ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what it means to describe music as sacrament, as transcending the usual labels of ‘material’ or ‘moral’ and instead inhabiting a third category: the ‘mysterious’. It begins with a contrast between the ‘material’ and ‘moral’ dimensions of music, the ways in which music has been historically understood as signifying either determinism or free will, universal harmony or individual melody, a strict materialism or a sentimental moralism. These two poles, seemingly relinquishing any need for God in their account of the universe, are typified by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Jean-Jacques Rousseau respectively. The author then explores the potential for a third dimension, the mysterious, as a more theologically constructive lens through which to explore music, including that of the modern era. Quash then explores this ‘mysterious’ dimension further by borrowing the concept of ‘obliquity’ – a kind of ‘diagonal’ directedness – as deployed in different ways by Thomas Aquinas, John Ruskin, Catherine Pickstock, and John Milbank. He reflects on the different ways in which music – as expressive but non-propositional – offers particular theological resonance but also may be better understood by analogy with habitable space – where humanity abides with God – than simply with texts or utterances.
