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Category Archive: Music

Musico-theological speculation - August 21, 2007
In his book, Wiser than Despair, Quentin Faulkner traces the links between musical theory (musical speculation) and theological speculation. John Scotus Erigena's views, for instance, were summarized by his pupil Regino of Prum, who wrote on music in a treatise...

Bach's Bible - July 03, 2007
In his biography of Bach, Martin Geck quotes a number of notes that Bach penned in the "Calov Bible," a copy of Luther's translation that belonged at one time to the theologian Abraham Calov. On Miriam and her singing women,...

Retuning the world - May 16, 2007
From a sermon by John Donne: "God made this whole world in such an uniformity, such a correspondency, such a concinnity of parts that it was an instrument, perfectly in tune: we may say, the trebles, the highest strings, were...

Cosmic polyphony - May 16, 2007
Johannes Kepler wrote in 1619: "the movements of the heavens are nothing except a certain everlasting polyphony (intelligible, not audible) with dissonant tunings, like certain syncopations or cadences (wherewith men imitate these natural dissonances), which tends towards fixed and prescribed...

Sacred music - October 17, 2006
Levine again: The German pianist Hans von Bulow toured the US in 1876. At one location, he was preceded by Emma Thursby who sant Schubert and Schumann, and then a popular song by Franz Abt: "Von Bulow's 'rage knew no...

Music and Spirit - November 20, 2005
A couple of interesting lectures on Music and Theology in the Christian Systematic Theology group of AAR. Nick Adams offered a very detailed and technical discussion of Messiaen's Messe de la Pentecote in order to explore some issues in doctrinal...

Music and communion - September 05, 2005
Ian McEwan's Saturday is from one angle a novelization of Arnold's "Dover Beach," which also figures prominently (if improbably) into the plot. The book begins with neurosurgeon Henry Perowne looking out a window early on a February morning on a...

But for Luther - August 27, 2005
In his Teaching Company tapes on Bach and the Baroque (recommended), Robert Greenberg suggests an historical sequence that accounts for the development of German music: Music for singing, which in the period was largely church music, must take account of...

African Polyphony - August 26, 2004
In a brief article in the August 6 TLS, Stephen Brown reflects on the influence of African music on the music of America and Europe. Until WWI, he writes, African music had little impact on the wider musical scene, but...

Why Music? - December 19, 2003
Why music? Well, for instance: What I want my life to be is better expressed by a 2-minute segment the Canzona of Beethoven's A minor string quartet than by any words I could ever speak or write, expressed all at...

Zuckerkandl on Music - November 18, 2003
I believe I first ran across Victor Zuckerkandl's name in some of Colin Gunton's work, and Jeremy Begbie makes significant use of Zuckerkandl in his book on theology and music. I've posted on Zuckerkandl before, but having now had a...

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