Music and the experience of the spiritual

Abstract

When an experience of music is described as spiritual, is that sense of spirituality an extrinsic (referential) or intrinsic (absolute) type of meaning? That question was examined using two questionnaires, which gathered qualitative and quantitative data on participants’ experiences and interpretations of music and spirituality. Study I included 117 participants from the Christian religion. Study II extended these findings by including 172 participants, both religious and non- religious. Data was examined for evidence of spirituality, which was circumscribed with reference to three key aspects: transcendence, connection and meaning; and for evidence of a link between spirituality and either referential or absolute meaning. Results demonstrated strong evidence of the perception of spirituality, though not all significant experiences of music were spiritual. Referential (extra-musical) associations were involved, particularly for religious people (e.g. reference to the supernatural). These associations were involved in the rational interpretation of the experience, but only really accounted for certain aspects of spirituality. Spirituality was better accounted for as an absolute (intrinsic) experience, though only in an absolute expressionist sense (ie. not just as an experience of the musical forms of melody, harmony, rhythm, etc,, but as an expression arising from those forms. There was no evidence of spirituality as a formalist experience.). Spirituality was enabled or embodied by those musical forms, but not contained by them. Spirituality was seen to be a pre-conceptual, ineffable awareness of a transcendent connection that arises from the mystery of the material experience of tonal forms that is music. Religion had only minimal impact on these findings. Culture and musical experience or training also had minimal effect on the experience of spirituality. Spirituality was as prevalent as emotion in most aspects of the questionnaire, suggesting that spirituality was as important as emotion in significant experiences of music. This finding challenges the dominance of emotion as the key construct of significant experiences of music, placing a strong call on the research community to engage with this phenomenon of spirituality.