A Grace of Sense - theological aesthetics

  La Passion de Simone (2006) combines two intriguing female figures of the recent century: the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) and the French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943).   This is a vocal and choral passion in a Bachian vein. The soprano soloist plays the part of the evangelist, as it were, narrating the life story of Simone. The choir comments the incidents, and the speaker (reciting texts by Weil) performs kind of recitatives. The dramatical structure is borrowed from the Stations of the Cross, where Christ's road to Golgotha is viewed as 14 stations. Eventually there are 15 stations in the passion of Simone. Saariaho, together with her librettist Amin Maalouf, portrays Simone Weil as a tragic, if not a pathetic figure. Her life was a failure indeed: Weil, a chronically sick young Jewish philosopher, identified herself with the working class, although never affiliated with a political party. She worked for a time in a factory in 1935, although she ...

  De Musica is an early work of Augustine, consisting of six books - the last of them written after his baptism in 391. It is a treatise of numbers, movement, rhythm and measure more than that of music (in the sense we understand the word). Initially Augustine aimed to dedicate a book to all the liberal sciences. However, the only accomplished works came to be De Musica and De Dialectica. The vision behind these books was a prominently Neo-Platonist one: through the study of these sciences that belong to the physical world, one could arrive at the incorporeal reality of God ( per corporalia cupiens ad incorporalia quibusdam quasi passibus certis vel pervenire vel ducere ). De Musica was a highly influential textbook throughout the Middle Ages. All subsequent authors on musical theory – Cassiodore, Boethius as well as Isidor – relied upon Augustine in a way or another. At the outset Augustine defines music in as scientia bene modulandi . This idea is difficult to translate c...

Luthers tankar om musik kan sammanfattas med följande sats: musiken är Guds bästa gåva och den bästa kunskapen efter teologin. Det är nog möjligt att förstå sådana ord som en musikväns euforiska utbrott, men jag antar att Luther var på allvar som en teolog när han sysslade med musiken. I följandet skall jag diskutera några synvinklar som musik öppnar till den kristna tron.  1. Musik är underhållande undervisning En urgammal vishet är att vad man sjunger, lär man sig lätt. Orsaken av de första lutherska psalmböckernas tillkomst var ju skolundervisningen. Den andra orsaken var – så att säga – liturgisk-underhållande. Med avsikt att undvika uttråkningen inom gudstjänsten tänkte man att det är bra att sjunga ibland. Ingen orkar lyssna på predikan, om man inte sjunger emellan. Det är inte en obetydlig drift av musiken endast att roa. Egentligen det är precis musikens och evangeliets gemensamma ämbete: de åker bort djävulen, som i Luthers tanke är framför allt sorgens ande.  2. Sång...

What is the factor that unites the diverse books of the Bible? What has the Pentateuch common with the Apocalypse, or the Song of Songs with the Pauline epistles? Martin Luther determined the justification of the sinner to be the doctrine that joins all the books of the Bible together, written on every page of it. As persuasive as this view is, it is hardly tenable. Indeed, there are many pages of the Scripture that do not mention the justification of the sinner. Justification is a good nominee for the uniting bond between the various texts of the Bible, but not an entirely satisfying one. I argue that the thing that joins all the literary genres and individual books of the Bible is their aesthetic character. This is not a highly original statement, but rather something very obvious. The aesthetic character of the Bible can be perceived along the following traits: Musicality. Many texts of the Bible are made for singing, Psalms in particular. There are many other songs, too: in the Pro...

"Les offrandes oubliées" (1930) is a major achievement of a newly graduated composer, a work that points out the essential traits of Messiaen's music: his preoccupation with rhythm, his modal language (Messiaen is not tonal or atonal composer, but modal) and his Catholic Christian faith. These features, with the later extensive use of birdsong, prevailed throughout Messiaen's career until his death in 1992. Messiaen commented on his faith in an interview in 1961 as follows: "God for me is manifest. and my conception of sacred music derives from this conviction. God being present in all things, music dealing with theological subjects can and must be extremely varied. The Catholic religion is a real fairy-story, with this difference, it is all true. I have therefore, in the words of Ernest Hello, tried to produce 'a music that touches all things without ceasing to touch God'. But, if my music is a spontaneous act of faith, without premeditation, it is by...

The Hungarian Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. He was also an outspoken atheist. Therefore I am puzzled by the recurrent religioso markings of his late works. The viola concerto (Sz 120) and the 3rd piano concerto (Sz 119) include a middle part titled adagio religioso (to be precise, the viola concerto has it in the version made by Tibor Serly). What does this religioso stand for? The Bartók biography by Kenneth Chalmers uncovers the composer's thoughts on religion to some degree. An important source is Bartók's letter to the violinist Stefi Geyer, who was some kind of a femme fatale to Bartók. Bartók dedicated his first violin concerto (that remained unperformed during the composer's lifetime) to Geyer, to whom he had a crush on. It is possible that they parted because of their opposite views on religion. In the letter to Stefi Geyer, Bartók describes his atheist stance. It becomes clear that Bartók is not a straightforward...