RELS 3080

How can we understand the religious experiences of people who are long dead? Writing survives from the ancient world and middle ages but only gives us half the picture, because it tends to record the official beliefs of the people who read and wrote. We can gain a better understanding of people’s religions by studying performance: what they sung, prayed and heard, the rituals they performed in connection with prayer, and what feelings it might have evoked. Music is an especially useful way to study religion because it has clearly definable patterns, ones that shape human experiences. And the musical dimension of religion is available in a way writing is not because it is physically present when performed, where it becomes audible to anyone present. In this way musical rituals are not just pre-defined texts but events, which can be unpredictable and mysterious but also comprehensible if we learn how to listen. With an introduction to the basics of music and the study of performance, this class will give you the tools to do that. We will survey the earliest known music from Mesopotamia, ancient Greek plays celebrating Dionysus, God of ecstasy, the development of Hebrew prayer, medieval and modern poetic and music practices from China to Haiti, and modern liturgical performance. With a special focus on Jewish liturgy and its interconnections with Islamic prayer, we will discover the long history of how music transforms our understanding and expectations of religion.