Series of books published by Peter Lang and edited
by June Boyce-Tillman
The series of books (published by Peter Lang) Music and Spirituality (general editor: June Boyce-Tillman) explores the relationships between spirituality and music in a variety of traditions and contexts including those in which human beings have performed music with spiritual intention or effect. It addresses the plurality of modern society in the areas of musical style and philosophical and religious beliefs, and gives respect to different positions regarding the place of music both in worship and in the wider society.
The series will include historical, anthropological, musicological, ethnomusicological, theological and philosophical dimensions and encourages multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary contributions.
It looks for well-researched studies with new and open approaches to spirituality and music and encourages interesting innovative case-studies. Books within the series are subject to peer review and will include single and co-authored monographs as well as edited collections including conference proceedings. The use of musical material in either written or recorded form as part of submissions is welcome.
Many of the chapters are based on papers given at conferences such as the SAME conferences (Spirituality and Music Education) at the Nordoff Robbins Centreand Winchester University in 2016 and 2017.
in tune with heaven or not: women in christian liturgical music (2014)
By the Rev Professor, June Boyce-Tillman
This book examines how the values associated with Wisdom theology can be used to examine women’s contribution to Christian liturgical music, concentrating on the English speaking world and Europe. It uses this to analyse vignettes of women in liturgical music in mainstream Christian history of Europe. The analysis concentrates on such values as community-building, nurturing, musical processes comparing orality and literacy, embodiment, intuition, and public and private spaces.
This book is an attempt to tell the untold stories of women in the musical history of the church history and I hope that for readers it will be a source of strategies of resistance, inspiration and hope.
Experiencing Music – Restoring the Spiritual: Music as Wellbeing (2016)
By the Rev Professor, June Boyce-Tillman
A River rather than a road: The Community Choir as Spiritual experience (2016)
By Sarah Morgan and June Boyce-Tillman
They Bear Acquaintance – African American Spirituals and the Camp Meetings (2016)
By Nancy L. Graham
Spirituality and Music Education – Perspectives from Three Continents (2017)
Edited by June Boyce-Tillman
Queering Freedom – Music, Identity and Spirituality: Anthology from North America, UK (2018)
Edited by Karin Hendricks and June Boyce-Tillman
Freedom Song: Faith, Abuse, Music and Spirituality: A Lived Experience of Celebration (2018)
Edited by Karin Hendricks and June Boyce-Tillman
Rivers of Sacred Sound (2019)
Chant by Solveig McIntosh
The intention of this book is to highlight perception and understanding of chant practice, Eastern and Western, from BCE to CE, by tracing some ancient roots. Why are there so many references all over the world to praising the divine with sound? Why is the tradition of chant a sacred one? Could it be that praise songs and ritual are at the heart of life and have been, since the beginning of human existence? The text of this book covers a time span of approximately 5000 years. The chapters represent a progression from aspects of the development of Eastern music, to the origins of Western music derived from chant. It opens with a very brief description of ancient river-valley civilizations before selecting the Indus river-valley civilization as a particular focus. This book takes the discussion about Gregorian chant beyond a European perspective. It aims to open a door onto some aspects of more ancient chant forms, their words and their melodies. The door, once opened, reveals a vista of possibilities.
Environment Matters Why Human Song Sounds: The Way It Does (2018)
by Lynn Whidden and Paul Shore
This sets out an environmental account of song and music that embeds it squarely in its physical environments based on human sensitivity to the sounds around them. It identifies three sound environments called habitats: outdoors, built, and electronic. Early on humans created songs outdoors that are a fit with the natural environment; then music composed indoors became independent of outdoor sound; and then electronic songs were transmitted by electricity, and composed largely from electronic material. Whether the ambient sounds are outdoor, indoor or electronic the impact on human song is audible. Our premise is that human song is made up of sounds derived from our surrounding environment. We think we have made ourselves independent of the physical sound environment, that our songs are learned from other people, from print and from electronic copies. Our focus remains on consciously creating music with little recognition of the planet’s pervasive sound. There is differentiation and diversity, but no disconnect. Humans and their sonic products are part of their environments.
Enlivening faith : Music, Spirituality and Christian Theology (2019)
Editor the Rev professor June Boyce-Tillman, Stephen Roberts and Jane Erricker
The connection of music to Christian spirituality has been there from the very beginning of the Christian tradition and has developed in different ways in a variety of cultures associated with various denominations as well as theological differences within denominations. Alongside this, the notion of spirituality within music has been generating increasing interest in the context of professional and academic discourses in Western music hand related fields. This has arisen in an increasingly secularized cultural context in which music is often considered as an important carrier for spiritual experiences. It is, however, an area besieged with problems such as the place of religion in the public square, including political, cultural, social, legal, educational, aesthetic, ethical, and religious tensions.
The Spirituality of the Music of John Tavener
Editors June Boyce-Tillman and Anne Marie Forbes
The music of John Tavener (1944 – 2013) has brought alive spirituality for many people. His own distinctive spirituality is the essence of his understanding of the nature and role of music. His spirituality is rooted firmly in the Christian tradition but during his lifetime he drew on a variety of spiritual traditions. His fundamental view of music was that it is concerned with heart’s ease. He challenged an increasingly secularized cultural context including its view of the place and role of music. This anthology is designed to look at the issue of Sir John’s spirituality through various lenses and from different perspectives with papers drawn primarily from the study days of the Tavener Centre at the University of Winchester. Contributions are from scholars, musicians, theologians, medical practitioners, informed listeners and practitioners in religious traditions. These include case study material, empirical studies, philosophical, theological and theoretical contributions and accounts from lived experience of spirituality generated by Sir John’s music.
The Return Beat: Interfacing with our Interface
By Olugbenga Taiwo
This book represents a significant contribution to debates about identity, the arts and spirituality. Written in an autoethnographic style, the author charts his own journey into understanding the interface between himself, culture and digital technology. He charts a course through West African orate and literate traditions and their relationship to the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans, describing how they became a source of so many dance traditions in Europe and the Americas, such as capoeira, Afro Brazilian and Cuban movement, Hip Hop and Samba. He enters into a detailed analysis of Western linear time and the African curved time; the flux of the Return Beat. He sets out a description of the Yoruba religion of the Orishas; centred around the figure of Olodumare and the concept of Ashe, the animating force of the natural world.