On Music, Sense, Affect and Voice

(Paperback)

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This book explores early reflections on music and its effects on the mind and soul. Augustine is an obvious choice for such an analysis, as his De Musica is the only treatise on music by a Christian writer in the first five centuries AD; concerned not only with poetic metre and rhythm, but also with an ontology of music. Focusing on the six books of De Musica, the Confessions and the Homilies on the Psalms, Carol Harrison argues that Augustine establishes a psychology, ethics and aesthetics of musical perception, which considered together form an effective theology of music. For Augustine, musicboth heard and performed becomes the means by which we can sense and participate in divine grace. Composed by one of the worlds foremost Augustine scholars, this book is a concise and powerful exploration of Augustines writing and reflections on music and, by extension, the intimate relationship between music, religion, and philosophy.

Reviews

The book gives a helpful map of theistic and nontheistic spiritualities, but due, in part, to its broad and comprehensive nature, specialists in the different areas covered will find issues to challenge and argue about. * Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society *
This is a critically important book [It] becomes very clear that the significance of Carol Harrisons study extends far beyond the fourth century, and concerns every major locus of Christian theology. * Modern Theology *
Harrisons book will be an asset for any academic library that serves students of music history, philosophy, and theology. It is a valuable assemblage of primary materials, a rich source of often unusual secondary sources, and an interesting presentation of a point of view that merits further consideration. * Catholic Library World *
Harrisons study captures the dialectical texture of Augustines thinking about music, as she strings along puzzles, resolutions and new puzzles with fugal complexity by helping us read Augustines thinking on music, with all its twists and turns, Harrison invites us into a rich conversation that gets at questions basic to human experience. * Theology *

Author Bio

Carol Harrison is Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, UK. She is the author of The Art of Listening in the Early Church (2013), Rethinking the Development of Augustines Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity (2006), Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (2000), and Revelation and Beauty in the Thought of Saint Augustine (1992). She is the Editor of the Routledge Early Church Fathers book series and is past President of the International Association of Patristic Studies.