Sacred music in Catholic church and its practice in Turkey

The tradition of praising God through music takes place in many religious cultures and is a phenomenon unique to each culture. In the birthplace of Christianity, there was a practice of singing hymns that has come from the ancient Jewish tradition. In addition to this, Christianity has been enriched by inspiring from environmental cultures. In the history of Christianity, the process of composing the music for the texts that were used during worship was started with monophony. This form of chanting, which is the product of an effort to establish a common way of singing in the churches, is called the Gregorian Chant. In the historical process, the ways of performing religious music have been divided into different categories such as Sacred Polyphony, Modern Sacred Music, Sacred Organ Music, Popular Religious Songs and Religious Music. In our thesis, 100 Latin and English hymns written for the Liturgy of the Hours were translated from official prayer books and phenomenological analyzes of these hymns were made. In addition, 207 Turkish hymns included in Turkish Catholic hymn books and performed throughout the liturgical seasons in the Catholic churches during the Mass in five major cities (Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Adana, Mersin) were examined with the same methods, and the findings were compared. Thus, the tradition of singing hymns in the West and in Turkey has been presented.