Theology and Music Research Papers (original) (raw)

di Chiara Bertoglio (Roma, 26-28 maggio 2011)

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- Trinity, Trinity (Theology), Theology and Music

What makes Christian punk “Christian”? And what makes it “punk”? Drawing on his previously published work on punk and religion, and engaging his own experiences as a musician and theologian, Iafrate’s chapter offers a theological engagement with and critique of Christian punk that interrogates the adequacy of both terms as they are typically used to describe this genre. Neither “Christianity” nor “punk rock” is monolithic, and each contains very different and even opposing ideas and practices. As a liberation theologian, Iafrate interprets both Christianity and punk relative to their ability to generate liberating communities, movements, and ways of life which are congruent with their original liberationist impulses. On these grounds, Iafrate questions the extent to which self-identified Christian punk is Christian and/or punk. Despite its laudable intention to find church outside of church walls, Christian punk’s predominantly Evangelical focus on converting the “unwashed” from the perspective of the normative “already converted” individual Christian tends to reproduce the assumption of a settled, conservative Christian identity. Iafrate finds certain expressions of secular punk, namely the political “do-it-yourself” DIY punk perhaps best exemplified in the 1990s punk scene of Washington D.C., more punk, more Christian, and more theologically satisfying. Rather than proselytizing an already settled Christian message, the liberating impulse of punk tends to go beyond a style of music toward an entire way of life lived through liberationist praxis, a continual process of conversion grasping toward “integral liberation” from “all servitudes,” including political, ethical, and religious liberations. Iafrate argues that these expressions of punk contain elements of a liberationist “gospel” and arguably could be considered more deeply “Christian.” Such a view seems counterintuitive when evaluating a genre with a propensity towards irreverence and blasphemy, yet Iafrate asserts that Christian communities have not adequately grappled with the fact that their adherents worship a divine person who was executed, in part, for the crime of religious and political blasphemy. In particular, the religious liberations provoked by punk and by liberationist Christianity may in fact rely on blasphemy as a theologically relevant category. Likewise, Christian punk, if it is to be true to both Christianity and punk, must include a wider understanding of conversion and liberation, one that may even include blasphemy as a possible “sacrament” of religious and ethical liberation.

- by Michael J . Iafrate
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- Liberation Theology, Theology and Culture, Punk Culture, Political Theology

Volume 71, Issue 2 (Spring 2020), 54-55

- by Nelson Cowan
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- Liturgy, Theology and Music, History of music, Hymnology

A theological exploration of John Coltrane's trinitarian piece, "The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost", published in "Didaskalia," the peer-reviewed journal published by Providence College and Theological Seminary. This article laid the groundwork for the book, "God’s Mind in That Music. Theological Explorations through the Music of John Coltrane," published by Cascade in 2012.

- by Jamie Howison
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- Theology and Music, John Coltrane, Theology and Jazz

The article discusses Richard Wagner’s last music-drama, which today is the traditional Good Friday “opera” in New York, Vienna, and other venues around the globe. I argue that Parsifal utilizes traditional Christian symbols and thereby transforms them, in order to help transform the world of the audience. The first part of the article summarizes the dramatic conflict and analyzes how the work appropriates the Christian
symbolism of the Lord’s Supper. I also look at Wagner’s essay “Religion and Art,” which was written during the composition of Parsifal and presents an ethical critique of Christianity in the name of “true religion.” The second part of the article presents two assessments of Parsifal, both of which acknowledge its inherent religious symbolism but come to different conclusions regarding its significance (Christian versus atheistic). The third part of the article offers an alternative interpretation and implies trajectories for further research.

