Music In The Modern Revivalist Tradition

The revivalist tradition is rooted in pietest hymnody. It is characterized by an emphasis on the relationship of Christ (the bridegroom) to the church and to the individual believer (the bride). It is commonly held that Isaac Watts combined most successfully the expression of worship with that of human devotional experience. The Wesleys developed what we know today as "invitation" songs. When transported to America, this tradition gave rise to the modern revival movement. The Pietist Movement in Germany In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, an important movement flowered in the German Lutheran church known as pietism. Its first leader was Philipp Jakob Spener (16351705), who called the church from its obsession with dry scholasticism and cold formalism to an emphasis on personal study of the Scriptures and experiential "religion of the heart. " Pietists rejected all art music in worship because of the "operatic tendencies" of the time. Johann Sebastian Bach was in…