The Music of the Spheres in the Western Imagination
eBook - PDF

The Music of the Spheres in the Western Imagination

  1. 261 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Music of the Spheres in the Western Imagination

About this book

The Music of the Spheres in the Western Imagination describes various systematic musical ecologies of the cosmos by examining attempts over time to define Western theoretical musical systems, whether practical, human, nonhuman, or celestial. This book focuses on the theoretical, theological, philosophical, physical, and mathematical concepts of a cosmic musical order and how these concepts have changed in order to fit different worldviews through the imaginations of theologians, theorists, and authors of fiction, as well as the practical performance of music. Special attention is given to music theory treatises between the ninth and sixteenth centuries, English-language hymnody from the eighteenth century to the present, polemical works on music and worship from the last hundred years, the Divine Comedy of Dante, nineteenth- and twentieth-century English-language fiction, the fictional works of C. S. Lewis, and the legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien.

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Yes, you can access The Music of the Spheres in the Western Imagination by David J. Kendall in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Introduction
  9. Chapter 1: “The Heavens Make a Harmony”: Musica Mundana, Musica Humana, and Musica Instrumentalis in the Ancient and Early Christian World
  10. Chapter 2: “Thy Hearing is Mortal Even as Thy Sight”: Human Perception in the Heavenly Journey of Dante’s Paradiso
  11. Chapter 2: “I Noticed That the Grass Did Not Bend Under Their Feet”: Solid People, Ghosts, and the Sense of Touch in a Heavenly Journey of C. S. Lewis
  12. Chapter 3: “Behold Your Music!”: Music as a Force of Creation, Destruction, and Re-Creation in the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
  13. Chapter 3: Powerful Music: Horns, Trumpets, Voices, and Other Magical Instruments in Tolkien and Lewis
  14. Chapter 4: When the Celestial Laws Change
  15. Chapter 5: To Conserve, Exploit, or Embrace?: The Human and the Non-Human in Christian Hymnody
  16. Chapter 5: “Still, It May Be Useful”: The Ring of Sauron and the Value Axis
  17. Chapter 6: Bent Roads and Bent People
  18. Chapter 6: Musica Humana and the Limits of Musical Genius
  19. Chapter 7: The Music of the Spheres and the Modern Worship Wars
  20. Conclusion
  21. Bibliography
  22. Index
  23. About the Author