Reviewed by: Learning in a Musical Key: Insight for Theology in Performative Mode by Lisa M. Hess. Eugene Amanda Kaminski (bio) Learning in a Musical Key: Insight for Theology in Performative Mode. By Lisa M. Hess. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011. 236 pp. $22.40 Drawing on her myriad theoretical informants in this project, Lisa M. Hess identifies music as “the language of the soul made audible,” the “narrative quality of human experience,” the “vehicle par excellence” for religious transformation. In Learning in a Musical Key: Insights for Theology in Performative Mode, Hess provokes Christian spirituality scholars with daring tone to consider and articulate what dimensions of human capacity can transform consciousness toward a self-transcendence that leads to deeper wisdom. She bravely suggests the unique ephemeral yet somatic way of music as particularly characterized for multidimensional learning, legitimizing sensate knowledge while inviting “critical inquiry within a self-implicating, communally-shaped, and receptive embodiment that makes conceivable wellsprings of life in all its transformations and fullness” (27). Pulling from ethnomusicology, educational theory, and practical theology, Hess places diverse conversation partners in dialogue to advocate for an epistemology shaped by the Chalcedonian formulation, which confounds the historical boundaries of being by asserting two seemingly irreconcilable natures for Christ based on the logic of the Spirit which understands dissonance “as a goad to critical inquiry, as an intimacy of difference within intentional companionships, as koan for contemplative inquiry” (209). Thus, Hess proposes a contemplative empiricism within an artisanal way as a new way forward in postmodern, theological critical discourse. Two guiding questions drive the structure of the study: First, what does learning from music in a performative mode require—or how does the wisdom of musical insight offer a potentially different approach to learning? Second, how does a disciplinary theologian integrate music’s performative mode into critical discourse— or how can this epistemological shift with its characteristic features inform a method of theological inquiry? The first four chapters of Hess’ argument seek to develop the notion of “learning in a musical key.” Hess begins by presenting Hildegard of Bingen as an historical composer-theologian whose letter to the Prelates at Mainz after the Interdict of 1178 provides a promising contribution for understanding the power of learning in music within a Psalm-centric, Benedictine spirituality. In this epistolary artifact, Hildegard advocates for music as the means of awakening the human heart to God’s inner illumination and for music’s sacramental nature to vest the human body with the Garment of the Word, who fills the human spirit with the Holy [End Page 265] Spirit and harmonizes the body with the soul in praise of God. Hildegard suggests that music acts as a spiritual vehicle for discretio, the practice of making distinctions in moderation, in both natural and sacred endeavors. Recognizing how Hildegard’s medieval location complicates contemporary appropriation of her theological interpretation and educational schema, Hess introduces Susanne K. Langer as a philosophical dialogue partner for understanding music’s gift of insight. Langer suggests that symbolization is the transformation of human experience into symbols and meanings. Music’s pure form as an unconsummated symbol acts as a lynchpin in the development of Hess’ argument. Music’s non-representational, nondiscursive symbolic presentation defies the logical sequence and linear formulation of linguistic projection allowing imagination and intuition to drive the phenomenon toward insight, which is a non-propositional integration of human sensation and awareness. The insight offered in music suggests an apophatic epistemology that challenges contemporary mathematical-logical forms of knowing pervasive in systematic theology. Thus, Hess begins to establish how music’s mode for teaching and learning—embodied, intuitive, non-logical, sensate—acts as a catalyst for transformation enacted in a non-discursive symbolism. The conundrum of the musical/ non-musical divide present in many North-American communities today emerges as a potential threat to Hess’ proposal for learning in a musical key. Hess uses Edwin Gordon’s music aptitude and Howard Gardner’s musical intelligence as key theories for musicality as a universal feature in humanity to re-conceptualize this musical polarization as two orientations toward participation in music in performative mode: those who prefer to learn from music and those who...