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Yeah, I know a pro K.A.C. thread from me, in here...

well it started at work, a discussion of modern "faith music" I commented that I prefered "Old Black Christian music" to "Trailertrash for Jesus music" and brought up "Swinglow Sweet Chariot", "Let my People Go", "Amazing Grace", "Prodigal Son", and religeous inspired blues tune "God Bless the Child" which I feel are much superior to "Awesome God" or 'Im a drunk who killed a kid but Jeezus forgave me' type songs.

Some gospel music is alright, but I can't see this thread going far without becoming overrun with classical, romantic or modern compositional music. To that end, I offer to throw into the ring just about anything done by the "holy minimalists" like Gorecki or Part, along with Charles Ives, a personal favorite.

J.S. Bach, he was cool, he wrote tunes for kids in sunday school. Actually a bit of choral music curtesy of a Dr. Demento contributor re: the amount of religious tunes Bach wrote.

Pie Jesu by Gabriel Fauré has been one of my favorite religious pieces. I also find Donna Nobis Pacen by Bach to be pretty good; my choir sung it in the Sydney Opera House back when I was in high school. Then there's the requisite Amazing Grace.

Gregorian chants, especially the later, more polyphonized and harmonized arrangements.

"Ave Maria" comes to mind.

Jesus Was Way Cool by King Missile.

The Book of Heavy Metal by Dream Evil.

Hahaha, but seriously... toss up between Miserere mei, Deus by Gregorio Allegri and Mozart's Requiem KV 626. The whole thing is just beautiful (both works, really), plus the Requiem contains my favorite version of the Dies Irae.

Besides really old instrumental religious music, I like "Down in the River to Pray"

Dies Irae gets an honourable mention.

The Redemption Process by Anorexia Nervosa is my favourite album by them and can be considered "unblack" metal since the lyrics deal with notions of redemption instead of the usual black metal fare. Then again, it might not be christian enough because I don't think any of them believe in Jesus.

This thread reminds me - what's copyright law like on classical music? Can a record label copyright their own recordings of a composition? If not, then I might like to post torrents and uploads to various pieces on here.

Classical music I think is usually copyrighted to the people who composed it, e.g. the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, etc.

I doubt the BBC philharmonic has ever composed much music of any sort.

A recording of a concert would be owned by the performing group. Use of the recording would be covered by copyright law.

A particular arrangement might be copyrightable, but I am not enough authority on that area of law to make definitive statements.

The composition itself, say, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, has in many cases long since passed out of copyright into public domain. Anyone can play it, it's now in public domain.

If the composer is still alive then your safest bet is to assume copyright is still in effect.

Oh, as to the OP topic... Favorites of mine:

Amazing Grace
I'll Fly Away
Simple Gifts
Gimme That Old Time Religion (Pagan version)
Lord of the Dance (Pagan version)
Hallelujah Chorus
quite a few Christmas tunes

"Little Brown Church" aka "Church in the WildWoods"
"How Great Thou Art"
"Just As I Am"
"Earnestly, Tenderly (Jesus is Calling)"
"I Come to the Garden Alone"


ALso, the old favorites of "I'll fly away", "Amazing Grace" (And Scadian variant "A Grazing Mace"), various Christmas hymns, a few Easter songs. Most of them are songs my mother's family sang, or that my dad loved to hear (does "GhostRiders In the Sky" count as faith music?).

Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame's God Help The Outcasts and especially its Finnish version are nice. I dare anyone to say that they aren't religious.

Dies Irae has already been mentioned, but I second it.

Dreamworks Pictures's Prince of Egypt's The Plagues is also good, but more in line with Dies Irae than with God Help The Outcasts.

Several Finnish Christmas and Easter songs are also nice. One of them has the reprisal where the singer tells God how he would want to understand and to have faith, but it is so hard - it has always struck some chord with me.

I like Christmas songs like The First Noel and traditional songs like that.

Also, I like Wade in the Water, a black spiritual. I sang it when I was in a children's honors choir and I still like that song.

Amazing Grace is an awesome piece of music, either played on the bagpipes in a proper Celtic funeral or sung by a gospel group.

Jeff Buckley does an amazing version of Hallelujah. Same with Rufus Wainwright, when he's not stoned.

I don't know what it is, but Amazing Grace has never really emotionally affected me. Everyone else is always so weepy over hearing it, and I just don't understand. Maybe I don't have the proper context.

It's impossible to hear it as anything other than a self-parody because it's been robbed of all artistic impact by being played and cliched into the ground even further than Beethoven's Fifth.

The Uncloudy Day (Ralph Stanley's, Don Henley's, The Staples Singers', Rev. Gary Davis' being IMO the best renditions)

O Mary Don't You Weep (Bruce Springsteen, 'The Seeger Sessions')

Keep on the Sunny Side (The Whites' version is my favorite)

Well, Well, Well (Peter, Paul, and Mary)

God Will Fuck You Up (Moxy Fruvous)

Plastic Jesus (Joe Johnson, Neal Black, The Levellers, or Battery, every version is special in its own way...)

When the Man Comes Around (Johnny Cash)

hmm, If when the man comes around counts (Which I will then +1), I'm guessing "Personal Jesus" - Depeche Mode, "Salt of the Earth"-The Rolling Stones, and "God's Gonna Cut you Down" - Johnny Cash can be added in.

Well...

...what part of When the Man Comes Around impresses you as *not* being a religious song...? I mean, it's sort of the Book of Revelations, set to music...

True. I was just thinking of it as a country western song, not so much as a religious song. The others I mentioned are also religious tunes but of a different musical stripe.

"Let us pray to the salt of the earth"- is pretty religious too.

Broomstick wrote:I doubt the BBC philharmonic has ever composed much music of any sort.

Yeah. I started writing something about composers and then changed the subject to performers and evidently didn't reread what I'd written.

I'm very fond of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's work. So much religious music is happy, but vapid. TSO's work focuses more on the idea that yes, we have the right to be happy, but there are problems on this earth and we're responsible for them.