes with mild harmony. Sounds like this.
Here’s a whole page of their singing.
*************************
What’s being held on to when people hold on to this as their sole musical worship?
August 22nd, 2010 at 8:14PM
Sounds fascinating. As I am in a Master’s program in liberal arts at Harvard (CE,), any interest in coming up on a Saturday morning and teaching it there?
August 23rd, 2010 at 12:42AM
The melodies are very different, but the general musical approach reminds me of Gregorian chant (and the later polyphony that arose out of unison chant).
I have to say, I’m not sure what your last line means, though; are you unhappy they’re holding on to their tradition, or praising them for doing so? There is definitely a kind of beauty to be found in a tradition that’s been passed down for hundreds or even thousands of years, as I found out when attending a Latin Mass in the pre-Conciliar Rite.
All those times listening to Mozart’s Mass in C minor (and his Requiem, and Bach’s Mass in B minor, and…) weren’t wasted by any means, but it’s a completely different experience to hear the Latin in context; all of a sudden the music made /sense/, in a way I hadn’t previously even imagined was possible.
Was I rambling there? Probably. My point is that tradition isn’t just a refuge for hidebound reactionaries; often traditions are so designated precisely because of their beauty.
August 23rd, 2010 at 9:49AM
What’s being held on to? Well, from what I heard its beautiful.