Sing to the LORD a New Song (in Chinese)! An L2 Songwriting Experience at the Intersection of Faith and Scholarship (original) (raw)

Hong Kong Christian Songwriters' Dilemma: Juggling Sacred Music, Tonal Language, and Christian Faith

Analytical Approaches to World Musics Journal, 2023

Hong Kong composers face a unique challenge when composing songs in Cantonese, as every syllable comes with a set pitch inflection — a “word tone.” Imposing tunes to texts without considering “word tones” either renders the words unrecognizable or changes their meanings entirely. In the 1970s, the pursuit of coherent verbal expression for reverent worship compelled Cantonese-speaking Christians to compose congregational ngaamjam songs (啱音歌). Literally translating to “tone-matching songs,” these pieces feature matching melodic pitch and linguistic tone contours that enable their performers to sing every word without distorting its meaning and pronunciation. However, the nine “word tones” of Cantonese cannot cover all twelve steps of the chromatic scale. When transliterated into Cantonese, common polysyllabic Christian terms like “Jehovah” gain inherent “word tone” sequences that songwriters must follow. Some local Christian songwriters sacrifice mainstream Western musical aesthetics to preserve literary excellence and theological accuracy. Others strive to compose songs with conventional tunes at the expense of poetry and grammar. These complications result in the divide between ngaamjam songs written text-first and ngaamjam songs composed tune-first. My study compares a song written text-first with one written tune-first. Musical and literary analyses identify unique formal, rhythmic, and syntaxial characteristics in each category. A new method of graphic representation helps illustrate different strategies used to reconcile linguistic tones with song melodies. Research on local church history and ethnographic interviews with composers reveal historical, aesthetical, theological, and social concerns that produced such diverging trends in Cantonese Christian worship songs.

Sing a New Song: Towards a Biblical Theology of Song

Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology, 2004

Reprinted by permission. 2 In common, of course, with many other countries throughout the world. I trust that readers will contextualise my remarks as appropriate. 3 See the helpful discussion of S. R. Guthrie, ‗Singing, in the Body and in the Spirit' JETS 46/4 (2003): 633-46 and the literature he cites. 4 One well-known critique of modern popular music is J. Blanchard, Pop Goes the Gospel (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 1983). Others from a similar theological perspective have, however, not been so negative in their judgement of modern popular music. See, for example, A. J. MacDonald, Love Minus Zero (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 1989) 120-34. MacDonald makes frequent reference to another significant book which considers popular music from a Christian perspective, S. Turner, Hungry for Heaven (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1988). 5 Unless stated otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from the NIV.

Music and Religious Experience: Developing a Theological Approach to Composition

Music can serve as a model to demonstrate aspects of religious experience such as 'original religious experiences', revelation, transcendence of I-It dualisms, temporality and partial fulfilment. Listening to music may be a religious experience in itself, depending upon the mode of listening, and upon the subject's openness to music and to religious ideas. Informed reflection on what I read has influenced and continues to influence my approach to composing religious music. During the research, I developed an increasingly theologically-informed approach. NB: This paper was written for an MMus which emphasised "artistic research" and "personal development," and as such contains chapters of personal reflection.

Acta Theol 31(1) 2011 What's turning the wheel? The theological hub of Song of Songs.pdf

Different interpretations are evaluated for their contribution towards a better under-standing of the theology of Song of Songs. Chapter 4:16-5:1 is presented as the structural centre of Song of Songs. Linear, cyclic and concentric structures point to the centrality of this passage. It has a key-function for the theology of the book which is understood as creational theology because love recalls paradise. God is identified with the third voice, encouraging the lovers to enjoy love in all its fullness.

8. Text, Orality, and Performance in Newar Devotional Music1

Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India, 2015

Acknowledgements ix Note on Transliteration xi Note on Dating Systems xii List of Illustrations xiii Notes on Contributors xv Acknowledgements This volume brings together the papers presented at the third and final conference of the AHRC-funded project "North Indian Literary Culture and History from a Multilingual Perspective: 1450-1650", which Francesca ran at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) between 2006-2009 and in which Katherine was intimately involved from start to finish. The conference was initially entitled "Tellings, Not Texts", but over the course of the three days it became clear that texts were very much involved in many of the performance forms and traditions we were discussing, hence the change of title. (The first conference volume, After Timur Left, came out in 2014 from Oxford University Press, New Delhi, co-edited by Francesca and Samira Sheikh.) We would first of all like to thank the AHRC for its generous support. The conference, which took place on 8-10 June 2009, benefited from a British Academy conference support grant, for which we are also grateful, as we are to the European Research Council which supported Katherine's contributions in the latter stages. We would like here to heartily thank all the contributors for their patience and good humour as we asked for more and more changes. We thank Alessandra Tosi for her enthusiasm and welcome, and Dr David Lunn for careful copy-editing. Our dear friend Aditya Behl helped plan the conference and was supposed to come, but was in the end too ill to travel. He died, tragically young, two months later. We would like to dedicate the volume to him, for he remains in our thoughts and in our love.

Reading the Song of Songs through a spiritual direction lens

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2015

Research on the use of the Song of Songs in spiritual direction is rare; yet, the Song of Songs (or Canticle of Canticles) is a highly conducive case as it provides in nuce the poetics, lyrics, erotics, and aesthetics of human and divine love which is found nowhere else in Scripture. This article draws on these unique features, integrates the biblical and the experiential, and offers a poetics-praxis paradigm for use in contemporary spiritual praxis. With the poem’s metaphorical vineyard (a figurative term for the beloved herself) serving as hermeneutical key, the beloved’s experience of love is interpreted through a multifaceted reading that is intrinsic to the poem, namely: eros [yearning]; mythos [searching]; mustikos [finding]; and kosmos [birthing]. In following the inner dynamism and dramatic tensions across the eight chapters of the Song, the fourfold reading traces the beloved’s transformation from a neglected vineyard (Can 1:6) to a generative vineyard (Can 8:12). The artic...