Open To: General Public
Admission: Free
Location: ISM Great Hall, 409 Prospect Street, New Haven
Description: On the Spirituality of the Roman Tradition, Harald Buchinger, Visiting Professor of Liturgical Studies, Yale Institute of Sacred Music
Liturgical Hermeneutics of the Bible in Gregorian Chant.
Abstract: Music and chant make a decisive contribution to the characteristic spirituality and to the distinctive theology of a liturgical tradition. This awareness – and not the canonisation of a specific musical style – is expressed, when the Second Vatican Council “acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 116).
Given the comparatively strict Biblicism of the Roman rite in the choice of its chant texts, the lecture seeks to investigate the liturgical mechanisms and to reflect the hermeneutical principles that lie behind the use of Scripture in the Gregorian core repertoire.
Harald Buchinger is currently professor of liturgical studies at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria. Having obtained a diploma in church music, he studied theology in Vienna and Jerusalem. After graduating from the University of Vienna, he spent three years in Rome engaged in postdoctoral studies and research. During his time as associate professor of liturgical studies in Vienna he also taught liturgy in the Department of Church Music of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. He has lectured at various universities, notably in Jerusalem and Leuven. His research focuses on the reception of the Bible in liturgy, on the relationship between Christian and Jewish liturgy, and on the development of the liturgical year; his interests include chant and forms of artistic expression in worship. At Yale he will investigate the liturgy of Holy Week and Easter in the High Medieval West, with special reference to music, drama, and the arts. Mag. Theol., Dr. Theol., University of Vienna.