ABSTRACT
WhY would someone feel compelled to write a book on music and spirituality? No. Stop! This question must be rephrased immediately. Why would I wish to write a book on music and spirituality? What is this inner drive, this almost compulsive urge, to reveal to you, to let you share in (in Dutch as well as German both meanings resonate in the words ‘mededelen’ and ‘mitteilen’ respectively) my pools of thought, albeit far from being systematically organized or comprehensive, concerning this subject? Where does my fascination with the relation between music and spirituality come from? Fascination, that is, according to the OED, a deprivation of the power of escape or resistance. I offer here four stations, four quite dissimilar leads. Four personal anchorages, from religion to literature and from film to faith, should serve here as a kind of justification.
