Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century

“This fascinating set of essays digs deep into the complexities of religion’s intertwining with music during an era when so many fundamental questions about the human condition were being thrown to the surface and debated. A rich feast indeed.” -- Jeremy Begbie, Duke University “Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century is an excellently researched, written, and edited volume, with essays spanning a broad scope of topics, genres, composers, and geographic regions. The authors challenge the conception of ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ as separate compositional and performative spheres, seeing them rather as complex categories with fluid boundaries. The volume is deeply cross-disciplinary, grounded in musicology while drawing on a wealth of other fields, including theology, liturgy, philosophy, history of religion, the politics of church and state, literature, theater, visual art, and aesthetics. It provides a valuable contribution to the field of nineteenth-century studies, both in the significant new insights it contains and in the ways it points to new avenues for future research.” -- Mark A. Peters, Trinity Christian College “This wide-ranging collection of essays clearly demonstrates the generative potential of dialogue between musical and religious themes. The volume is fascinating, illuminating, and highly recommended!” -- Stephen A. Crist, Emory University [This] volume is a very welcome addition to the growing literature on the relationships between music and spirituality. It goes some way to meeting the editors’ aim of broadening the topics for such study and points the way for further research. The essays are all engagingly written and replete with impressively extensive documentation and bibliographies that will be of considerable value to researchers... The editors are to be congratulated for bringing together the work of PhD and early-career scholars alongside that of more established academics. Though drawing almost entirely from scholars working within musicology, this volume is an important reminder and example of the ways in which interdisciplinary perspectives can enhance understanding of musical repertoire, practice and reception. * Nineteenth-Century Music Review *