Sacred Music, Religious Desire, and Knowledge of God

While singing Henry Purcell’s Hear My Prayer, O Lord, Julian Perlmutter became aware that this was no dispassionate activity. Rather, it seemed to him that the human longing evoked by the music produced a form of knowledge about God, the theme explored in his book, Sacred Music, Religious Desire and Knowledge of God. Perhaps this may appear unsurprising to a Christian. But what of a non-believer, Perlmutter asks? Does sacred music engender a desire for a God whose reality remains in serious doubt? When listening to, or even overhearing, sacred music, is it possible to acquire knowledge about such a “God”? In a meticulously attentive philosophical inquiry, Perlmutter seeks to demonstrate how emotional responses generate images and conceptions of what would fulfill the desires evoked and expressed in sacred music.

The very brief opening chapter summarizes the content of the scrupulously qualified arguments that follow. Chapter 2 grants a context—at least, in parts of the Northern hemisphere—in which the influence of the Christian faith is marginal. However, Perlmutter observes that there is a seeming anomaly with regard to sacred music. Even when a composer, singer, or listener may not believe in the subject matter of a cantata or a motet, they may be rather unsettled to discover that it could both echo and also respond to their own needs (2–6). This rather odd occurrence raises the question as to whether such a longing or desire may be legitimate.

To pursue this issue, chapter 3 examines the place of the emotions in determining thought, decision-making, and action by initially distinguishing between affective states that provide background moods, and affective states that include intentionality (32–38). Among the former are feelings of restiveness or contentment, and these differ from feelings about something, which present to the person the content of what would satisfy them. But precisely because the focus of this project is on desire that produces knowledge about what does not necessarily exist, it may be similar to “feeling like” eating a chocolate bar that is close to, and yet not, a Snickers or a Milky Way. The “close to” gives rise to a form of knowledge about what would resolve one’s desire for a chocolate bar, even though no such chocolate bar exists (45–46). A related example is evident in the manner in which cadences resolve musical dissonance. One can (almost) hear the resolution before it is played or sung—that is, one knows what it is that would resolve the dissonance, even though the melody may never pursue that final resolution. 

In chapter 4, Perlmutter assembles the evidence of the previous two chapters in order to claim that music—and, in particular, sacred music—“arouses affective states” that are intentional and related to an object. Here, at least for this reviewer, he convincingly refutes Peter Kivy’s denial that music’s “aboutness” is about anything other than the music itself (64–80).

Chapter 5 exemplifies the book’s thesis by turning to four choral pieces: Hear My Prayer, O Lord by Henry Purcell, Abendlied by Josef Rheinberger, and Charles Villiers Stanford and Herbert Howells’ settings of the Nunc Dimittis (from compositions for Evensong in G and the Collegium Regale respectively). The author demonstrates that music and words structure and articulate desire in specific ways to produce knowledge. Thus, Purcell’s anthem elicits a “compassionate presence”; Rheinberger’s song provides a sense of “divine protection”; and the settings of the Song of Simeon (the Nunc Dimittis) by Stanford and Howells trace the contours of salvific hope that extend beyond this world, and yet are present in this world in God incarnate. The textual and musical illustrations in, and the commentary on, these short and well-chosen pieces by Perlmutter are insightful and disclose the content of what would satisfy the yearnings which are evident in the texts’ musical settings. Quite justifiably, a reader could presume that Perlmutter has accomplished the aim of his project, which is to show that the cries in Christian sacred music invoke particular characteristics and attributes of a God who could still them, but a God whom a singer or musician, composer or listener may not believe exists.

In a further and final exploration in chapter 6, these conclusions are applied to a—perhaps, the—central Christian practice, that of contemplative prayer. Appropriately, Perlmutter’s focus on the “interested non-believer” causes him to ask whether the extreme rigor and distress of travelling along the viae purgativa, iluminativa, and unitiva may be undertaken without a committed faith, when, in contrast, Thomas Merton (Perlmutter’s guide) asserts that it is “a necessary precondition for a life of contemplative prayer” (143). But if faith were essential, then it would contest the non-doxastic attitude that is fundamental to the author’s argument—that of not believing. Perlmutter responds by proposing that an awareness of the privations and austerity of the contemplative journey too engenders attributes of the God who would accompany the pilgrim. Returning to the selections of sacred music, he claims that during the “dark nights . . . compassion and protection must be central” (145)—features evoked by Purcell and Rheinberger.

In fact, however, contemplative prayer may demand a more rigorous non-doxastic approach for the Christian, especially during the darkest part of the “dark night” for John of the Cross (upon whom Merton relies). But this is simply to suggest that Perlmutter’s fine monograph could possibly inspire further “cutting-edge research” in Bloomsbury’s series in the philosophy of religion.

Frank England is an honorary research associate at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Frank England

Date Of Review:

January 13, 2023