“And can it be”: Analysing the Words, Music, and Contexts of an Iconic Methodist Hymn

Clarke, Martin V.

doi:10.17132/2377-231x.1023

Cited by 22 publications

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Music and Spirituality

2024

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The composer Sir James MacMillan has often referred to music as ‘the most spiritual of the arts’, and for many people, regardless of religious affiliation, this rings true. In listening to music, we are drawn to dimensions of human experience beyond the material. This collection brings together leading scholars from various disciplines – including Christian theology, musicology, and psychology and neuroscience – to interrogate the intimate relationship between music and spirituality. Organised in three parts – theological approaches, empirical methods, and Christian worship – the volume covers a vibrant array of topics. From examining how the Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped the profile of contemporary worship to investigating the spiritual effects of bodily positioning in liturgical spaces, from exploring spiritual experience through heart and breathing activity, electrodermal activity, and saliva samples to comparing the spiritual experiences of British Methodists with Welsh sporting fans, these essays attend to the lived reality of people’s perceived spiritual experiences through music. This collection will be an invaluable resource for scholars in the growing field of Christian theology and music, and will serve as a cornerstone for future research at the intersection of theology, music, and psychology and neuroscience. It will also appeal to anyone curious about why music consistently, across cultures, occupies a unique space bridging the material and spiritual dimensions of human life.

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Music and Spirituality

2024

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Foreword

MacMillan

2024

Music and Spirituality

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In the foreword James MacMillan discusses the profound influence of Shūsaku Endō's novel Silence on his third symphony. Endō's exploration of God's silence in the face of human suffering, such as torture and genocide, is depicted not as absence but as a form of presence. This concept resonates with MacMillan, who sees parallels in the creative process of composing music. He argues that silence is not merely emptiness but a space rich with potential, where music is born. MacMillan reflects on the necessity for composers to engage deeply with silence, despite its inherent fears and challenges, to access their inner creative resources. He draws analogies with religious experiences, particularly the contemplative practice of gazing at icons, which can reveal deeper spiritual truths. Ultimately, MacMillan emphasizes that a composer’s engagement with silence is essential for the creation of meaningful and profound music.

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1. Encountering the Uncontrollable

Begbie

2024

Music and Spirituality

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This chapter explores the ways in which the practices of music press against reductionism, and the theological resonances this provokes. Music is especially effective in countering reductionist habits: it stubbornly refuses to be treated as an equivalent or merely an instance of something else, or as no more than its component parts. Music makes sense through the distinctiveness of its own forms of life. Attention is paid to one form of reductionism lying behind many of the concerns of this volume—‘naturalistic reductionism’—and especially on the paradigm of language that regularly attaches to it. This language paradigm is criticised, and it is argued that music’s challenge to reductive impulses and its favoured language push us in decidedly theological directions without denigrating the spoken and written word.

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“And can it be”: Analysing the Words, Music, and Contexts of an Iconic Methodist Hymn

Cited by 22 publications

References 1 publication

Music and Spirituality

Music and Spirituality

Foreword

1. Encountering the Uncontrollable

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