The Sacramentality of Music

By: Christina Labriola

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Hardcover | 15 August 2024

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Hardcover
256 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.75

Hardcover

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Steeped in the Catholic spiritual tradition, The Sacramentality of Music argues that musical experience, in its appeal to the entirety of the human person, can serve as a locus of encounter with the divine and an occasion of God's self-revelation in love, with spiritually nurturing, ultimately transformative, ends. Christina Labriolacontends that this dynamic might most aptly be understood as sacramental, an all-encompassing perspective of the cosmos permeated by the divine creative, salvific, sustaining presence. Through its participation in the mysteries of beauty and creativity, its bodily and affective engagement, and impact on the inner life, music operates sacramentally: manifesting divine realities through the tangible stuff of human experience. In a thematic theological exploration that interweaves pastoral theology, theological aesthetics, and mysticism, the reader is invited to contemplate music's sacramental potentiality and to engage the sacramentally charged music of Beethoven, Bartok, MacMillan, Messiaen, Mozart, Esenvalds, Bach, Paert, and Hildegard. In attending to musical ways of relating to God, this book invites readers into a deepening awareness of the sacramental nature of reality itself as that in which the spiritual resonance of music is grounded and reveals afresh, taking musical beauty seriously in the spiritual order with repercussions for Christian living.

Industry Reviews

The means of holy encounter long associated with Baptism and Eucharist are increasingly challenged by music-making. Indeed, music as an emotive art form of expression is being seen as suitable medium to encounter the divine. It is fitting that Dr. Christina Labriola, a scholar in the Catholic liturgical tradition now investigates this medium to understand how it may strengthen spiritual formation in the encounter with God. Labriola's book is essential reading to all who desire to understand how music can enhance worship as an expression of love for God and neighbour in its use.

--Swee Hong Lim, Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto, Canada

This valuable book offers a rich and stimulating approach to music's sacramentality. It is a pastorally oriented theology and spirituality of music, undergirded by a keen musical intelligence. The argument builds on Catholic foundations--from Hildegard to von Balthasar--but with the windows wide open. Labriola's generosity shines through in her writing, celebrating music's transformative potential under divine grace, rejoicing in the overflowing love of the triune God.

--Michael O'Connor, St. Michael's College

What is a sacrament, and how can music help us define it? Alternately erudite and reflective, The Sacramentality of Music tells us in a sustained and systematically argued theological work. Adding her voice to what she describes as "the dazzling symphonic array of theological consideration of music's spiritual import", Labriola rises to the challenge, testing our presumptions and revising our understanding with a clear, comprehensive and critically astute analysis of the topic.

--Bennett Zon, Durham University

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