A Feminist Theology of Music: Melting the Venusberg

Description

Epstein considers the masculinist foundational texts of Western music from Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Augustine, John Chrysostrom, Aquinas, et al. to find them wanting. How? The erotic or even fleshy aspect of music has been suppressed whereas music as an expression of transcendent harmony and restraint has been extolled. This all changed with Hildegard of Bingen, ca. 12 c., a great mystic, herbalist, and all-around genius. This feminist-Christian tradition, with its restoration of what music in a religious setting might be, is traced through figures like Rosetta Tharpe and the writings of Michael Eric Dyson.

A native of Newfoundland, Heidi Epstein has graduate degrees in music history and religious studies from McGill University, Montreal, where she was also a church organist and choir director. She is currently on the faculty of religious studies at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan.

"Important not only for the articulation of a feminist theology of music, but also for rendering visible the intense (and intensely bodily) devotion elicited by music itself." Amy Hollywood"