Music, Spirituality, and Transformation

This course will explore the interface of music and spirituality and the role of music in spiritual formation and transformation. It will study the centrality of songs, verbal and non-verbal, within the liturgical and pastoral contexts of various spiritual and religious traditions, with particular reference to Neo-Piatonism, Catholicism, Calvinism, Chasidism, Sufism, Zen Buddhism, and Pentecostalism. It will focus on some key musical forms developed within these traditions such as choric songs, nigun, cantillation, metrical psalmody, Gospel music, mantras and ragas, and observe the way in which music, through both sound and silence, functions as the 'contemplation,' viz. an intensive intellectual and spiritual exercise associated with the moral state of human beings. In doing so we shall explore the extent to which music has been utilized for the contemplation of the divine' (contemplatio divinorum) which lies at the core of spiritual disciplines and transformations. Topics covered will include the relations of word and tones, the 'mode ethos,' music in theurgy (natural magic), musica mundana (music of the universe), musica humana (the harmony of body and soul), the 'modulated recitation' (modulata recitatio), and singing as the 'philosophical prayer' and as the 'spiritual sacrifice.'