[Mandryka]

There's a thread on sacred slow movements where people are proposing all sorts of instrumental music, romantic adagios that sort of thing. Lacking the god gene, I don't really understand the mindset. So I thought I'd start this off just for personal clarification of spirituality in music.

So, what are some examples of spiritual fast music, not by a direct link to a sacred text or story, but rather by intrinsic spiritual musicalness? Or is spirituality linked essentially to slowness?

 

[Mandryka]

Could I just ask very briefly what "spiritual" in music is supposed to mean? I don't mind labels, as long as they are not constrictive, but I would like to know what this term is generally taken to mean. To be frank, it's a term I never use (as far as I can recall) and it rather disturbs me. I don't mind being disturbed, by the way.

Yes, I can't say what it is yet I feel I know it when I see it. I feel it lives in performance. I'll give an example, though it's an obscure one, it's one that means a lot to me, I couldn't recommend it more highly. Jens Christensen's Art of Fugue.

 

[Mandryka]

No I don't think all performances of AoF have the quality of Christensen's. And it has something to do with a sense of focus of the performer's mental and physical resources: the sense of everything that the performer has in him coming out in the performance.

 

[Mandryka]

OK, so you mean that specific performances (for example Christensen's) have this 'spiritual' quality and that this 'spirituality' has nothing to do with the work itself. But surely both ('performance' and 'the work') must somehow be interrelated? If not, what you are saying is that 'the performance act itself' renders this spirituality concrete. Once again, I have to confess that I have problems understanding what is meant by 'spirituality'.

I believe it's a product of performance, music and audience.