Welcome

This section will periodically report new information about the site. Watch for updates. Last revision: May 10, 2007.

Believers and non-believers are equally welcome to this ecumenical Christian site. It identifies and explains an aesthetic model, which has been at the base of western sacred music for the last 1,400 years and continues to express itself as we enter the third millennium.

The Roman Catholic section was developed first in November of 1999, because of the immediate enthusiastic support it received. The Anglican section was developed in July of 2002, although sound files by parishes in New York and elsewhere had initiated it much earlier. Bethany Church, Tulsa, Oklahoma, has initiated the Lutheran section recently, thanks to sound files.

Sacred Music America is developing directories of parishes and congregations in the USA to help guide selection of places to worship. This site lists them by invitation free of charge after selecting them with the greatest care because their programs are believed to contain examples of the musical model mentioned above. Sound files give direct examples of the musical model of the beauty of holiness. All of them are the actual music of the parishes and congregations listed. Some were recorded live during worship services. These files use "streaming" technology, which downloads as you play them. To hear them your computer must have Real Audio or download it free of charge.

This site does not guarantee that all the music of every service at the places of worship it lists is consistent with its standards. If you plan to visit any of them, call ahead to ask details about the program for the specific service you expect to attend.

Aesthetic Wasteland

We live in a time of established disregard for sacred music and scorn for aesthetic values as such. The deplorable state of musical education in our public schools has left several generations of adults who are unable to read musical notation and totally ignorant of a classical repertoire. In a misdirected attempt to be inclusive, public education excluded any choral music that had Christian content--thus eliminating essential parts of the aesthetic heritage of the human species.

Church leaders, submitting to the demands of a "religious market" economy, have eroded high standards of musical competence. The most convenient market strategy encourages clergy and worship committees to look for a "product to offer" that appeals to the lowest common denominator. For the sake of "user-friendly" worship that requires no spiritual effort, or intellectual growth, or acquired understanding, basic music, both sophisticated and simple, is abandoned. Pop songs fill the void. In addition, the conscious intention of providing "upbeat" worship forbids the use of texts that witness to human frailty. The sonorous tune and multivalent text of "O God, our help in ages past" is replaced by simplistic refrains such as "Jesus, you're the best!"

Mission of Sacred Music America

The overriding purpose of Sacred Music America is to benefit those who have been and are being harmed by the effect the aesthetic wasteland has on church music. Another purpose is to encourage improvement of the quality of music in churches to help prevent such harm in time to come. The site has breadth of scope in its historical perspective, future vision, and ecumenical nature. The musical model it identifies is equally at home on all sides of the major divisions of western Christianity.

The scope is limited in some respects. It makes judgments only about music in the Western European style. This limitation does not suggest that other musical traditions are less important, but aims instead at specificity. The site lists only parishes and congregations in the USA. This limitation does not imply disregard of global reality, but facilitates the site's mission of contributing to healing a spiritual sickness in America.

Pittsburgh Catalyst

Sacred Music America was conceived in Pittsburgh. This city has excellent secular and academic musical resources, including its internationally esteemed performing groups and the music departments of Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, and the University of Pittsburgh. Even the subway stations play music recorded in local concerts. There is nevertheless an unfortunate discrepancy between the high quality of Pittsburgh's aesthetic resources and, with some exceptions, the musical practices in the surrounding Western Christian religious communities. During the winter of 1998 a small core of Episcopalians and Roman Catholics within a 75-mile radius of the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers became astonished and concerned about the degradation of western sacred music in their area. They witnessed how the way bad church music had spiritually mutilated various individuals they knew. It alienated them from God. Sacred Music America was born from their wounds. Then the core came to the dreadful recognition that the same kind of harm they observed locally was being done to many elsewhere in the USA. They resolved to find a way to speak for them and welcome them home throughout the entire American aesthetic wasteland. Their decision was the catalyst, which produced the mission of Sacred Music America. In spite of the way it was born, this site does not dwell on criticism of bad music. The tone of Sacred Music America is not polemical. It states its case entirely in the positive when it explains the aesthetic model essential to western sacred music in "God and Music."

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