Author: Prof. Nicolae Teodoreanu (Bucharest National University of Music)
Keywords: Christianity, Bible, Liturgy, Holy Fathers, music, theology
Abstract:
Music in general, and Church music, particularly has their theology or spirituality. Basically, music is a spiritual phenomenon, even if most of its listeners or interpreters don’t accept it. Speaking about music, we cannot simply talk about a “fun thing”, not about a pleasure of the ear. The author of the is study, who left us in 2018, finished an extraordinary study about the spiritual (Biblical and Patristic) foundations of music, about its biblical origins, nature, and the role in the spiritual man’s development, and this is all the more so as, according to the Holy Fathers, man is the God’s musical instrument, made in His image in order to sing the graces of God, to glorify His creation and, in the same time, to weep for his sins. The first chant in history, says he, was the weeping-chant, by which Adam wept for his fall, for loosing God’s grace. In premodern times, music was about celebration, in all aspects of human life. Celebrating God, liturgically, celebrating someone else birthday or wedding, the crop and so on. Nowadays, in the secularized societies, when man has nothing to celebrate but his own addictions and idols, (mainstream) music have lost its original meaning, for most of the people becoming simply a drug. This article tries to prove the authentic spiritual layer of music, in general, and the theological resorts of Christian music, in particular.
Pages: 112-136