Jonathan A. Neufeld on Spiritual Music

What is spiritual music? The first step toward answering a question is figuring out what the question is. Are we looking for what counts as a member of a particular genre of music? Is it like the question, “What is country music?” or “What is bluegrass?” We could approach it this way and start with music that has the name “Spiritual” and start our looking for our answer there. But the question, when thought of within the context of Music of the Spirit, must be broader this. It isn’t a question about a certain genre of music, or a certain section of a record store. Rather, it asks what is it for music to be of the spirit. This is a much more difficult question. What could we mean by of the spirit? And what do we mean spirit? This is a hornets nest of a problem if ever there was one. We human beings have lots and lots of different answers, depending on our backgrounds, histories, and traditions. So if we were to think of the question in terms of finding properties of pieces of music that are spiritual, I think we would be at a loss.

If we think about the question a bit differently, things become more promising. Rather than looking at pieces of music (songs, works, etc.) as though they have some quality in them that makes them spiritual, I think it’s more fruitful if we think of music as spiritual when it plays a role in a way of listening. What sort of a role could this be, and what sort of listening? Let me throw out a few possibilities. Spiritual music moves us to consider things outside of ourselves, it invites us to move with it, to join voices with it and with each other. Notice what’s happened here, and how the question has changed. Instead of being a kind of music that we might point to in a section of record store, spiritual music has become a way of being together.

The next question, and there are always more questions, is what way of being together. This, I think, is not up to me to say. It is up to us to consider. I’m thankful that the Nashville Chamber Orchestra is providing such a innovative set of venues for us to do just that.