Somebody in C. C. Cline's Standard Hymnal thinks themself terribly clever.

Don’t like that : /

Tagged by @itinerarium-hic to “list 15 songs you are listening to right now.” I’m trying to do this sans hymnody and with as much vaguely popular music I can think of (i.e., basically Death Mode). It’s a weird list: 

Surprisingly reassuring words from Aloysius, magister venerandus, in Fux's “Gradus ad parnassum” (1725).

“Non hic piscis omnium”

I’ve just encountered this motto, and I think I’m going to find plenty of use for it in the future. 

I Think You're Thinking of St. Joseph of Cupertino

per tuam sapientiam / michi da ueram scientiam

An appropriate prayer for this penitential season of quals preparations, extracted from a sequence in one of the manuscripts I’m working on cataloging.

“Although They Removed the Scenery”

What an exhausting day at school. There were two brief apparent crises with my quals and prospectus scheduling--both resolved, but nerve-wracking at the time--and then I had to stay late as one of the candidates to fill Dr. Americanist’s position had her student forum. I at least got a little commiseration when my Latin prof asked to schedule a make-up quiz (originally from last Friday, which I missed for the conference) sometime on Wednesday. When I told him I have no breaks on Wednesdays between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., he told me, “On the other hand, I’m pretty sure you already know your subordinating conjunctions!”

I certainly did not get as much reading done as I would have liked, and zero writing. Grading happened, and it hurt. Tomorrow will make up for the latter point as I have to write both another practice quals essay and something along the lines of a prospectus abstract to show Dr. Americanist. And I’ve got to read some more Crawford if kills me.

I did read a really excellent model article on revivalism within space, though--

Jeanne Halgren Kilde, “Church Architecture and the Second Great Awakening: “Revivalism, Space, and Politics,” in Michael J. McClymond,  Embodying the Spirit: New Perspectives on North American Revivalism, 87–108 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

Kilde focuses on two revival-oriented (?) church buildings of the 1830s—Chatham Street Chapel (1832) and Broadway Tabernacle (1836), both in the New York City area and both associated with Charles Finney’s congregation—to ask questions mostly relate to the reception of their architectural innovations: “What caused this hiatus between the end of the revival period and the post-Civil War period? Why did the Second Great Awakening not have a significant impact on church architecture as it did on so many other aspects of evangelical religion? Why were the few distinctive revival buildings ignored? Why was it that the Gothic Revival style, a church style that in many ways indicated the antithesis of revivalism, become so popular just as the revival period ended?” (86). The core of her argument is that a general turning away from revivalism ca. 1840 led to Chatham Street and Broadway being abandoned as viable models for other church buildings; their form no longer had a function, and would not until the growth of “organized” urban revivalism in the 1870s/’80s. Kilde sees the religious antiformalism and political/social activism associated with revivals as the reason why evangelical congregations turned so decisively against them and their practices. In such an environment, the architectural formalism of the Gothic Revival shored up the renewed ecclesiastical formalism many congregations sought.

The chief recommendation of this article to my research is that it provides an excellent model for how I will eventually need to discuss the way in which space and surroundings could facilitate or complicate revival meetings. Some of the same details Kilde addresses—especially the sense of closeness and intimacy among congregants and orientation to a preacher vs. orientation to the people—will likely come up in the vestry meetings, if for very different architectural reasons. I am particularly intrigued by the notion that physical closeness and the ability to see one another ties into the duty of mutual responsibility for one another’s moral and spiritual lives. The problem of sacred, secular, and nebulous spaces comes up in a dramatic way toward the end of the chapter, in which she points out that the Gothic Revival was the first trend in American church architecture to be solely ecclesiastical; I doubt I will be able to recycle that argument meaningfully given the time period of my research, but the fact that even dedicated church spaces were architecturally ambiguous is an interesting one to ponder in relation to chapels and vestries. She also provides an interesting description of the goals and means of urban revivalism, particularly among the mercantile classes, at an even earlier date than my 1840s people, when it is not generally acknowledged to have yet existed. A tiny detail that may be interesting to investigate is the elimination of pew rents at the Chatham Street Chapel in an effort to make it more accessible for the unchurched—was the same thing more generally done at chapels and other less-formal worship spaces in this era?

For such an insightful article, there will be relatively little factual evidence that I can use. In fact, Kilde’s main argument—that urban revivalism was basically dead from about 1835 to about 1875—obviously has the potential to get in the way as I study revival meetings of the 1840s! At least Boston is not New York. A more pressing issue, and one that would have to be addressed if I give this chapter much space in the literature review, is the way in which she is defining revivalism. My assumption is that Kilde considers these two spaces “revival” churches because they were associated with a prominent advocate for revivals. Yet Finney himself was pretty clear on the point that revivals were something “extra” from the regular formal worship of the church. Everything in my primary sources so far has indicated that the vestry music was meant for use specifically outside of church, as I would generally think of revival meetings occurring.  If Kilde is using the notion of revivalism more loosely than I am, it will be important to make clear that her points about space and behavior still stand—perhaps that the auditorium churches facilitated a particular style of oratory and particular emotionality that is characteristic of revivalism even though it was not part of revival meetings. A final problem is that, while the particular means used to appeal to unchurched urbanites seem similar to those of the Boston revival of 1841–42, the congregation doing it certainly had greater material and political heft than any of those I am studying (with the exception, maybe, of Park Street). Even if the congregations that fostered vestry music had wanted to have a revival-specific space like these two churches, it would certainly have been beyond their means.