Theology, Music and Time

by Jeremy S. Begbie

• ISBN13: 9780521785686
• ISBN10: 0521785685
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-07-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Theology, Music and Time aims to show how music can enrich and advance theology, extending our wisdom about God and God's ways with the world. Instead of asking: what can theology do for music?, it asks: what can music do for theology? Jeremy Begbie argues that music's engagement with time gives the theologian invaluable resources for understanding how it is that God enables us to live 'peaceably' with time as a dimension of the created world. Without assuming any specialist knowledge of music, he explores a wide range of musical phenomena - rhythm, metre, resolution, repetition, improvisation - and through them opens up some of the central themes of the Christian faith - creation, salvation, eschatology, time and eternity, Eucharist, election and ecclesiology. He shows that music can not only refresh theology with new models, but also release it from damaging habits of thought which have hampered its work in the past.

Table of Contents

List of musical examples	x
List of figures	xii
Acknowledgements	xiii
Part I Introduction
Practising music	9	(20)
Music's time	29	(42)
Part II In God's good time
In God's good time	71	(27)
Resolution and salvation	98	(30)
Music, time and eternity	128	(27)
Repetition and Eucharist	155	(24)
Part III Time to improvise
Boulez, Cage and freedom	179	(25)
Liberating constraint	204	(42)
Giving and giving back	246	(25)
Conclusion	271	(10)
Bibliography	281	(22)
Index of names	303	(4)
Index of biblical verses	307	(2)
General index	309