Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship

“I myself consider the totality of a piece as the idea”: Arnold Schoenberg’s Concept of the Musical Idea in Trinitarian Perspective

Michelle Stearns, independent scholar (Seattle, WA)

The categories of “totality” and “the whole” are central to Arnold Schoenberg’s compositional philosophy of unity. Within his essays and theoretical writings, he equates his concept of the musical idea (Der musikalische Gedanke) with totality or the whole: “I myself consider the totality of a piece as the idea.” Thus, the concepts of “unity” and “the totality of the whole” are intrinsically and inexorably linked in his compositional poetics. Furthermore, all compositional theory and technique must, in Schoenberg’s thinking, express and serve the idea (“the creator’s idea has to be presented”). It then follows that in Schoenberg’s philosophy unity in a composition can only be achieved through the proper presentation of the idea.

As we can see here, Schoenberg sets up an interesting platform on which to dissect and discuss the concept of unity within compositional space. With this in mind, the aim of this paper is to first elucidate the relationship of unity, totality/the whole and the musical idea within Schoenberg’s philosophy of compositional unity. The second half of this paper will then place his philosophy of unity within a Christian trinitarian perspective. The purpose of this exercise is to simultaneously critique Schoenberg’s construal of unity as well as to construct a more trinitarianly conceived definition of unity within the context of musical space. Thus, this paper seeks to show not only how theology can benefit the philosophy of music, but also how the philosophy of music can benefit theology.

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The Present of Things to Come: What Makes Music “Spiritual?”

Scott Robinson, Eastern University

The word “spiritual” appears in Scripture almost exclusively in the writings of Paul, who uses the term in only one way: to refer to the activity of the Holy Spirit. What, then, do people mean when they describe music, and/or their experience of musical performance, as “spiritual”? Assuming that such experience is primarily psychological and emotional rather than “spiritual” in the strict Pauline sense, I believe they are responding to the way music shapes their experience of time. Music helps us to experience time differently than we ordinarily do, in one of three ways:

1) by helping us to place our awareness within—or at least closer to—the elusive, razor-thin temporal phenomenon we call “the present moment;”

2) by guiding us toward a perception of time organized at a higher level than we usually experience, drawing our attention to a larger, overarching temporal design;

3) by doing both of these things at once, giving us a illustration of what it means to be “in the world but not of it.” (cf. John 15:18-19, 17:16-18.)

Using Jeremy Begbie’s model of time as neither linear nor cyclical, but rather metrical, I examine these different ways in which music influences our experience of time by drawing our attention toward different areas of the “metrical matrix” of music. I also draw on the infant neuroscience writings of Daniel Stern, as well as practical experience as a musician to discuss how music shapes time, and consider the theological implications of these musical ideas. Musical examples include Sufi ceremonial music, Notre Dame organum and Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten.

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The Artifice of Musicality as Sound Theology: Practicing Time with Carter and Messiaen

Cheryl Pauls, Canadian Mennonite University

Time and performativity figure significantly in the current interface of music and theology, as evinced in Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music and Time (2000), and Philip Stolzfus’ Theology as Performance (2006). In this paper I address questions of time and performance in relation to musicality through music by two composers who are to be celebrated in 2008: Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) and Elliott Carter (b. 1908). There are many correlations between Messiaen’s musicianship and Christian expression; similar affiliations do not accrue with Carter. However, I converse between music and theology not through musico-Christian representation, as common with Messiaen, but through a consideration of “musicality as artifice” in relation to those traits by which these composers frequently are linked: attention to time and rhythmic innovation. Both composers ascribe particular characters to both rhythmic relationships and expressive articulations; as such, temporal and sonic constructs are rendered as compositional materials, distinct from how the musicality of form can be grasped and measured. I consider how the player’s practice of the temporal and sonic aspects of their music figures into notions of musicality, which I pursue as a musical and a theological construct. Throughout I focus on the second of Two Diversions by Carter (1999) and “Modes de valeurs et d’intensites” from Quatre etudes de rythme by Messiaen (1949), and draw on the ecological metaphors of recent music theoretic work, within which a distinct shift from the linguistic and cosmological terms of earlier musicological discourse can be noted.