Thursday 20 October 2011

Music and Spirituality

Been preparing for a session that I'm teaching in a week or two on our MA module "Contemporary Spirituality".  Came across this from Don Salliers in Minding The Spirit Elizabeth Dreyer and Mark Burrows (eds.)
Music itself … offers us a pattern of how we actually experience the world and our lives.  It presents to us a morphology of human existence.  … I propose that spirituality has to do with sounding life before God.  Because we live through time music is perhaps our most natural medium for coming to terms with time and attending to the transcendent elements in making sense of our temporality.  Our lives, like music, have pitch, tempo, tone, release, dissonance, harmonic convergence, as we move through times of grief, delight, hope, anger and joy.  In short music has this deep affinity to our spiritual temperament and desire.  Our lives like music can only be understood in remembering the passage through time.  The order of sound is comprehended as we remember and reconfigure the previously heard in light of the yet to be heard.  So, too, the deeper desires and yearning of the human soul are not understood until a larger pattern emerges.
I liked it so I thought I'd share it.  Hope you like it too.

5 comments:

Geoff Colmer said...

It's beautiful - I love it! What's the rest of the book like? Is it worth buying?

Glen Marshall said...

Hi Geoff, not sure only really read this one chapter from Salliers. The chapter as a whole was OK rather than outstanding but with one or two nice turns of phrase. His focus is primarily on the place of congregational singing within liturgy. If I'm honest it's a bit too Catholic for my taste. If I do get round to reading the rest I'll get back to you.

Lucy Mills said...

Love it! Thanks for sharing it here.

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Geoff Colmer said...

I thought that Stephen Hough's post on Pleasure: its delights and dangers, had some resonance with yours and one that's worth giving a heads up on anyway for it's richness. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/stephenhough/100057173/pleasure-its-delights-and-dangers/

I hope it gives you pleasure!