- by Matthias Gockel
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- Nineteenth-Century Music, Music And Religion, Theology and Music, Richard Wagner

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is undoubtedly a pious Christian. Many of his works, no matter with or without religious title, come from his deep experience of religion. This article aims to construct a musical theology of Bach through the analysis of his works. The term “theology” here means “the speech of (on) God” from its etymological origin of “theos-logos.” Bach's theology of music is a special speech on God, which is without words but with music. On the one hand, Bach calls God with the extraordinary structure of music; on the other hand, God presents in the music and is therefore with the audience. This article tries to show this theology of music with the analysis of the Prelude of the Suites for Cello Solo, No. 3 (BWV 1009).

- by Shang-Wen Wang
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- Baroque Music, Theology and Music, Doctrine of the Affections, Bach Cello Suites

Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology (analyzing Pärt’s signature “tintinnabuli” method), cultural and media studies (Pärt’s audience is uncannily broad within and beyond the contemporary classical world) and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality (Pärt is primarily a composer of sacred music). For the most part, this work is centered around the representational dimensions of Pärt’s music (including the trope of silence), writing and listening past the fact that its storied effects and affects are carried first and foremost as vibrations through air, impressing themselves on the human body. In response, this ambitiously interdisciplinary volume asks: What of sound and materiality as embodiments of the sacred, as historically specific artifacts, and as elements of creation deeply linked to the human sensorium in Pärt studies? In taking up these questions, Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred “de-Platonizes” Pärt studies by demystifying the notion of a single “Pärt sound.” It offers innovative, critical analyses of the historical contexts of Pärt’s experimentation, medievalism, and diverse creative work; it re-sounds the acoustic, theological, and representational grounds of silence in Pärt’s music; it listens with critical openness to the intersections of theology, sacred texts, and spirituality in Pärt’s music; and it positions sensing, performing bodies at the center of musical experience. Building on the conventional score-, biography-, and media-based approaches, this volume reframes Pärt studies around the materiality of sound, its sacredness, and its embodied resonances within secular spaces.

- by Jeffers Engelhardt
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- Cultural Studies, Music History, Piano, Theology

"Sinfonia di Salmi" è il titolo della prima, grande opera di musica sacra di Igor’ Stravinskij: un monumentale pezzo per coro e orchestra su testi biblici, composto nel 1930. Un avvincente romanzo sonoro popolato di luci e di ombre, in cui l’immagine di un tempo immutabile ed eterno, che evoca la solenne maestosità delle icone bizantine, sembra tranquillamente convivere con la dirompente vitalità ritmica dei riti arcaici e primitivi che aveva dato vita alle sue prime opere.
La possibilità di conciliare in un unico oggetto musicale istanze così diverse, e all’apparenza contraddittorie, ci invita prepotentemente ad attivare un processo di interrogazione, di ricerca di senso. Accogliere il richiamo di questa sfida è il principale obiettivo di questo libro, in cui la realtà sonora di Sinfonia di Salmi viene messa in relazione con i possibili universi di significato che ruotano intorno ad essa.
L’analisi investe questioni di estetica, di poetica e di tecnica compositiva, ma anche di etica e di interpretazione musicale. Ci si interroga sui processi di ascolto, e in particolare sul modo in cui la musica di Stravinskij ci invita a sperimentare un rapporto più consapevole con l’esperienza della temporalità, stimolando la scoperta di nuovi modi di costruire il nostro senso del reale. Fino ad evidenzare la presenza di un orizzonte di pensiero teologico profondamente radicato nell’universo creativo del compositore, al di là del suo effettivo impegno nell’ambito della produzione di musica sacra.

- by Susanna Pasticci
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- Music And Religion, Sacred Music, Theology and Music, Symphony
- by Shaun Yong
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- Franz Liszt, Theology and Music, 19th Century Music, Music Romanticism
- by Brad Broadhead
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- Trinity (Theology), Theology and Music

Desde una perspectiva litúrgica, el artículo estudia cinco casos de la liturgia romana actual en los que una pieza gregoriana del repertorio clásico coincide en la misma celebración con el pasaje bíblico que le sirve de fuente. De ese modo, se analiza la conexión lectura-canto en diferentes modalidades, la intencionalidad de la selección textual obrada por el autor y la interpretación que el canto hace del texto bíblico en cuestión.

