Theology, Music, and Modernity

Theology, Music, and Modernity addresses the question: how can the study of music contribute to a theological reading of modernity? It has grown out of the conviction that music has often been ignored in narrations of modernity's theological struggles. Featuring contributions from an international team of distinguished theologians, musicologists, and music theorists, the volume shows how music--and discourse about music--has remarkable powers to bring to light the theological currents that have shaped modern culture. It focuses on the concept of freedom, concentrating on the years 1740-1850, a period when freedom--especially religious and political freedom-became a burning matter of concern in virtually every stratum of Western society. The collection is divided into four sections, each section focusing on a key phenomenon of this period--the rise of the concept of 'revolutionary' freedom; the move of music from church to concert hall; the cry for eschatological justice in the work of black hymn-writer and church leader Richard Allen; and the often fierce tensions between music and language. There is a particular concern to draw on a distinctively 'Scriptural imagination' (especially the theme of New Creation) in order to elicit the key issues at stake, and to suggest constructive ways forward for a contemporary Christian theological engagement with the legacies of modernity today.

Jeremy Begbie is Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University. Daniel K. L. Chua is Mr and Mrs Hung Hing-Ying Professor in the Arts and Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong. Markus Rathey is Robert S. Tangeman Professor in the Practice of Music History at Yale University.

- List of Illustrations - List of Contributors - Introduction - Part One: Revolutionary Freedom - 1: Revolutionary Freedom: An Image of Musical Autonomy in Beethoven - Daniel K. L. Chua - 2: Kant, Aesthetic Judgment, and Beethoven - John Hare - 3: Freedom in Paul and Modernity - Chris Tilling - 4: Soundworld Spatiality and the Unheroic Self-Giving of Jesus Christ - Imogen Adkins - Part II. From Church to Concert Hall - 5: From the Church to the Concert Hall: J. S. Bach, Mendelssohn, and the Imaginary Chorale - R. Larry Todd - 6: Music in the Margin of Indifference: J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion - Bettina Varwig - 7: Individual and Communal Freedom and the Performance History of the St Matthew Passion by Bach and Mendelssohn - Markus Rathey - 8: Music, Freedom, and the Decisive Particular - Jeremy Begbie - Part III. Singing Justice - 9: Richard Allen (1760-1831) and the Sacred Music of Black Americans, 1740-1850 - Patrick McCreless - 10: Hymns, Songs, and the Pursuit of Freedom - Michael O'Connor - 11: Between Free Grace and Liberty: Richard Allen's Evocations of Eschatological and Immediate Freedom - Charrise Barron - 12: The Theology of Richard Allen's Musical Worship - Awet Andemicael - Part IV. Music, Freedom, and Language - 13: Music Language Dwelling - Julian Johnson - 14: Herder's Alternative Path to Musical Transcendence - Stephen Rumph - 15: The Witness of Praise: The Hope of Dwelling - Norman Wirzba - 16: The Word Refreshed: Music and God-talk - Jeremy Begbie