Jesus Music Review

About Christian Music

Christian music is music that has been written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding Christian life and faith. Common themes of Christian music include praise, worship, penitence, and lament, and its forms vary widely across the world.

Like other forms of music the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of Christian music varies according to culture and social context. Christian music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace.

Worship Services

The most prevalent uses of Christian music are at religious or worship services, most frequently at church buildings on a Sunday morning, but they may also be held on other days and nights of the week or at other venues. Most Christian music involves singing, whether by the whole congregation (assembly) or a specialised subgroup such as a choir, or worship band.

The majority of Christian denominations use instruments of various types to accompany their worship. But some (such as some Exclusive Brethren, the Churches of Christ, the Primitive Baptists and the Free Church of Scotland) have historically not used instruments, citing their absence from the New Testament. During the last century or so several of these groups have revised this stance.

Some worship music may be unsung, simply instrumental. During the Baroque period in Europe, the chorale prelude (for organ) was widely used, generally composed by using a popular hymn tune thematically, and a wide corpus of other solo organ music began to develop across Europe. Some of the most well-known exponents of such organ compositions include Johann Sebastian Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude, Georg Friedrich Handel, Francois Couperin, César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor to name a few. Up to the present time, various composers have written instrumental (often organ) music as acts of worship, including well known organ repertoire by composers like Olivier Messiaen, Louis Vierne, Maurice Duruflé,and Jean Langlais.

Contemporary Christian Music

Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) is the marketing, from the late twentieth century to the present day, in Western Christendom of various genres of music, often related to soft rock, for home-listening and concert use. It can be divided into several genres and sub-genres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. These genres (sometimes referred to as ’style’) like other forms of music may be distinguished by the techniques, the styles, the context and the themes, or geographical origin. Specific subgenres of CCM may include (but are not limited to): Progressive Southern Gospel, Christian country music, Christian pop, Christian rock, Christian metal, Christian hardcore, Christian punk, Christian alternative rock and Christian hip hop.

The sales and popularity of contemporary christian music is ever-increasing and to provide a wide selection and choice for that is one of the main goals of Jesus Music Review.