Multilingualism and Interculture in the Repertoire Proposed in Hymnals from 2000 to Today: A Study on Italian Protestant Churches

Abstract

In the last twenty years the Baptist, Methodist, and Waldensian churches in Italy have experienced an important season of migrations, mainly from South America, South-east Asia, and West Africa. This has led to a problem of sharing and mutual influence on the liturgical and musical levels for Italian churches that they had never experienced before. This article intends to study the editorial proposals of hymnbooks published by the Baptist, Methodist, and Waldensian churches in Italy. How many and which hymnals have been published from an intercultural point of view? Are the proposed repertoires transcultural? How many and which languages have been used in the publications? These three Protestant denominations have used different models for migrant churches. Another important aspect is the translation of the hymns: what language is used, and how certain words, images and theological ideas are made. The article, also using the methods of ethnographic field research, will be enriched by graphs which will show, for each denomination, which hymnographic repertoires were preferred and which vehicular languages were most used (and if this happened).