bouncing in unison to the pounding rhythms and loud chords, is almost instantaneous. Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy describes this power of music wonderfully in an excerpt from “We Are the Music Makers.” “One man with a dream, at pleasure, so go forth and conquer a crown; and three with a new songs measure can trample a kingdom down.” Music throughout history has been used to encourage a spirit of worship and to communicate with God. In fact, until the renaissance, music that wasn’t written for or about God was strictly forbidden and punishable by death. All music was said to come directly from God to help us to worship, so composers never put their names on their songs. They never received credit for their work because to take credit for “Gods” music would be blasphemy. The first recognized composer in history was a nun named Hildegarde. This early “sacred” music was monophonic, it had one melody line and no accompaniment. Soon, however, composers began to write non-sacred, or secular, music. With the rise of secular, non-sacred music, the use of harmonies and eventually a harmonic system became popular. In order to compete with the popularity of secular music, sacred music composers began to employ some of the styles and techniques used in the secular music. The styles became so similar, some Baroque composers such as J.S. Bach wrote both secular and sacred music. After the Baroque era , the popularity of secular music rose so much that sacred music was all but forgotten. This trend of musical taste continued in this fashion until late in the nineteenth century when an entire branch of secular music was founded on a style of worship music. This style was created by slaves in the United States, it was derived from African music and Negro spirituals. The sound and feeling of this “Gospel” style caught on fast. Soon, a secular style of Gospel appeared; it wa...