- by Juan Pablo Rubio Sadia
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- Liturgy, Gregorian Chant, Christian liturgical music, Theology and Music
- by Théodora Psychoyou and +1
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- Gay And Lesbian Studies, Biblical Studies, Performance Studies (Music), French Baroque Music

The eighteenth century was marked by a series of tumultuous social issues for Jews attempting to assimilate into German culture. Local Christian and Orthodox Jews alike mistrusted the intentions and sincerity of these “converts.” Born a Jew, the composer Felix Mendelssohn converted to Christianity and developed a unique perspective on the role of music within the spiritual life. This paper focuses on Felix Mendelssohn’s theological motivations when composing two of his most notable oratorios, Paulus and Elias. In my writing, I show the evolution of his theological thinking and the struggles he faced in order to create his own deeply spiritual experience. Using specifically the libretto from both oratorios, combined with notable Mendelssohn scholars, I suggest a synthesis of Jewish and Christian theology as a result of the composer’s upbringing and personal evolutionary growth. In many ways, Mendelssohn did not shy away from or reject Jewish ideas within his music, but actually believed them fulfilled according to Christian doctrine. Paulus shows us that Mendelssohn was familiar with Christianity’s Jewish roots, and also recalled that Jesus himself was a Jew. The oratorio Elias also expresses Mendelssohn’s fascination with Christian salvation history that was first prophesied by the Old Testament prophets. Mendelssohn’s genius as a composer drew on his ability to synthesize the two cultures of Christianity and Judaism together, and integrate them into a coherent musical clarity that drew on the theological richness of each faith tradition to complement one another, and bridge the assumed incompatible gap between the two.

- by Daniel K . S . Walden
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- Music, Music Education, Music History, Musicology

This article explores the burgeoning interest in biblical studies in the use of the Bible in music, as a
medium and as an ever fresh way of expounding and expressing the stories and sentiments of the
Bible. It looks at some recent scholarship on the Bible and music and then goes on to look closely
at a sample book, that of Ecclesiastes, to see which texts have been used as inspiration for musical
expression and in what ways that has evolved in ever fresh historical and cultural contexts. It is seen
that particular themes such as time (Eccl 3:1-8), the fate of humans and animals (Eccl 3:9-14) and
that of ‘vanity’ (the repeated refrain of the book) have been of particular interest to librettists and
composers.

This work seeks to demonstrate that jazz provides a viable and valuable partner for theology, and more specifically that it provides a way of exploring the nature of God's interaction with humanity through his word via analogy. It is divided into two parts, the first of which makes the case that God does in fact interact with humanity. This is accomplished through a critique of classical theology and the establishment of an interactive model based on J.R.R.

- by Brad Broadhead
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- Systematic Theology, Theology and Music, Analogy, Theology and Jazz

The theology of Rosemary Radford Ruether has the critique of dualism as one of its central themes. She locates the mind/body dualism as the root issue that underlies various social ills, including sexism, racism, and classism. A variation, with different historical entailments, of the mind/body dualism is the early modern reason/sense distinction. Antonio Cesti's 1656 opera, Orontea, plays with the reason-sense distinction in a manner that illustrates and expands several elements of Ruether's theology.

- by Dirk von der Horst
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- Music, Feminist Theology, Opera, Seventeenth Century
- by Michael J . Iafrate
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- Liberation Theology, Theology and Culture, Punk Culture, Political Theology

