Music, Nature and Divine Knowledge in England, 1650-1750: Between the Rational and the Mystical

During a period of tumultuous change in English political, religious, and cultural life, music signified the unspeakable presence of the divine in the world for many. This book explores how the musical reflections of Peter Sterry, Richard Roach, William Stukeley, and David Hartley expressed alternative and often uncustomary conceptions of God, the world, and the human psyche. It shows how their shared belief in universal salvation was articulated through a language of music, implying a feminizing influence that set them apart from contemporaries who often strictly emphasized the rational aspects of religion. Musical discourse provided a link to a spiritual plane that brought these intellectuals closer to ultimate reality.

Format: Hardback
Length: 366 pages
Publication date: 16 May 2023
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

During a period of tumultuous change in English political, religious, and cultural life, music signified the unspeakable presence of the divine in the world for many. What was the role of music in the early modern subject's sensory experience of divinity? While the English intellectuals Peter Sterry (1613-72), Richard Roach (1662-1730), William Stukeley (1687-1765), and David Hartley (1705-57) have not been remembered for their musicality, this book explores how the musical reflections of these individuals expressed alternative and often uncustomary conceptions of God, the world, and the human psyche. Music is always potentially present in their discourse, emerging as a crucial form of mediation between states: exoteric and esoteric, material and spiritual, outer and inner, public and private, rational and mystical. Dixon shows how Sterry, Roach, Stukeley, and Hartley's shared belief in truly universal salvation was articulated through a language of music, implying a feminizing influence that set these male individuals apart from contemporaries who often strictly emphasized the rational-i.e. the supposedly masculine-aspects of religion. Musical discourse, instead, provided a link to a spiritual plane that brought these intellectuals closer to ultimate reality. Theirs was a discourse firmly rooted in the real existence of contemporary musical practices, both in terms of the forms and styles implied in the writings under discussion and the physical circumstances in which these musical genres were created and performed. Through exploring ways in which the idea of music was employed in written transmission of elite ideas, this book challenges conventional classifications of a seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution and an eighteenth-century Enlightenment, defending an alternative understanding of these periods.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781783277674