Toward the end of his life, the Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, began to write about the “liturgy of the world.” Simply stated, Rahner was saying that the action of liturgy is not isolated to the four walls of a church building. Rather, all of life is one grand liturgy.
When I was a kid, my dad use to talk about Sunday Catholics. When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me that there were some people who were Catholic only during that hour when they were at worship on Sunday. Outside of that one hour a week, you would never know by the way they acted that they were Christian at all. Dad taught me that what we did on that one hour a week was to shape how we lived all the rest of the hours outside the church during the week. In Dad’s own way, he was saying the same thing that Rahner was saying.
We like to compartmentalize things in our life. For years the Catholic Church was no different. The Church like to separate things including music into compartments of that which was profane and that which was sacred. For instance, all music in duple meter (e.g. 2/4 or 4/4 meter) was considered the “Devil’s Meter”, and all music in triple meter (eg. 3/4 or 6/8 meter) was considered “Sacred Meter”, because three beats in a measure was deemed Trinitarian. Of course, that was all nonsensical.
In its simplest form, and applying this to music, Rahner is saying that the music of our lives is “liturgical”. In other words, a song does not necessarily have the word “God” or “Ave Maria” attached to it to make it liturgical in a broad sense.
For some Christian traditions, dance music and dancing is discouraged, even sinful. Why? It goes back to this unfounded notion that dancing is evil. Dance music is in the realm of the Devil. This is believed, even though, music and dance plays a huge part in the liturgical life of our Jewish brothers and sisters in the Hebrew Testament. As a good practicing Jewish man, Jesus would have danced at weddings and other Jewish liturgical celebrations.
I am calling this new collection of music “The Celestial Dance”. While there are many forms of music in this new collection, it is primarily a collection of dances. Estampie, Sarabande, Jig, Blues, Polonaise, Tango, Tarantella, Galop, Waltz etc.
Below is a Tarantella I composed for this collection. I dedicate this song to my good friend, Joey Nytes.
WITH HEARTFELT LOVE & GRAND APPRECIATION THANKYOU MY DEAR FRIEND BOB 💋❤️💋
You are welcome Joey! For whatever it is worth, A Tarantella is an Italian dance, which takes it name from the spider Lycosa tarantula (a wolf spider, not to be confused with what we know as a tarantula today). It is a folk dance from southern Italy. The dance was originally considered an anecdote to what was thought the poisonous bite of this spider. The magico-religious tarantella dance was a fast, agitated, contorted solo dance performed to supposedly work a cure from the delirium and contortions of the spider bite through perspiration. However, the Tarantella is also a courtship dance performed by couples. It was of a more cheerful nature, equally as fast as the couple and the musicians would challenge each other to dance/play music faster and longer. I would like to think of this music as more a courtship dance, as opposed to warding off the poisonous bite of a spider, however, music critics might think differently than I. Take care of yourself, Joey. Stay healthy, good friend!