Jazz service

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Jazz service at St. Augustine Church, New Orleans (2007)

A jazz service is a Christian service , the musical design of which is essentially based on the performance of jazz . In Germany, church services in which spirituals and gospel songs (in German translation) are sung are sometimes referred to as jazz worship .

history

In 1954 George Lewis recorded the album Jazz at Vespers . Numerous gospel groups toured Europe in the 1950s; some of them appeared in churches. In the late 1950s, Geoffrey Beaumont experimented with youth services in Great Britain , which also incorporated jazz-oriented music. From 1961 John Gensel invited jazz groups to his service in the Advent Lutheran Church in New York, from 1965 to his jazz vespers in St. Peter's Lutheran Church .

In Germany, from 1957, the view prevailed in the Protestant Church that “more popular forms of jazz could serve to sensitize young people to religious content.” In Hamburg-Harburg, Germany's “first jazz service” was held in 1960 in the parish hall of the Paulusgemeinde Youth choir and members of the youth dance orchestra. A “shepherd calypso” and a “Christmas blues” were played. In 1961, jazz elements were also integrated into youth services elsewhere, for example in Limburg by Dieter Trautwein , in Ottweiler or in Lahr. In Bad Cannstatt , Kurt Rommel organized jazz services in the cinemas that were very well attended; up to 2000 visitors came. In the Neander Church in Düsseldorf , Oskar Gottlieb Blarr organized youth services with the help of a jazz combo and the Spiritual Studio Düsseldorf . The probably first jazz church services in Bavaria were initiated by Joe Viera and Erich Ferstl in Riederau (Ammersee) .

At the end of 1962, the Darktown Strutters in the Lukaskirche in Krefeld, on the initiative of the then pastor Hellmut Coerper, helped to organize the first jazz service, which was followed by others. Not only jazz pieces and spirituals were played during the service: “At that time, instead of ringing bells on the now defunct tower , we called to the services with Dixieland sounds for a few years .” In 1962, Mani Planzer designed the first in the St. Matthew's Church in Lucerne Swiss jazz services. In the mid-1960s, the first pastors and deacons in the GDR also began to open church rooms specifically for young people with jazz services and the concept of “worship with a difference”. In Cospeda near Jena, where the Dresden Elb Meadow Ramblers performed in the church, the fire brigade denied adolescents streaming into the overcrowded church.

Increasingly, under the label jazz worship less jazz was presented in Germany , but mainly “hit, chanson and gospel-like music.” The Tutzing theologian Günter Hegele recommended “Bible study with Louis Armstrong ” as early as 1960 , but initiated a competition for the New Spiritual Song that produced songs like " Thank you for this good morning ". Joachim-Ernst Berendt severely criticized these activities as attempts to pander to them.

Jazz fairs

Numerous composers wrote music that can be used in worship. Here, Duke Ellington's Sacred Music deserves a special mention, who performed his first Sacred Concert in 1965 for the consecration of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and repeated it in around fifty American churches, but also Billy Taylor's Make a Joyfull Noice , which was also performed in Indianapolis in 1981 . A few jazz fairs were also created, the formal structure of the individual movements being based on classical works of sacred music . The 20th Century Folk Mass , written by Geoffrey Beaumont in 1958 , is often categorized here, but contains very few jazz elements. In the Netherlands, Huub Oosterhuis and Bernard Huijbers founded the Werkgroep for Volkstalliturgie and wrote their own Advent liturgy as early as 1960, in which syncopation and other elements of jazz were used "very carefully". In 1961 a fasting liturgy and a Pentecostal liturgy followed.

Jazz musician Ed Summerlin wrote a Requiem for Mary Jo to come to terms with the death of his daughter , which premiered at Southern Methodist University in 1959 . This requiem was also on his debut album Liturgical Jazz (1959), which received four and a half stars on Down Beat and was presented on television in March 1960. Standrod T. Carmichael performed his own jazz fair in St. Louis in 1961 . Lalo Schifrin composed a jazz mass in 1964, which was recorded on record by Paul Horn and which received two Grammies in 1966 . Critics such as William Robert Miller accused the work of eclecticism and borrowed from numerous composers as well as Hollywood effects; Only the soloist's playing is shaped by jazz.

