Music, Rhetoric, and the Edification of the Church in the Reformation: The Humanist Reconstruction of Modulata Recitatio
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Hyun-Ah Kim
Abstract
This article elucidates the rhetorical framework within which the new culture of popular sacred music flourished in both Protestant and Catholic Reformations, focusing on modulata recitatio, the ancient manner of ecclesiastical singing reconstructed by the humanists as an embodiment of musica divina. It discusses how metrical psalmody and oratorios, originating from the modulata recitatio and aimed at edifying the laity, paved the way for modern hymnody and church cantatas respectively – the new music which facilitated the promotion of Christian spirituality and virtue by appealing to emotion. Considering the cultural development of popular sacred music the article demonstrates that in combining moral education with Christian devotion the modulata recitatio lies at the heart of lay spiritual music shaped by the Reformation.
Notes
An earlier version of this article was delivered at the REFO conference of 2015, KU Leuven, Belgium.
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Music, Rhetoric, and the Edification of the Church in the Reformation: The Humanist Reconstruction of Modulata Recitatio
- The Polish Brethren versus the Hutterites: A Sacred Community?
- Some Aspects of Jean Gerson’s Legal Influence in Sixteenth Century England: The Issue of Epikeia
- A Dowry, Will, and Blended Family of Calvin’s Geneva Put Anne Colladon, to the Test
- The Civil Magistrates of Geneva and the Placement of Pastors in France on the Eve of the First War of Religion (1562)
- The Muses in Mourning: Identity and Classicism in Calvinist Heidelberg
- Niels Hemmingsen and the Construction of a Seventeenth-Century Protestant Memory
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Music, Rhetoric, and the Edification of the Church in the Reformation: The Humanist Reconstruction of Modulata Recitatio
- The Polish Brethren versus the Hutterites: A Sacred Community?
- Some Aspects of Jean Gerson’s Legal Influence in Sixteenth Century England: The Issue of Epikeia
- A Dowry, Will, and Blended Family of Calvin’s Geneva Put Anne Colladon, to the Test
- The Civil Magistrates of Geneva and the Placement of Pastors in France on the Eve of the First War of Religion (1562)
- The Muses in Mourning: Identity and Classicism in Calvinist Heidelberg
- Niels Hemmingsen and the Construction of a Seventeenth-Century Protestant Memory
