Join us in March for our London Make Good Event with Dr Chris Blakey. A hot meal is included with the ticket.

Book at Eventbrite.

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Music Theology, Harmony and Meaning

According to St Augustine, God is supreme music: music, as ‘harmonious measurement’, is divine harmony. Music theologians – modern successors to Augustine’s line of thinking – consider music to be both inherently theological and fundamentally harmonic. In this talk, Dr Chris Blakey will introduce the academic field of ‘music theology’ as a useful model for the interdisciplinary study of theology and the arts. Building on this, we will explore contemporary issues of theological meaning in artistic forms through the concept of musical harmony.

Bio

Dr Christopher Blakey’s work explores the relationship between music and theology. Chris recently completed his AHRC-funded PhD at Durham University; based in the music department, he was supervised by Prof Bennett Zon, along with additional supervision from the theology department by Rev Prof David Wilkinson. His doctoral thesis analyses the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams in relation to natural theology and explores this relationship in the context of contemporaneous biological evolutionary thought.

Chris’s main research interests include theological approach to music, music analysis (especially regarding harmony and form), and the relationship between science, music, and faith. He is the author of a chapter in the forthcoming OxfordHandbook of Music and Christian Theology, has presented his research at various international conferences, and convenes the International Network for Music Theology (https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/music-theology/).