In this issue:
 Programs for the Annual Meeting in Baltimore: The NAPTS Meeting and the AAR Tillich Group Meeting
 The Annual Banquet of the North American Paul Tillich Society
 In Memoriam: Robert P. Scharlemann by Mary Ann Stenger and Annette Neblett Evans
 New Publications
 A Reminder about Dues
 “Tillich’s Systematic Theology as an Educational Resource for a Comparative Critical Dialogue on Peace-Making” by Peter Slater
 “Paul Tillich and Paul Ricœur on the Meaning of ‘Philosophical Theology’ Introduction” by Michael Sonn
 “Tillich and Intellectual Disability: Adequacy of Accounts of Faith” by Courtney Wilder
 “Belief Without Borders: Theological Perspectives on the Rise in ‘Nones’” by Linda Mercadante
 “Music as Theology: Using Tillich’s Theology of Culture to Understand the Prophetic and Theological in Popular Music” by Meredith A. Holladay

- by North American Paul Tillich Society and +1
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- Philosophy Of Religion, Theology, Systematic Theology, Philosophical Theology

Artist Entry, De Gruyter "Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception"

- by David M Wilmington
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- Music, Musicology, African American History, African American Studies

Since the establishment of the first major cathedral girls’ choir at
Salisbury in 1991, many other cathedrals have followed suit. Various
studies have looked at the girls’ choir phenomenon from sociological or
physiological perspectives but none of these have linked it to its religious context, most commonly the Book of Common Prayer service of Evensong. Although this liturgy is made up of various Scripture readings, psalms and other songs, this thesis will focus on the Magnificat, the song of Mary. I will demonstrate that it can be productively used as a hermeneutic window (Kramer, 1990) to understand the socio-theological significance of a cathedral girls’ choir, arguing that the relationship between the Magnificat and the girls’ choir is homological. The discussion will have an interwoven ethnographic element, drawing on fieldwork conducted at Ely Cathedral between December 2015 and April 2016. The Ely Cathedral Girls’ Choir was founded in 2006 and has been under the direction of Sarah MacDonald since 2010. The cathedral choir of boys and men, which has led worship at Ely for hundreds of years, is directed by Paul Trepte. This arrangement of having two Directors of Music is a structural idiosyncrasy of Ely, related to the fact that the girls’ choir is entirely funded by the cathedral school rather than the cathedral itself. The theoretical discourse and ethnographic data will mutually inform one another to form an integrated perspective. Three themes will be used to explore the homological relationship between the text and the girls’ choir: social reversal, somatic and sonic efficacy, and eschatological tension.

The Moravian music collection in Christiansfeld is one of the largest privately owned, Danish collections including works dating back to the foundation of the town in 1773. At the end of the eighteenth century Christiansfeld, which the... more

- by Peter Hauge
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- Music, Early Music, Music History, Musicology
- by Brad Broadhead
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- Theology and Music

Handel's oratorio Jephtha treats the familiar, if horrifying, story of an Israelite who kills his daughter as a sacrifice in fulfillment of a vow. 1 In repeated listening to Handel's rendition of this story, Jephtha's aria "Waft her, angels," in which he comes to peace with his vow, has always stood out as the music I find most beautiful. I take this admittedly subjective experience of musical beauty as a heuristic key to finding the fulcrum of musical power in the oratorio. I speak of power in two senses here: a more neutral sense of effecting action and a more critical sense of power as exercised in unjust social relations. Precisely where Handel's music achieves the ineffability that anchors its spiritual power, it most effectively seduces the hearer -performer or listener -into collusion with a system of injustice, a process analyzed by the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser as interpellation. 2 I do not intend to resolve this tension between, on the one hand, ineffability as opening the subject beyond the constraints of linguistic discourse to the alterity of the divine and, on the other hand, ineffability as obfuscating the dynamics of interpellation. Justice and beauty are both goods -where they conflict, we may push the tension as far as it will go with a tragic understanding of irreconcilable differences as opportunities for revelatory insight. However, the fact that justice and beauty can be in tension with each other has been inadequately honored in much theological reflection on music. The interconnection between beauty and violence in "Waft her, angels" secures, and may even sacralize, an uncritically patriarchal subject position, which demands that theologians of music incorporate a hermeneutic of suspicion into their analyses. The move to the question of the hermeneutic of suspicion means that Handel's aria is less the object of my argument than an opportunity to 1 [Georg Friedrich] Händel, Jephtha: Oratorio in Three Acts, HWV 70. Piano Reduction based on the