Mary Lou Williams wrote a total of three jazz fairs from 1966 onwards , who tried in vain to get the Vatican to adopt a positive attitude towards jazz services. She was followed by Eddie Bonnemere , who also wrote several jazz masses and was able to perform them regularly in the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle in Manhattan . In 1978 the Finnish jazz musician Heikkie Sarmanto performed his jazz mass in St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York.

In Germany in 1965 a mass by Peter Janssens was performed at the Catholic Academy in Münster , which combined old church modes with jazz elements. In 1966 Hermann Gehlen wrote a (short) jazz mass, which was recorded in 1969 with the Kurt Edelhagen orchestra , the soloist Agnes Giebel and the choir of the Düsseldorfer Musikverein . Claus Bantzer , Kenn Cox , Jan Gunnar Hoff , Wynton Marsalis , Johannes Matthias Michel and Erich Kleinschuster wrote other jazz fairs .

literature

  • Marilyn L. Haskel: What Would Jesus Sing ?: Experimentation and Tradition in Church Music Church Publishing, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-89869-563-2 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ G. Lewis: Jazz at Vespers at Allmusic (English)
  2. ↑ cf. Theo Lehmann Nobody Knows ..., Negro Spirituals , Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 1963
  3. ^ Gene Santoro Myself When I am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus. Oxford 2000, p. 180
  4. ^ The Jazz Church
  5. ↑ Detlef Siegfried Time is on My Side: Consumption and Politics in West German Youth Culture in the 1960s, 2006, p. 135
  6. ↑ Daniel Scheufler: Online ( Memento from January 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Diploma thesis submitted and defended at the "Carl Maria von Weber" University of Music in Dresden, submitted on September 30, 2007 (PDF file, 10.8 MB) p . 40, as well as Detlef Siegfried Time is on My Side , p. 136
  7. ↑ a b René Frank The New Spiritual Song: New Impulses for Church Music p. 59
  8. ^ Daniel Scheufler On the development of popular sacred music in Germany between 1980 and 2000 Diploma thesis Dresden 2007 p. 39f.
  9. ↑ 50 years ago: First jazz sounds in the church (RP-Online) March 7, 2013
  10. ↑ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk Endgame : The 1989 Revolution in the GDR Munich 2011, p. 205
  11. ↑ a b Calypso the Shepherd . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1966, pp. 129-130 ( Online - Feb. 28, 1966 ).
  12. ↑ Detlef Siegfried Time is on My Side 2006, p. 136
  13. ^ From the Club to the Cathedral: Revisiting Duke Ellington's Controversial 'Sacred Concert'. KQED, September 14, 2015, accessed February 3, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Arrigo Polillo : Jazz - the new encyclopedia. Atlantis, Mainz 2007, ISBN 978-3-254-08368-5 , p. 415.
  15. ^ Billboard September 19, 1981, p. 68
  16. ^ A b Sacred Blue: Jazz Goes To Church In the 1960s
  17. ↑ Tony Jasper Jesus & the Christian in a Pop Culture 1984, p. 95
  18. ↑ L. Schifrin: Jazz Mass in Concert (AllAboutJazz) and Modern Music for Worship Ebony April 1966, p. 78
  19. ↑ Linda Dahl: Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams. University of California Press, Berkeley 1999, S. Dahl, pp. 288-310. At that time there was still a percussion ban imposed by Pius X in Catholic sacred music
  20. ↑ Frederick Johnson Updating Easter , New York Magazine March 30, 1970, p. 70
  21. ↑ Down Beat 45 (1978), p. 10
  22. ^ Daniel Scheufler on the development of popular sacred music in Germany between 1980 and 2000. Diploma thesis, Dresden 2007, p. 40
  23. ↑ Herrmann Gehlen: Jazz Messe 66 ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musikverein-duesseldorf.de