Holden Village Vespers ’23: (Re)Sounding a Transforming Community

Nestled in the remote Cascade mountains of Washington State, Holden Village operates as a year-round Lutheran retreat center with a robust musical and liturgical culture. While on sabbatical in the Village in 1986, composer Marty Haugen wrote his Holden Evening Prayer liturgy, a now-iconic setting b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religions
Main Author: Marchesini, Maren Haynes (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: MDPI 2023
In: Religions
Further subjects:B Liberal Protestantism
B Worship
B Liturgy
B Holden Village
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Summary:Nestled in the remote Cascade mountains of Washington State, Holden Village operates as a year-round Lutheran retreat center with a robust musical and liturgical culture. While on sabbatical in the Village in 1986, composer Marty Haugen wrote his Holden Evening Prayer liturgy, a now-iconic setting beloved around the world. Known in the Village as Vespers ’86, Haugen’s liturgy soon became canonical. Over 35 years later, however, Vespers ’86 is a fraught icon of collective identity. As Village leadership welcomes a greater diversity of people, Haugen’s liturgical language, theological perspective, and musical style do not universally resonate. Yet others adore—and sometimes demand—Haugen’s liturgy, regarding it as essential to the Village. Suggestions to adapt Haugen’s liturgy have been met with a simple question, one posed by Haugen himself: Why not write a new one? This paper chronicles the collaborative process of liturgical composition at Holden that resulted in Vespers ’23. Centering methodologies of participant-observation and ethnographic interview, I engage the Holden community as a liturgical musician and ethnomusicologist. The resulting paper shows how this unique cohort navigates identity, belonging, tradition, and change through the rich and contested sites of music and liturgy.
ISSN:2077-1444
Contains:Enthalten in: Religions
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3390/rel14091191