In
this paper he aims to lay some initial conceptual foundations for later
exploration of particular case studies in terms of resonance. He is going to survey existing
social and sonic usages of the term and suggests the need to hold together a
number of different understandings in order to take full advantage of resonance’s
messy and expansive ability to point towards multi-directional and
multi-dimensional complexes of relationships surrounding the activity of
congregational music. He suggests, rather than aiming to arrive at a strict
definition of resonance as a phenomenon, that it is useful to allow a degree of
messiness and suggest, instead, that a list of questions might serve as a more
useful starting point for further exploration.
The paper is part of the larger project on 'Axes of resonance in Christian congregational music':
The paper is part of the larger project on 'Axes of resonance in Christian congregational music':
The rise of contemporary worship music in
the latter part of the 20th century has been bound up closely with ideals of
personal authenticity. The use of popular musical styles in church is, at least
in part, the result of a pragmatic desire for the music of the church to act as
a natural expression of worshippers’ everyday lives, whilst at the same time
the need for ‘personal sincerity’ in worship has resulted in an emphasis on the
role of the individual’s inward attitudes in the activity of sung worship. As
my own recent work, alongside that of a number of others has highlighted, this
project has come to face numerous challenges over the course of its
development: the diversity of musical lives present in contemporary society
calls into question any straightforward relationship between individuals’
musical lives and the music employed in a congregational environment, whilst
discourses and ideals of personal authenticity have led to contradictory and
problematic dynamics as they have collided with the performative spaces of the
commercialised worship industry and the social dynamics and needs of local
church communities.
Such analyses are not limited to the
academic realm, and a number of popular commentators have charted a
generational retreat away from the pragmatic strategies of contemporary worship
music environments. Sensing the need to articulate new understandings, some
individuals have found themselves turning to alternative models and ideas in
order to understand the contemporary musical practices they find themselves
embedded within, exploring, for example an understanding of worship as a
formational practice or as a sacramental activity. Such ideas challenge the
notion of musical worship as a product of the authentic self in favour of the
self as produced by and receptive of divine and social dynamics as transmitted
through music. However, at the same time, they continue an on-going quest which
sets out to describe and prescribe an appropriate relationship between the
individual and the social, spiritual and musical context that they find
themselves in within congregational worship.
Such dynamics can
usefully be illuminated by an appeal to Hartmut Rosa’s application of the
concept of resonance. We can understand the quest for authenticity in musical
worship as one particular attempt at forming a resonant relationship between
individual, world, group, music and the divine. The individual, through a
dynamic of authenticity stemming from both protestant theology and consumer
ideologies, is able to appropriate the world around them through its reflection
of their everyday self and through their investment and expression into it of
their inner spiritual devotion. If this relationship breaks down, then we can
ask whether this might be a result of the situation of the contemporary worship
music industry’s appropriation of and situation within the paradoxical dynamics
and conditions of modernity. At the same time, we can potentially see the quest
of the Millenials as a search for alternative models of world resonance,
embarking on precisely the same task as a previous generation of worshippers
but setting out on a range of different paths in order to do so. This research
project will take such contemporary dynamics as its starting point in order to
explore the concept of resonance as it applies to Christian congregational
music. If the quest for resonance through patterns of personal authenticity has
found itself encountering significant challenges, then what axes and processes
of resonance can we trace through Christian congregational music’s long and
diverse period of existence? What forms of resonance does congregational music
permit? What processes have enabled individuals to appropriate this musical and
social environment in a resonant manner? How do social and sonic theories of
resonance complement, contradict or combine in congregational music?
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