This book explores the ways in which music can engender religious experience, by virtue of its ability to evoke the ineffable and affect how the world is open to us. Arguing against approaches that limit the religious significance of music to an illustrative function, The Extravagance of Music sets out a more expansive and optimistic vision, which suggests that there is an 'excess' or 'extravagance' in both music and the divine that can open up revelatory and transformative possibilities. In Part I, David Brown argues that even in the absence of words, classical instrumental music can disclose…mehr
This book explores the ways in which music can engender religious experience, by virtue of its ability to evoke the ineffable and affect how the world is open to us. Arguing against approaches that limit the religious significance of music to an illustrative function, The Extravagance of Music sets out a more expansive and optimistic vision, which suggests that there is an 'excess' or 'extravagance' in both music and the divine that can open up revelatory and transformative possibilities. In Part I, David Brown argues that even in the absence of words, classical instrumental music can disclose something of the divine nature that allows us to speak of an experience analogous to contemplative prayer. In Part II, Gavin Hopps contends that, far from being a wasteland of mind-closing triviality, popular music frequently aspires to elicit the imaginative engagement of the listener and is capable of evoking intimations of transcendence. Filled with fresh and accessible discussions of diverse examples and forms of music, this ground-breaking book affirms the disclosive and affective capacities of music, and shows how it can help to awaken, vivify, and sustain a sense of the divine in everyday life.
David Brown is Emeritus Professor of Theology, Aesthetics and Culture, and Wardlaw Professor at the University of St Andrews, UK. Gavin Hopps is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Theology at the University of St Andrews and Director of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA), UK.
Inhaltsangabe
1. INTRODUCTION: AN ART OPEN TO THE DIVINE
The Extravagance of Music
Ancestral Conceptions of Music
The Pythagorean Tradition
The Orphic Tradition
The Extravagance of the Divine
Prospectus
Part One: God and Classical Sounds
2. A GENEROUS EXCESS
The Divine at Work beyond Scripture
The Possibility of Music as Encounter
Types of Aesthetic Experience and Their Relation to Religion
Competing Types of Aesthetic Evaluation and Experience
Religious Perspectives Interacting with Aesthetic Criteria
Music in the Context of Words: Setting Divine Encounters to Music
Interim Conclusion
3. TYPES OF EXTRAVAGANCE
Order and the Music of the Spheres: Haydn, Mozart, and Bach
A Sense of Transcendence: Beethoven and Led Zeppelin
Divine Immanence: Beethoven, Sibelius and Debussy, and the Creed's Incarnatus
Divine Immanence in Nature
Immanence and the Incarnatus est of the Creed
The Mystery of the Divine Life: Minimalism, Bruckner, Liszt and Franck
Transcending Time
Serenity, Majesty, Ecstatic Joy
Specifics: Coltrane on Generosity, Schubert on Suffering, Massenet on Suicide
4. DISCOVERING GOD IN MUSIC'S EXCESS
Giving Sense to the Encounter
From the Human Side: Knowledge and Emotion
From the Divine Side: Developing a Philosophy of Presence
Restraints on Such Experience
Part Two: Popular Music and the Opening up of Religious Experience