Part 2 of this volume moves directly from the past to the present, our own era of reformation in church and synagogue. Whether recognized officially or not, diversity of membership has always characterized religious denominations and movements. Certainly that is the case today, with the obvious result that we are unable in any one volume to provide a full gamut of opinion within any one of the two liturgical traditions in question. Nor could we hope to cover every change, every challenge, and every musical debate in every church and every synagogue body. Nonetheless, the three authors whose essays constitute part 2 represent a particular segment of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish traditions in the throes of current change. Each has chosen specific currents in his or her contemporary church or synagogue music, with the belief that these are central matters that will continue to demand our attention in the future. The authors focus on the trends that they consider pivotal in the direction our sacred music will take.
Miriam Therese Winter is professor of liturgy, worship, and spirituality at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. Her compositions include Mass of A Pilgrim People, which was premiered at Carnegie Hall. Since 1968, however, she has also been named annually to the Popular Awards List of ASCAP. Her appreciation of both the classical musical heritage of the Catholic church and of the popular sounds that emanate authentically from a people’s lived situation form the basis of her challenge to the church to take advantage of the revolutionary new possibilities of the postconciliar era, by acting prophetically to sing a new world into being. Whereas other authors in this book decry secularity (see the remarks by Samuel Adler, for instance), Winter celebrates its possibilities, in that it represents the workplace, the marketplace, and the real life-space of the people whom the church is called to liberate—hence her emphatic attention to the prophetic task of religion in general and religious music in particular.
The broad gamut of churches we call Protestant are represented here by a particular case study: the music of the Reformed churches in North America and, particularly, their historical penchant for psalmody. What has happened to the Calvinist ardor for meshing liturgy with a social order? asks Horace T. Allen. Allen is in a good position to ask that question. He surveys the movement in America away from social responsibility and toward individual salvation, and he calls on the Reformed churches to reengage themselves with their Hebrew scriptural musical bases, to the end that proper praying will support “doing justly” in this “paganized, consumerized, and competitive culture.”
Finally, Benjie-Ellen Schiller gives us the case of North American Reform Judaism. A cantor herself, Schiller teaches the Jewish musical heritage at the Hebrew Union College’s School of Sacred Music. She is as well a prominent composer for the synagogue, and as such, she struggles with the issues that she describes in historical overview here. Her survey of the official hymnals that have guided Reform synagogues since 1897 turns up several trends in American Jewish identity, most recently a recapturing of tradition that past generations threw away (like the psalmody for which Allen yearns?) and yet, on the other hand, a recognition of the validity of musical diversity to match a worshiping constituency that is far from homogeneous (recalling Winter’s observations on Catholic polity, certainly).
There are patent differences in each of these articles—to note that we share a “second reformation” is not to imagine that we all do so to the same extent or in the same way. Surely our diverse histories and traditions channel contemporary challenges in denominationally unique ways, just as our social situations demand different responses. But points are shared in common here, above all, perhaps, an accent on sacred song as the people’s prayer, and a recognition of the pluriformity of the worshiping community, with a resulting eclecticism in musical taste.