Andreas Knapp Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena kneels in concert.
The performance of sacred music in concert halls has become so common that we rarely pause to reflect on what is lost in translation. Outside its intended context, church music, like a Madonna displayed on a museum wall, loses its ritual power. What was conceived as an act of communal worship – a mass for the dead, a re-enactment of the Passion – becomes a professional spectacle offered up for the edification of a passive audience.
The performance of sacred music in concert halls has become so common that we rarely pause to reflect on what is lost in translation. Outside its intended context, church music, like a Madonna displayed on a museum wall, loses its ritual power. What was conceived as an act of communal worship – a mass for the dead, a re-enactment of the Passion – becomes a professional spectacle offered up for the edification of a passive audience.
- 4/19/2012
- by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
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