Description: 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, music-both heard and performed- becomes the means by which we can sense and participate in divine grace. Composed by one of the world's foremost Augustine scholars, this book is a concise and powerful exploration of Augustine's writing and reflections on music and, by extension, the intimate relationship between music, religion, and philosophy.
Brief description: 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 (Oxford University Press, 2013), Rethinking the Development of Augustine's Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity (Oxford University Press, 2006), Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (Oxford University Press, 2000), and Revelation and Beauty in the Thought of Saint Augustine (Oxford University Press, 1992). She is the Editor of the Routledge Early Church Fathers book series and is past President of the International Association of Patristic Studies.
Review Quotes:
"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 Harrison's study extends far beyond the fourth century, and concerns every major locus of Christian theology." --Modern Theology "Harrison's 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 "Harrison's study captures the dialectical texture of Augustine's thinking about music, as she strings along puzzles, resolutions and new puzzles with fugal complexity ... by helping us read Augustine's 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