- by Dirk von der Horst
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- Music, Theology, Liberation Theology, Feminism

The paper examines the narratives of redemption – from the state of sin, to the search for atonement, and finally the attaining of salvation – found in the albums of Bruce Springsteen, particularly in "The River" and "Nebraska". It uses various works by Flannery O’Connor as a means of reading these narratives on account of her influence on Springsteen’s works and their common theological ties. Explores the artistic and theological claims made by O'Connor and Springsteen.

- by Grant Shellhouse
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- Religion, Music, Theology, Literature

American missionary William Newbern (1900–1972), one of the first C&MA missionaries to China, is known as the father of the Hong Kong Alliance Bible Seminary. Newbern, a successful evangelist and educator, also made a major contribution to Chinese hymnology in the mid-twentieth century, especially in his editorial role in preparing Youth Hymns, whose hymns are still used in Chinese churches today. As primary sources, I use mainly his autobiography (The Cross and the Crown), his articles in Alliance Magazine, and his music commentaries Narrating Hymns (Shengshi mantan).

- by Calida Chu
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- Missiology, Chinese Theology, Theology and Music, Hymnology

By bringing texts from the Gregorian Mass for the dead into dialogue with selected topics from Owen’s war poetry, Britten indicates that belief in the resurrection of the dead is never self-evident. He fears that the traditional texts, left on their own, can become the opium of the people of God. By only listening to the proclamation of the story of Christ’s victory over death, Christians run the risk of closing their eyes to the reality of suffering. The spirituality of Owen and Britten is one of a biblically-inspired pacifism. Christians may continue singing or listening to the Gregorian Requiem but their hope in God’s promise of eternal life must not make them forget to realise that sacrifices of human suffering can in no way be regarded as the will of God.

- by Peter De Mey
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- Benjamin Britten, Theology and Music, Art and Religion

This paper will explore how musical space, as defined in contemporary musicology, can help us to open up new ways of discussing the concept of unity; both in terms of musicology and constructive theology.
In this paper, we will compare two models of musical space: that of composer Arnold Schoenberg and that of theologian Jeremy Begbie. Schoenberg founds his understanding of musical space in his conception of the musical idea. The musical idea in Schoenberg’s thinking encapsulates both musical and metaphysical categories. Through this concept, Schoenberg subverts the smallest features of music for the sake of the presentation of the whole. We will argue that the parts are subjugated to the whole within Schoenberg’s understanding of the ‘unity of musical space.’
Begbie, in contrast, grounds his conception of musical space in trinitarian theology. In Begbie’s model, we observe a dynamic musical exploration of a non-competitive, ordered and mutually constitutive interrelational ‘space,’ as found in the theological concept of the perichoresis of God’s being.
Both thinkers argue that music is a relational space but, as we shall see, much relies on one’s theology/philosophy of unity.

- by Chelle Stearns
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- Theology and the Arts, Theology and Music, Arnold Schoenberg, Jeremy Begbie

One of the undoubted musical hits of the mid-eighteenth century was Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, transmitted throughout Europe in countless manuscript copies and prints. It became one of the exemplars of the lighter and more “sentimental” style of Roman Catholic sacred music developed in Italy in the 1730s. Ironically, “one of the earliest traces north of the Alps” of the piece “leads to Bach’s library” (C. Wolff). Thus the staunch Lutheran J. S. Bach, criticized in print for his old-fashioned and “turgid” style, actually remained stylistically ahead of the curve with his wide-ranging interests that extended even to the latest galant music from Catholic Italy. In his arrangement (“Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden”, BWV 1083), Bach removed Pergolesi’s Marian-centered text, unusable in a Lutheran context, and substituted a poetic setting of the Miserere (Psalm 50 [51]), thus creating a major shift in the doctrinal and overt affective intentionality of the work.
It was not unheard of that 17th century Lutheran composers would re-text Italian Marian motets for use in Lutheran contexts, and so Bach’s treatment of Pergolesi was not unprecedented. However, this raises a crucial question: how can a specific musical work expressing a particular set of affects support different texts with divergent religious claims? This paper takes a phenomenological approach and asks whether, beneath these religious texts and their claims, there may have been a more fundamental devotional affect and intentionality that 17th- and 18th-century Lutheran and Catholic piety shared and that might be appropriated today.

