>
>But, as Lou Reed once put it in another context, those were different
>times. Western music became a lot less religious in ensuing years.
>Yes, Beethoven wrote a couple of masses, and the Missa Solemnis is
>stupendous, but the bulk of his work was very much part of early
>bourgeois rationality. Not much religion in Shostakovich, either.
>
True, true. But don't limit yourself to the majors.
There were tons of hymns that continued to be sung (and therefore written), and there would have been no R & B, no rock and roll without the music of the black protestant churches in the U.S.
Joanna