Music and Monotheism

This Element kindles dialogue between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on the relationship between God, world, and Aesthetic Experience.

Gareth F. Wilson (Author)

9781009517041, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 January 2025

76 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1 cm, 0.26 kg

What connects the phenomenon of music as an art with the belief in one indivisible God? What has music, a non-linguistic medium, to say about the personal, loving, communicative God of Scripture and the Prophets, or the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, transcendent God of the Philosophers and can it bring these 'concepts of God' together? To answer these questions, this book takes divine Creation as its starting point, that the God of monotheism must be the Creator of all that is. It thus argues that anything which instantiates and facilitates communication within the created realm has been enabled to do so by a God who communicates with His Creation, and who wishes that His Creation be communicative. Indeed, it will argue that the communication allowed by music, and aesthetic experience in general, is the very raison d'être of Abrahamic monotheism and might thus allow an opportunity for dialogue between monotheistic faiths.

1. Introduction
2. Arnold Schoenberg – Moses und Aron
3. A Great Separation?
4. Knowing the Unknowable God?
5. Telling all the Truth?
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Religion: general [HRA]