- by A J Godzieba
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- Baroque Music, Early Modern Catholicism, Theology and Music, Johann Sebastian Bach

The “poetic imagination” has been defined as the ability to “think otherwise” (R. Kearney). The quintessential instance of this imagination is religious belief, the construal of reality that subtly and radically refigures our understandings of time, human life, and the status of the self, all in relation to divine transcendence. The depth of this “refiguring” is most clearly revealed in performance, especially of religious practices. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the liturgy traditionally has been granted pride of place among its practices. This essay examines an under-valued element of the Roman Liturgy, the invocation Agnus Dei (“Lamb of God”) in the Communion Rite, under three aspects: its role in the inaginative intentionality of the liturgy, its status as a prime locus of the disclosure of the “otherwise” provoked by the liturgy, and as a clue to the overall refiguration of the believer’s experience provoked by the Catholic incarnational-sacramental imagination.

- by A J Godzieba
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- Liturgy, Systematic Theology, Philosophical Theology, Theology and Music
- by Brad Broadhead
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- Theology and Music

Looking at the themes of the world, memory and the ultimate fulfilment, the book seeks to recover the symbolic languages which can assist a dialogue and mutual learning on the boundaries between theology, politics and arts.
Contents:
Preface
Introduction: Culture as a Theological Theme
PART I: THE WORLD
Chapter One: Images of the World in Karel Čapek and Isaac Bashevis Singer
1. The Transcendent in the Ordinary
The World as a Factory
The World as a Garden
The World as an Open Horizon
2. A Vanished Past in the Mosaic of the Present
Roots that Were Moved
Shadows of Hope
Forces Playing in the Universe
3. Concluding Remarks
Chapter Two: Theologies of the World
1. What Lies beyond Secularisation?
2. The World as a Gift
All that is Seen and Unseen
Cosmic Nature and Humanity
The Image of God
The Fall and Renewal
3. The World as a Task
Divine – Human Cooperation
Utopia as a Symbolic Mediation of Hope
The Journey of Deification
4. Concluding Remarks
PART II: MEMORY
Chapter Three: Heritage of Totalitarian Cultures in Folk Music
1. Vladimir Vysotsky: Interplay of the Historical and the Archetypal
Losers’ Point of View
The Tragic Human Condition
Tell Me Where Is the Land Lit with Icon-Lamp Light
2. Jaromír Nohavica: Breaking and Healing in Retrospective
Memory as a Burden
God, Where Have You Been?
Glimpses of Redemption
3. Concluding Remarks
Chapter Four: Redemptive Memory in Theology
1. Victimhood as a Positive Identity
2. Remembering God
Christ as the One Who Remembers
Redemptive Re-Membering
God Siding with the Victim
Doctrine versus Experience?
3. Giving Back the Past
Liturgical Remembering
Historical Remembering
Two Eschatological Horizons
4. Concluding Remarks
Part III: THE ULTIMATE FULFILMENT
Chapter Five: Figuring the Ultimate Fulfilment in Central European Cinema
1. Guiding Desires in extremis according to István Szabó and Vladimír Michálek
Mephisto
Forgotten Light
2. Kieślowski’s Journey towards What is Real
Liberty
Equality
Fraternity
3. Concluding Remarks
Chapter Six: Love as the Ultimate Fulfillment in Theology
1. Estrangement of Love or Ambiguity of Conversion?
2. The Spirit as the Giver of Love
Human Freedom without Love
Love outside and inside of the Body of Christ
Kenosis of the Spirit
Two Hands of the Father
3. The Spirit as the Giver of Conversion
Disordered Inclinations in the Light of Love
Discernments of the Spirits
Restored Communion
4. Concluding Remarks
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

