anible and i started reading this book yesterday. (this is the first non-fiction we've done aloud, very different experience.) the author, jeremy s. begbie, was educated at both the royal academy of music in london and the universities of edinburgh and aberdeen. so naturally, he currently teaches systematic theology at cambridge. *grin grin* his book is fascinating. we're only about twenty pages in at this point, so he's just laying the foundation, but still--this is the kind of material i expect to cover in hijleh's music and christian perspective graduate seminar next semester.
begbie says his basic premise is that music's temporal properties give it insight into aspects of christian theology. i can't get much more specific than that because i don't have the book with me and he hasn't covered that idea yet, but his 'this is how the book is laid out' paragraph sounded almost revolutionary. if he's right, music could be an invaluable theological tool, able to illuminate areas such as eschatology, election, salvation, etc. in a completely unique way. (he is ordained in the church of england, so it'll be interesting to see how his own doctrine manifests itself in his book.) so far, he's just been covering some basic premises about the nature and 'meaning' of music--also interesting stuff. he commented that ideally, a few live performances (not recordings of live performances) would be included along with his book. he believes to think of music as being contained in a score or a recording is to diminish it; the actual performance is as much a part of the music as are the notes on the page. he briefly discussed how music inevitably exists in a socio-political context, because it comes from the minds of human beings who inevitably exist in socio-political contexts. music doesn't spring out of a vacuum. lessee...also went into the emotional content of music for a bit. he rejects the idea that our emotions rise and fall when we listen to music because music has direct corrolaries in human mental states. instead, he argues that our reaction to music is a sympathetic response to a fictional object. (we become sad for no real reason, etc.) because the object is fictional, music-hearers (as he calls them) are emotionally free to follow the music--there's no real object constraining their emotions to a particular kind.
so this is looking to be a really interesting book, from the first twenty pages. definitely looking forward to the rest of it.
in other news, holly was up visiting anible on sunday night. (i tagged along.) she's on her way to el paso for the summer. was much fun, we went to the lost dog cafe for dinner and showed her around cornell a bit. tried to get up to mcgraw for a concert, but they weren't playing. it was a lovely hazy day, so we sat at the foot of the tower instead and enjoyed the view. walked around briefly at that one waterfall downtown that has a name i can never remember. watched love actually. it was a good time, good way to spend a lazy sunday afternoon.