This post also appears in the thread, "History of Spirituals."

~S~

What is Gospel Music?

According to the New Harvard Dictionary of Music, Belknap Press, 1986:

Gospel.
[Lat. evangelium].

(1) In all of the Christian liturgies, a reading or lesson from one of the four Gospels of the Bible. In the Roman Catholic Mass, it may be chanted to a simple tone (Tonus Evangelii, LU, pp. 106-9). A liturgical book in which such lessons are copied in the order of the liturgical year is called an evangeliary.

The Gospels have been the source of texts for much music, including motets and, especially, Passion music.

(2) Anglo-American Protestant evangelical hymns from the 1870s to the present; also gospel hymns, gospel song.

In revival meetings, preacher Dwight Moody (1837 - 99) and singer Ira Sankey (1840 - 1908) popularized simple, strophic melodies set homophonically to strong tonal progressions in major keys.

The sentimental poetry of Fanny Crosby (1820-19115) exemplified the texts, each assembled around a biblical idea. Texts are often in the first person and concern the Christian life and the anticipated joys of heaven. Among the best-known examples is George Bernard's "The Old Rugged Cross" (1913)

(3) Black American Protestant sacred singing and an associated 20th-century sacred genre; also gospel music, gospel song.

In this style, vocalists radically embellish simple melodies, and in full and falsetto voice, they shout, hum, growl, moan, whisper, scream, cry. By adding florid melismas and tricky syncopations, altering given pitches with blue notes and glissandos, and interpolating formulaic phrases ("Lord have mercy," "well, well, well"), they freely extend or repeat any fragment of the text. Spontaneous or choreographed dancing, clapping, and stomping may accompany the singing.

Mingled functions, performing media, and repertories confuse stylistic distinctions within the genre "black gospel music." Musicians perform for religious stimulation and for commercial profit, in boisterous services and concerts or in silent recording studios.

Vocalists may be a preacher and congregation (as in the mono and heterophonic music of numerous Holiness and Sanctified sects), soloists (Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams), singer-guitarists (Blind Willie Johnson, Rev. Gary Davis, Rosetta Tharpe), quartets and quintets (the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Soul Stirrers, the Clara Ward Singers, the Mighty Clouds of Joy), or choirs (led by James Cleveland, Alex Bradford). Accompanying instruments, if present, are piano, Hammond organ, or guitar, alone or with bass, drums, and tambourine.

Performances may include open-ended ostinatos, in which a soloist's improvised comments alternate with a repeated phrase of text. Many "gospel songs" (exemplified by the compositions of Thomas A. Dorsey) have 16-bar antecedent and consequent tonal schemes. These structures represent only two facets of a repertory that initially drew upon 18th- and 19th century hymns, Negro spirituals, blues, barbershop singing, ragtime, pop tunes, country and western, and jazz. Later, after creating (through male quartets) the basis for rhythm and blues and Soul, black gospel drew upon those secular genres for new material.

Commercial white gospel recordings have sacred texts and occasional imitations of black gospel singing. They are otherwise stylistically indistinguishable from pop, country and western, or rock.

Bibl.: (2) Sandra S. Sizer, Gospel Hymns and Social Religion (Philadelphia: Temple U Pr, 1978).

(3) John Godrich and Robert Dixon, comps., Blues and Gospel Records 1902-1942 (London: Storyville Pubs, 1969). Tony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971). Cedric J. Hayes, A Discography of Gospel Records 1937-71 (Copenhagen: Knudsen, 1973). David Evans, "The Roots of Afro-American Gospel Music," Jazzforschung 8 (1976): 119-35.