Melting the Venusberg: A Feminist Theology of Music

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Summary: Innovative Feminist Theology of Music
Review: Melting the Venusberg: A Feminist Theology of Music by Heidi Epstein (Continuum International Publishing Group) reconstructs music's theological significance by implicating it in the "politics of representation," by delineating the very concrete processes through which are ascribed music symbolic or metaphorical value, in short by treating it as a discursive practice, one socializing force among many. Such "radical" theological critiques and rearticulations of extramusical meanings may seem problematic only to those for whom music provides a transcendent oasis, who need music to remain hermetically sealed, unstained by the mundane-vir¬ginal.
Soliciting a range of feminist theorists as muses, Epstein treats music not as an ideologically immune, self-contained system, but as a "social barometer," a "product" of struggles over cultural meaning. Music's theological meaning emerges from its implication within specific historical struggles; more precisely, certain musical ethics and taboos are reread as sites where Christians individually and collectively negotiate distinctive, gendered identities within antagonistic contexts. These symptomatic readings respond more appo¬sitely to the "timeless" reality that music is a powerful social and political practice that causes listeners to experience, or, if musical censorship abounds, not to expe¬rience their bodies in new ways.
Part One constitutes a critical survey of extant theologies of music, their clas¬sical sources and norms, and the polemical Christian rhetoric about music that these more traditional approaches have not interrogated. At times, the tone in part one is sharp as recurring patterns of sexist thought in musico-theological discourse, as well as contemporary blindness toward the same, impair some of the finest theologians' discussions of music's meaning. The sharpness intensifies as desire mounts for "corrections" of these aporia. In part One, Epstein first attends to the now almost unconscious assumptions that have directed the "creative metaphor-making" processes in traditional and contemporary articulations of music's theological meaning. While a wide range of theologies of music is always justifiable, the main objective in part one is to carefully anatomize the theo¬logical readings of music that have gradually taken shape, and then assess their persuasiveness for a feminist religious context. To these ends, this critical overview of antecedent sources for Christian theologies of music (chapter 1), Christian rhetoric about musical decorum (chapter 2), and twentieth-century masculinist musico-theolog¬ical discourse (chapter 3) reveals a tacitly sexist subtext in extant theologies of music, one that has buried a goldmine of musico-theological riches. Such trenchant critique is also used to unsettle the most deeply entrenched biases. As one possible alternative to such classical models, part two offers a very modest, gender-sensitive rearticulation of music's theological import. Like other feminist theological reappraisals, it represents a relatively novel approach, given that feminism has altered academic the¬ory and social practices only in the last century. The present book's contribution to this discursive forum, therefore, is situated as tentative and partial, yet con¬structively critical. By exhuming the musico-theological riches in part two, Epstein retrieves materials by which to construct a new model, namely, a neglected trope from the tradition, and insights derived from the musical activities of women-musician/composers: Hildegard of Bingen, Lucrezia Vizzana, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Diamanda Galas.
Both parts are broadly chronological in form and content. Consequently, given that Epstein's search for reconstructive raw materials spans several millennia, seri¬ous omissions are bound to occur. But this theological project is selective, not an exhaustive survey and critique of theologians', church leaders'; and composers' discussions of music; rather, the Epstein's historical and contemporary samplings seem to be chosen as building blocks for constructing an alternative theology of music. Mining both center and margins of the Christian tradition, Epstein consults those thinkers whose methods of inquiry and ideas about music have become norma¬tive for understanding music's religious significance, and also those whose astute insights have been overlooked.
In order to reformulate music's symbolic content and shift its locus within divine-human relations, Epstein converses with a number of other feminist theorists to illustrate the valuable yet neglected contributions that theological discussions of music can make to a wider range of other feminist discourses, but also to construct a more genuinely dialogical theology of music. By its very nature, this topic mandates a rigorous interdisciplinarity.
This book contributes to the ongoing conversation among religionists and theologians about music's sacred uses and meanings. Given this discursive scope, the project does not directly address musi¬cologists, yet it is hoped that they might also learn from the nascent interconnec¬tions that this essay makes between Christian musical ethics and aesthetics, on the one hand, and New Musicology's multivalent studies of gender "in" music, on the other.
It should be emphasized that Epstein's project here is theological, not a histori¬cal. The historical sources that are engaged are in no way construed as proto-feminist. Rather, reflection upon previously neglected insights from the past guides the construction of a conceptual framework that responds more com¬pellingly to our current musical (and theological) contexts. In other words, alternative readings of particular moments within past tradition unearth lost themes and concepts that stimulate and redirect contemporary theological reflection. Through this recuperative synthesis of lost tradition and revisionist music history, this feminist initiative may set a precedent that will inspire other politicized, hence more ingenuous, theologies of music.