Music and the Christian Tradition: For Robert Louis Wilken on His 85th Birthday
Kevin D. O’Brien
Music and the Christian TraditionFor Robert Louis Wilken on His 85th Birthday Kevin O’Brien (bio) Not a few things too are closed against us obscured by ignorance of music.Non pauca etiam claudit atque obtegit nonnullarum rerum musicarum ignorantia. augustine, christian doctrine ii 16.26 Good historians remind from past that worth remembering. But great have way helping understand our tradition forging identity. One makes an historian is his or her willingness to raise issue consistently even when colleagues follow suit. Wilken, arguably greatest living in English-speaking world, has for decades been subtly yet pointing out fact about hiding plain sight. That fact—that music played crucial role Church’s formational intellectual tradition—is greatly underappreciated today among intelligentsia. The relationship between Church, once glorious partnership, come something [End Page 148] stalemate modern times. Remedying begins with reinvestigation into music’s import within tradition. This essay follows lead asking how understanding would be altered if we approached not as subdiscipline history, but constitutive part larger narrative. For most was far more integrated life Christians than find it today. There many direct testimonies inferences both patristic medieval eras elucidate daily included robust compulsory training music. At heart endeavor liturgy its recitation, rehearsal, composition. A version history focuses per se frequently told. Every autumn there new undergraduate majors around world who learn likes Gregory Great, Notker Balbulus, Guido Arezzo standard textbooks. corollary overlooked: existence this meant all facets Church were taken up men women reaped benefits having studied sung regularly liturgy. educational system flourished monasteries Carolingian empire, which much known, provides good window Church.1 Performance large body liturgical chants, especially psalter, repertory rehearsed day after day, year point memorization.2 theologians, bishops, abbots one received education centered Bible, wherein text put memory being grafted melody. In era, utterance Word God, logos, spoken allotment occasional allowances singing. Rather, experience logos proclamation “musification” Word, borrow latter-day term then-Cardinal Ratzinger.3 “musified” conception challenges 149] privileging words, normative words mere adornment thereof. inherent act singing allow medievals merely speak required principle does seem invention medievals; finds antecedent Athanasius, fourth century wrote “The psalms recited melodies because desire pleasant sounds. sure sign harmony soul’s reflections. Indeed, melodic reading symbolic mind’s well-ordered undisturbed condition.”4 From trained came theological similarly balanced between...
Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture