Secular Music, Sacred Music: A Brief History part 1.

For the full extent of my musical life I’ve swum in two streams, the sacred and the secular. My first experiences as a performer, like many musicians, was in a religious context. Whether I was working in the pop idiom or the classical, I’ve always found myself constantly crossing what has become an increasingly odd divide. Odd, because over the course of time, the meaning of secular and sacred has changed. In its original meaning, secular(from the Latin saecularis) referred to being of the age, reflecting a specific time and place, temporal in nature. In medieval Christianity this contrasted with the sacred, things associated with an omniscient god, beyond space and time, non-temporal in nature. Music was classified in this way of thinking by it’s source, not it’s content per se. If it was created as the result of a revelatory experience, meaning a divine source, it was considered sacred. If it was the product of the rational mind, and therefore derived from a human process, it was considered secular.
      By Bach’s time the definition of sacred music had changed in western Christianity. It was now thought of as music specifically created for religious use. The method of creation for Bach was from the rational human mind in both cases. There is no difference between the musical content of the Brandenbhurg Concertos and a Bach mass. The same can be said for Vivaldi, Handel, or Mozart. The sacredness of music was derived primarily from the purpose of it’s creation, not the process.
     The current state of affairs for protestants dates to the reformation and a trend begun by Martin Luther himself. Luther wanted to replace the Catholic music cannon with one that reflected the new reformed theology. The musical content became incidental and the theological meaning of the piece took center stage. His emphasis was therefore on the message and that was contained in the lyric. To keep things simple, Luther adapted his lyrics to the popular tunes of his time. This was a direct contrast to the Catholic musical culture of trained choirs and musicians. These were hymns, in the musical style of the people, for a religion that belonged to the people, not the institutional Church. Fast forward a few centuries.
     In the late fifties and early sixties things began to change. We started to get singing nuns with their folk tinged kumbaya style that still makes many of my generation cringe and brings a sentimental sparkle to our parent's eyes. Then things changed again. In the late sixties, when the Jesus Freak movement started, a few artists already part of the popular music business become avid followers of Christ in the evangelical mode. These pioneers used their pop music writing skills and turned them to religious purposes. They created music that sounded just like the popular rock music of the time but contained religiously themed lyrics. Some early acts that come to my mind are Larry Norman, Randy Stonehill and Liberation Suite. Even mainstream artists got caught up in this movement resulting in projects like Blind Faith and Dylan's Slow Train Coming. By the mid-eighties I was seeing Christian acts in the recording studio on a regular basis. The most interesting one I recall was a heavy metal hair band, comprised of hispanic Catholic guys, who were on a mission to spread the word of Jesus. Complete with leather pants, hair spray, makeup, and tattoos. It was a sign of things to come.
     At this point in time, Christian music makes use of the entire range of styles in popular music often including the attendant fashion sense of their secular counterparts. Simply insert a religious message in the lyrics and the music becomes holy. This is the modern concept, at least for many Christians, of what sacred music is. In my next post I’ll comment on why I think this view of secular versus sacred actually hinders an understanding of the true role of the divine in music.

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