Sacrum in music: theoretical assumptions

Despite the proclamations that liturgical music should stand out by the virtue of its sacred character, church documents define the determinants of sacredness of music relatively vaguely. The study investigates this problem in all documents of the universal church published since the beginning of the 20th century. It approaches the material from a qualitative perspective, which enabled to trace a whole number of properties, or factors, whose presence allows us to call music sacred. The factors of sacredness of the music is able to give into the four categories and to divide them from the point of view (1) of liturgical theology, (2) of the music production, (3) of the immanent musical structure and (4) of the musical interpretation. Here is shown that only insignificant part of references in church documents deals about the required properties of music as itself. Most of the references about the factors of sacredness of music tend to the attributes or determinants, which are not deal with the musical structure. In the context of liturgy, its sense and objects, these are “non-musical“ factors for the sacredness of music are important, even key. From this analyses results that according to the church’s norms is the main attribute the sacredness of music, this can not belong to the music as itself. The music shall enters (or on the contrary lost) in coexistence with other factors, with which is connected. The analytical reflection of above mentioned categories of determinants of the sacredness reveals multiple correlations and the relationships between them. In the conclusion the author highlights the difficulties, which connect the reflections onto determinants of the factors of sacredness, concrete factors, which into this problems give historical and cultural determinism and speculativeness