- by Ivana Noble
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- Christianity, Cultural Studies, Theology, Systematic Theology

[James Patrick McGrath, Masters by Research thesis: The Lyrics of U2: A Christian Band in a Secular World? (School of English, University of Leeds, 2002).] I received huge scorn for making a 30,000 word MA project of this, but at the... more

- by James McGrath
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- Religion, Christianity, Cultural Studies, Media Studies

One of the more subtly disconcerting experiences a Christian can face is participating in a worship service in which the music does not seem to "work/' Although it may be perfectly good music in itself, it fails to foster in us what Don Saliers calls the "senses of worship/ 72 In some cases, we feel as if we are being drawn away from our efforts to remain explicitly open to God. Instead, "the thoughts of our hearts" 3 turn in the direction of temporary pretenders to the throne of our ultimate telos: ourselves, other people, even -through excessive foregrounding of aesthetic appreciation -the very music intended to point us to God.

- by Awet Andemicael
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- Secularization, Theology and Music, Liturgy, Sacred Music

Chiara Bertoglio, «Non omnis moriar»: la teologia dei Quadri da un'esposizione di Mussorgskij (Repor… 1/21 mondodomani.org/reportata/bertoglio01.htm Cerca Inv ia | Commenta «Non omnis moriar»: la teologia dei Quadri da un'esposizione di Mussorgskij di Chiara Bertoglio (15 luglio 2008) I Quadri da un'esposizione di Mussorgskij delineano un possibile percorso nel «discorso su Dio». Essi si pongono come molteplice dialogo, secondo quanto scrisse egli stesso: «L'arte è un mezzo per dialogare con le persone». Il dialogo avviene su diversi piani: con Dio; con il ricordo dell'amico Hartmann; con se stesso; con gli ascoltatori. Il percorso di visita della mostra diviene un percorso interiore, un cammino spirituale: i primi quadri sembrano essere soprattutto l'oggetto di una contemplazione artistica, seppur eccezionalmente partecipe; al massimo di una reinterpretazione creativa. Dalla seconda parte in poi, la contemplazione estetica fa spazio alla meditazione spirituale, alla riflessione filosofica e teologica, ad un itinerario interiore logico, stringente, e --nel contempo --profondamente, dolorosamente e ineludibilmente vissuto.

- by Chiara Bertoglio
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- Theology and Music, Musorgsky, Pictures at An Exhibition, Mussorgskij

- by Dirk von der Horst
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- Music, Feminist Theology, Opera, Seventeenth Century

What was truly distinctive about the black Gospel music style of the Sanctified Church was its extensive use of musical instruments previously associated with " the world. " Yet, this fact presents a theological conundrum. The very churches that were so enthusiastically " embracing " the Gospel style were, at the same time, ardently emphasizing strict moral living and the repudiation of all things carnal. In this article, I suggest lines of theological reasoning that may have informed early black Holiness and pentecostal Christians in their widespread liturgical use of the Gospel style. Drawing on primary source material from cogic founding Bishop Charles Mason, I expand Lawrence Levine's model of the relationship between early black Sanctified churches and the secular black musical world and argue that a more nuanced conception of the Christ-world relation than is generally assumed may have undergirded Sanctified development of early Gospel music.

- by Awet Andemicael
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- Pentecostal Theology, Secularization, Sacred Music, Theology and Music

Genre Article, De Gruyter "Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception"

- by David M Wilmington
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- Music History, Musicology, African American Culture, African American Studies
- by Dirk von der Horst
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- Music, Music History, Theology, Feminism