Music and Spirituality Across the World

Catalog description

Music is a spiritual practice. Music and spirituality are intricately related, with spirituality often being the inspiration for the creation of music, and music so often creating the desired atmosphere for a spiritual occasion. This course will explore the relationship between the two by investigating the role of spirituality in music and the role of music in spiritual practices around the world throughout history. All creators of art eventually must reconcile with the spiritual nature of living life as an artist. Whether they reject the notion entirely or look at their artistic practice as lifelong meditative practice – this course will help them find answers. By exploring the history of the relationship between spirituality and religion in music as well as the role of ritual, students will contextualize and articulate their own spiritual paths with a sense of confidence. Through weekly readings, listenings and creative assignments, students will explore all rhythmic, harmonic and melodic aspects, as well as the historic significance of sonic information as it relates to spirituality, mysticism and self-reflection. Basic understanding of and access to a Digital Audio Workstation (Garage Band, ProTools, Logic, Ableton etc) is a requirement as students will be given access to recorded music stems in order to create their own sonic collages within the given parameters of each genre. Students will complete a library of their own works throughout the semester to accompany their reflective writing on each musical style and the culture from which it comes.