Spiritual and Religious

Mention of Greek religious music more often than not conjures up liturgical music–singing to be precise, chanting, monophonic or in unison, neumes, modes, an archaic idiom and, its raison d’être, the Word of God. Parallel to liturgical music but independent from it, flourished for centuries an equally rich and long tradition of popular religious songs. Their composition, transmission, orchestration, musical and poetics meters, linguistic idiom as well as the lyrics themselves, are consonant with the Cypriot oral tradition of music and singing.

Please join us for a lunchtime talk with Institute of Sacred Music fellow, Dr. Samantha Slaubaugh. Since lunch is included, RSVP to raymond.vogel@yale.edu by Monday, November 6, 2023.

Note: Seating capacity is limited and will be given on a first-come, first-served basis.

Whereas the period 1890–1914 (between Bismarck’s dismissal and the outbreak of the Great War) has long been framed as a relatively static episode in Second-Empire Germany, recent historiography has recognized here a nation still struggling to define its identity in the arenas of politics and culture. Since the Reformation at latest, the peculiar dynamic of German history assured that the Catholic-Protestant divide, too, would inform questions of Germanness.

A collaboration between Portuguese vocalist-composer Sara Serpa and Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma, drawing inspiration from Iduma’s book, A Stranger’s Pose, a unique blend of travelogue, musings and poetry. In a combination of music, text, image, and field recordings collected by Iduma during his travels, Intimate Strangers explores such themes as of movement, home, grief, absence, and desire in what Iduma calls “an atlas of a borderless world.”