Marian Music During The Baroque Period
The Marian music in the baroque period is strongly influenced by the Latin tradition, but develops its own characteristics. Marian songs venerate her exceptional sanctity. Many Marian songs have the form of litanies, expressing adoration of Mary. Others moralize the faithful in light of her virtuous life. In Poland and Hungary, baroque Marian compositions stress her national protective powers for the Polish and Hungarian nation, an aspect largely missing in Italy, France and Germany, where Mary is likely to be called upon to protect a city or region rather than a nation. Many Latin Marian hymns are now translated into vernacular language, especially in Germany under the influence of Lutheran use of the vernacular in liturgy. Latin texts are often enriched with flowery adorations and Marian praises. Like Marian poetry, Marian music has flourished most in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, countries uninfluenced by the reformation.
Before the German secularisations of 1802 many religious congregations had their own composers. In the monastery of Andechs, Father Nonnosus Madleder, in Ottobeuren, Father Franx Schnizer, in Irsee Father Meinrad Spiess, and in Banz Father Valentin Rathgeber OSB, (1682–1750) wrote 43 masses, 164 offertories 24 concerts and, 44 Marian antiphones.
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholic Marian Music
Famous quotes containing the words music, baroque and/or period:
“During the cattle drives, Texas cowboy music came into national significance. Its practical purpose is well known—it was used primarily to keep the herds quiet at night, for often a ballad sung loudly and continuously enough might prevent a stampede. However, the cowboy also sang because he liked to sing.... In this music of the range and trail is “the grayness of the prairies, the mournful minor note of a Texas norther, and a rhythm that fits the gait of the cowboy’s pony.””
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Of all the barbarous middle ages, that
Which is most barbarous is the middle age
Of man! it is—I really scarce know what;
But when we hover between fool and sage,
And don’t know justly what we would be at—
A period something like a printed page,
Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair
Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)