INSIGHTS INTO SPECIFICATION OF RELIGIOUS MUSIC TERMINOLOGY

Abstract

The central question of this article concerns the term Religious music and the use of the contextually close, often almost synonymous terms – Spiritual, Sacred, Christian, Church, Cult, Ritual, Ceremonial, Liturgical, Paraliturgical and similar terms in Latvian musical circles. In Latvian musicology, the usage of the above-mentioned notions is observed at the end of the 19th century. For example, during the First National Song Festival (1873), the first Sacred Music Concert was organized. Also, Jāzeps Vītols contemplated the terminology of religious music in his notes written while preparing for the theological department’s lectures An Introduction to Church Music at the University of Latvia in the 1920s and 30s. Arvīds Purvs was the next person who focused his attention on the concept of religious music and contextually similar terms (Purvs 1977: 78). Beginning in the 1990s, differentiations of the sacred music expressions by Roman Catholic priest and musician Gerhard Jüngst (born 1928) became known in Latvia.

Nowadays, we know the specifications of these terms both by Russian musicologists, as well by researchers in Europe and Englishspeaking countries outside Europe. The justification for each of these terms is determined by its etymology, as well as the concrete function of content embedded in the word, a task according to which a definite position can be formulated. Along with this, the specifics of using these concepts are made relevant, and traditional, decades-long usage has taken root in musical circles. The choice of an appropriate word makes it possible to guide every composition into the context of terminological idiosyncrasies, specifying the mission of the musical work and at the same time making easier its characterization.