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Rituals

Ritual is a term used to describe an action or a series of actions that are fixed and symbolically loaded according to a given context within a particular community. Ritual is a metalinguistic term: it does not define an object or event as ritual, or a quality inherent to an object or event; rather, it is an analytical tool that can be applied to a variety of situations or events: “viewing something as a ritual.” Ritual is often synonymously used with rite, ceremony, and sometimes liturgy or performance. Music and ritual can be integrated from a variety of standpoints: Music performance can be studied as a part of rituals, or music as a communicative tool may refer to or describe rituals. Additionally, music performance in general can be described as ritual, applying analytical frameworks from the academic area of ritual studies to any manifest formal music performance. Ritual theories have been developed during the past century, mainly in anthropological writings, but also in sociology, psychology, education, and literature studies.

Etymology and Definitions

Ritual stems from Latin ritualis, “belonging to a ritus,” with ritus meaning certain temple services in ancient Rome, and the Catholic Church's worship in medieval Europe. Ceremony (caeremonia) probably stems from the Etruscan. In the medieval canon of ecclesial services, the book ceremoniale describes services executed in the pope's and emperor's coronations, and around the episcopal ranks. The older book, rituale, prescribes priest services such as marriages or funerals, not included in the mass and office (which are treated in other books). The term liturgy (from the Greek, meaning “public service”), used in its latinized form from the 16th century onward, encompasses all formalized ecclesial services. Since the 19th century, these terms were also used outside of Christianity, retaining in part their meaning.

Although the terms often present overlapping definitions, a liturgy denotes a system of religious practice that is institutionalized in a given society. A rite describes a series of actions commonly encompassing a sequence of ritual actions. Ritual, or ritual action, is the core concept defining one or more actions constituted by strict rules and that are highly symbolically loaded. Rituals are furthermore repeated with no or minor alterations, resulting in a “tradition” or “canon.” Ceremony is most often used as a subset of ritual, dedicated to the celebration of a person, object, or event. One can conduct a ritual in solitude, but a ceremony is celebrated in community and is usually evaluated positively. A performance is any action that is staged or representatively organized. Finally, ritual action has to be juxtaposed to what became known as ritualized action; the latter may refer to any traditional act, habit, or routine that is not directly reflected upon, for instance brushing one's teeth every morning.

Ritual Theories

Outside of Christian liturgy, ritual and related terms were most often used to refer to acts of “others,” commonly evaluated as inferior, primitive, or archaic (a connotation still found in popular judgements). Émile Durkheim understood ritual action as a social process, attaching the individual to society by the means of symbolic actions of believers toward their gods. In 1915, he explained in Elementary Forms of the Religious Life that ritual was a representation of social structure to a society. Belgian anthropologist Arnold van Gennep investigated formal structures in ritual, and in 1909, he describes in his seminal work Les rites de passage a temporal sequence defining ritual action: preliminaire, liminaire, and postliminaire. This threefold structure was taken up by British anthropologist Victor Turner, who formulated the most influential model for ritual music performance: In 1969, he published his observations on how African Ndembu install a new chief for the community. Turner described the three phases as “separation,” “liminality,” and “reaggregation.” During separation, the participants would depart from their roles and duties of daily life and enter the space and time of ritual action, which is different from the ordinary. During liminality, social rules, hierarchies, and norms (“structure”) are turned upside down or made ambiguous (“antistructure”).

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