Description:

Nick Strimple, Professor of Music at USC's Thornton School and Music Director at Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church, gives us a capsule history of sacred music in the Christian tradition, from the Council of Trent and the Dutch Reformists' unison psalmody to the integration of ornate music into the Catholic Mass in the Seventeenth century, and through the various trends and revisions to what is considered "proper" church music into the late Twentieth century. He contrasts these recent debates over sacred music in Christianity with similar debates in Judaism in the last two centuries.