Dec 222009
I want to work for the Anglican church as a choir member or a soloist. Eventually, I wish to conduct my own choir. How do I go about this? What universities/seminaries are available for a graduate program? Which ones are the best for Sacred Music performance? I would also like to study the theological aspects of church music, and I want to learn from the best. How do I go about this?
While flock’s answer wasn’t politely worded, I agree. Focus first on getting a degree in music – music is a universal language, and if you want to study the theological aspects of it, you can take classes on the side, do personal study, or even take a minor in chuch history or some such. It does you little good to understand the theological context of sacred music if you don’t study the history of the Catholic church and the Middle Ages…. and even go back further to the Greek music that the “church modes” were derived from (albeit via an incorrectly translated document).
If you were to present yourself as a Anglican in good standing with your church and a degree in music performance (or whatever the correct term for it is) then I don’t think you’d have an issue – the position requires the knowledge of how to *do* it, and belief and an understanding of the historical context and theological roots is, quite frankly, secondary.
Besides, studying the right music theory course will give you a basic understanding of the history of how music came to be what it is today, and there is no escaping the fact that it came to us largely through the work of church hymns, liturgies, etc.
Saul
I did a quick search for you and there’s a sacred music course at the University of Bangor here: http://icsmus.org/. They do MAs / PhDs specialising in sacred music. There’s also an interesting distance learning programme which includes a residential course: http://www.rscm.com/education/sms/sms.ph…
Bangor seems to come up most frequently. The only potential downside seems to be that it’s more learning about sacred music rather than performing it (this is only at a glance though – there may be opportunities to study performance as well.).
I think you might find that a course specifically for sacred music is only really possible at postgraduate level as it’s quite a specialist area. You could look at music colleges or university music courses to study performance, conducting etc. as an undergraduate degree first, then go on to specialise in sacred music as a postgraduate. Although it would take a while (4 years probably) it might be worth it as you’d then have a good grounding in performance and then be able to become a specialist.
Best of luck!
Go for a MUSIC DEGREE and THEN worry about the “Sacred” part of it because any RELIGIOUS MUSIC course would have more emphasis on the RELIGIOUS part than on the MUSIC PART. Some years ago I was teaching at an Anglican church/school in the Caribbean and the people who were in the music courses got their minds filled with all that crap about Geezus and not about Grieg and Gounod.