Bücher der Reihe Music and Spirituality

This book is intended to challenge the status quo of music learning and experience by intersecting various musical topics with discussions of spirituality and queer studies. The book reaches an international audience, with invited authors from around the world who represent the voices and perspectives of over ten countries.

The text of this book, preceded by an introduction, is presented in seven chapters and covers a period of approximately five thousand years. In an aural culture what was the role of gesture and what is its role now? There are many doors to open in pursuing these and other questions. This book opens some of them.

This book concerns an examination of the totality of the musical experience with a view to restoring the soul within it. It starts with an analysis of the strands in the landscape of contemporary spirituality. It examines the descriptors spiritual but not religious, and spiritual and religious, looking in particular at the place of faith narratives in various spiritualities. These strands are linked with the domains of the musicking experience: Materials, Expression, Construction and Values. The book sets out a model of the spiritual experience as a negotiated relationship between the musicker and the music. It looks in detail at various models of musicking drawn from music therapy, ethnomusicology, musicology and cultural studies. It examines the relationship between Christianity and music as well as examining some practical projects showing the effect of various Value systems in musicking, particularly in intercultural dialogue. It finally proposes an ecclesiology of musical events that includes both orate and literate traditions and so is supportive of inclusive community.

This book is an auto-ethnographic account of the development of a charismatic community choir leader. It brings together management literature and a survey of the community choir scene with the development of community choir leadership. It provides a useful introduction to the sustaining of community choirs, including the use of English folksongmaterial in this context. Some useful arrangements of folk songs are included. Community singing events are described with helpful advice on setting up and managing these. It presents a useful model of the range of skills necessary for aspiring community choir leaders. This is linked with the formation of a community that contains spiritual elements; this is theorized in relation to the role of the parish church in communal singing. It also discusses the two aesthetics of choral singing and the relationship between oral and literate traditions. The book arises from the engagement of the University of Winchester in partnership with the local community, which is theorized.

Identifying the roots of African American Spirituals and other religious folk music has intrigued academics, hymnologists and song leaders since this genre came to the public eye in 1867. This book examines twentieth-century research, and new material from this century in an attempt to preserve and affirm this musical genre.

This book is an autobiographical account of the development of an authentic interiority, based thematically around the Lord's Prayer. It charts the way in which the Christian faith in which the author was enculturated, was refined by her lived experience of music, abuse, forgiveness, interfaith dialogue, gender and vocation.

Why does human music sound the way it does? To understand this, the authors look at human and animal ability for mimicry, at existing acoustic niches and introduce the idea of at least three habitats for music. Is there a unified sound quality for music created indoors, for song sung outdoors, and for music produced with electric signals?

The contributors to this book include scholars, musicians, theologians, medical practitioners, informed listeners and practitioners in religious traditions. It includes case study material, empirical studies, philosophical, theological and theoretical contributions along with accounts from lived experience of the spirituality in Tavener's music.

This volume consists of various approaches to the spirituality of the singing experience, and how these have changed or even been heightened during the current pandemic. It offers a number of very wide-ranging perspectives from across the world. The chapters are drawn from several cultures and include a number referring to the various lockdowns.

This volume focuses on the ways in which mutual musical engagement might play a role in creating healthful, life-giving experiences. Scholarly chapters and reflective interludes illustrate how people use music to forge authentic spiritual and emotional connections with others, including in times of physical isolation and political unrest.

This book interrogates the notion of belonging through musicing rituals in the South African context. The authors raise questions such as "What can we learn from musicing rituals?", "What does it mean to belong through musicing?" and "In what ways could musicing address marginalization and transform a broken society?"