Music and Religion in the First World War

Abstract

Listening to instrumental music has really become the only form of worship which is still possible to us.’ These words, said to have / been uttered by a distinguished Oxford philosopher, were quoted by Hastings Rashdall, then an Oxford theologian but later Dean of Carlisle, when he preached in Hereford Cathedral in connection with the Three Choirs Festival in 1912.’ Rashdall rejected the substitution of aesthetic appreciation in the concert hall for Christian worship because, he contended, it did not evoke any practical response. That he should have felt it necessary to stress this difference was in itself evidence of the strength of the view he was repudiating. It was also a significant comment on the secularization of the English academic profession and perhaps of a wider section of the middle class. It is a reminder, too, of suggestions made by scholars of history, sociology, and anthropology that there are significant connections and similarities between the development and social functions of music and religion. H. G. Koenigsberger has argued that the decline of religion left an emotional void in Western Europe which came increasingly to be filled primarily by music. David Martin points out that both music and religion serve similar purposes, ‘such as orgiastic stimulation, group solidarity, martial sentiment’. J. S. Eades begins with the view that both ‘artistic performance and religious ritual may be symbolic expressions of solidarities which can be used for political ends.’