Theomusicology and the Song Supreme

As I've said before, music had better be important, or I've wasted most of my life. If you tally the hours, it's probably tied with reading for how I've spent the bulk of my waking hours. So it's heartening to read that "Music is not only an art. It is a clue to the cosmos" -- and that it's "not just one phenomenon among many but the secret key to understanding the whole of reality" (Leithart).

But what have I learned, exactly, from all those hours? For it's not as if music conveys propositional statements about the nature of reality. Rather, its very form is the message it conveys. Its mere existence leads us to wonder in what kind of cosmos it is possible for it to exist. To paraphrase Nietzsche, a Cosmos without music would be a mistake.

Supposing we take that literally, it would have to be possible for God to err. But God cannot err. Therefore music is necessary? Well, it's one of the constants of human nature, and we are I & L of the C, so there's that.

Augustine, for example, "recognized that music offers special insights into the nature of time," for it is the quintessentially temporal art, seemingly testifying to an irreducibly positive character of time -- again, in contrast to the pagan view of time as degenerative:

To be ultimately real, something has to be static, ever itself, not turning into something else, not aging or decaying..., impervious to time's changes.

Conversely, it is impossible "to take in music in a moment" but "only through the process of listening":

Music forces time upon us, but shows us that the passage of time and the patience it demands are gifts to be received rather than evils to be endured. 

Otherwise the best song would be the shortest and fastest, or maybe just a single note, like an eternal siren blast. 

In the previous post we spoke of the intersubjectivity of man, which is -- in my opinion -- gorounded in the intersubjectivity of the Trinity. Well, this is mirrored in music too: its

overlapping and interpenetrating quality is one of the ways that music points to the mysteries of the world, for time has precisely this layered musical quality.... Music's form is a trace of the form of the whole cosmos.

Change my mind. But wait until I dive into this next book on the pile, Theology, Music and Time. Right now I want to finish with Traces of the Trinity before circling back to theomusicology proper. 

In the penultimate chapter, Leithart describes what amounts to (IMO) a purely left-brainish view of the world whereby

Every thought is constructed with sharp cuts, and thoughts are combined at right angles. Everything depends on this not being that, on keeping that and this from touching or slopping into each other.

In other words, an atomistic -- and tone deaf -- world of pure external relations. But music, it seems, is a quintessentially right-brain activity. I'll have to check back with McGilchrist as we plunge into the next book.

At any rate, it sounds very right-brainish to say that "the Spirit is the music of God, who lends melody and rhythm to the Father's Word," and that "The Father, Son, and Spirit live in a harmony and love that is a model for human life." Likewise,

the Spirit who hovered over the formless and empty waters harmonizes, orchestrates, and sets the rhythm for all things.

Bottom line, at least insofar as this book is concerned: RELATION is a "transcendental category," "the leading feature not only of the divine life but also of created life." 

In his book Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World, Zuckerkandl asks

What must the world be like, what must I be like, if between me and the world the phenomenon of music can occur?

I guess we're about to find out.