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Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation
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Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2026) | Viewed by 11375

Editor

Prof. Dr. Guy Beck

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Philosophy, Religious Studies and Asian Studies, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA
Interests: philosophy; South Asia; religion; theology; ethics; the arts; music
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The recent rise in interest in the combined study of religion and music has led to the book, Musicology of Religion: Theories, Methods, and Directions (2023), authored by our own Guest Editor, in which the historical background of religion and music is surveyed and developed methodologically in terms of a distinct subject area. A principal focus in this book is the near-universal pairing of music and religious ritual over centuries. The link is so widespread that the argument can be made that, until modernity, there was virtually no ritual without music or chant, and almost no music without ritual. Since ritual or liturgy is a primary operative dimension of religious, and many secular, activities, this realization underscores the potency of music as a near-indispensable component of spiritual transformation. Beside the principal world religions, there are countless lesser-known examples of how music and chant are interwoven with religious practice and ritual behavior throughout history and across the globe. As this approach is in the nascent stage, it is hoped that more research will be forthcoming, as proposed in this Special Issue.

We are pleased to announce this Special Issue, “Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation”, which seeks original contributions that provide new insight into the topic of music as part of religious or spiritual transformation. Spiritual transformation refers to all forms of life-changing experiences involving the sacred, including conversion, a deepened relation to God or the Absolute, religious ecstasy, or a change in worldview or ideology enabled by music. To assist in this project, the term ’harmony’ is employed, not in reference to modern harmonics or counterpoint, but to its original Greek understanding of harmonia as the ‘fitting together’ of two items or elements. In the material sense, this meant the fitting together of wooden beams; in the metaphysical interpretation, the link between the soul and the divine. Basic questions are advanced: what role does music play in spiritual transformation? In singing or chanting, is it the words or strictly the musical features that act as agents of transformation? Exploring the depth of one tradition, or comparing traditions, the methods of approach may include phenomenology, history of religions, philosophy, esthetics, theology, ritual studies, liturgical studies, social sciences, ethnomusicology, and cognitive studies. Any example of the confluence of music and religious practice worldwide is welcome, whether traditional or popular, and may involve references to sacred songs and chants, musical instruments, rites of passage, or liturgical action. Beside ritual or ceremonial activity, other forms of practice can be included: meditation, contemplation, solo performance, etc. The contributions need not be representative of a particular world religion but may instead focus on an example of religious practice that is tangential to or outside of an established religion. This Special Issue complements and enlarges upon the two previous MDPI Special Issues by this Guest Editor: “Tuning In the Sacred: Studies in Music and World Religions” (2021) and “Musicology of Religion: Selected Papers on Religion and Music” (2024).

References

Engelhardt, Jeffers, and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. 2016. Resounding Transcendence: Transitions in Music, Religion and Ritual. New York: Oxford University Press.

Godwin, Joscelyn. 1987. Harmonies of Heaven and Earth: The Spiritual Dimension of Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.

Godwin, Joscelyn, ed. 1986. Music, Mysticism, and Magic: A Sourcebook. New York and London: Routledge.

Guzy, Lidia. 2008. Religion and Music: Proceedings of the Interdisciplinary Workshop at the Institute for Scientific Studies of Religions, Freie Universität Berlin, May 2006. Berlin, Germany: Weißensee Verlag.

Jimenez, Raquel, Rupert Till, and Michael Howell, eds. 2013. Music and Ritual: Bridging Material and Living Cultures. Berlin: Ekho Verlag.

Ralls-MacLeod, Karen. 2000. Music and the Celtic Otherworld: From Ireland to Iona. Edinburgh: Polygon.

Ralls-Macleod, Karen and Graham Harvey, eds. 2000. Indigenous Religious Music (with CD). London: University of London.

Stone-Davis, Ferdia J., ed. 2020 (2015). Music and Transcendence. London and Oxford: Ashgate, New York: Routledge.

Wuidar, Lawrence, ed. 2010. Music and Esotericism. Leiden: Brill.

Prof. Dr. Guy Beck
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • music
  • spirituality
  • sacred sound
  • ritual
  • liturgy
  • philosophy of music
  • theology of music
  • religious studies
  • ethnomusicology
  • musicology of religion

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 758 KB  
Article
Oh May Our Voice to Friendship Move: Masonic Singing in the United States
by Andrew Owen
Religions 2026, 17(9), 1005; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17091005 - 25 Aug 2026
Abstract
Freemasons in the United States have engaged in music making together to different degrees across the history of the country. Throughout the eighteenth century, it tended to occur at times of refreshment and structured meals as a means of diversion and community building. [...] Read more.
Freemasons in the United States have engaged in music making together to different degrees across the history of the country. Throughout the eighteenth century, it tended to occur at times of refreshment and structured meals as a means of diversion and community building. The nineteenth century gradually saw a transition from convivial songs to ritualistic songs that heightened the experience of initiation. The twentieth-century fraternity’s use of music generally followed that of society, away from communal music making and toward appreciation of recorded music by professionals or spoken word only. This article examines a few representative songs from different eras of American Freemasonry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation)
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19 pages, 2181 KB  
Article
Beyond the Crystal Bowl: Ethnomusicology, Spiritual Transformation, and the Modern Sound Bath
by Meghan Hynson
Religions 2026, 17(7), 809; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17070809 - 7 Jul 2026
Viewed by 635
Abstract
The modern sound bath has emerged as a global wellness phenomenon, widely promoted as a practice for relaxation, healing, and spiritual transformation. Despite its rapid proliferation, a critical social–scientific analysis of this practice remains largely absent. This article addresses that gap by drawing [...] Read more.
The modern sound bath has emerged as a global wellness phenomenon, widely promoted as a practice for relaxation, healing, and spiritual transformation. Despite its rapid proliferation, a critical social–scientific analysis of this practice remains largely absent. This article addresses that gap by drawing on ethnomusicology, the study of music as cultural and social practice, to examine sound bath culture. Rather than locating efficacy in a decontextualized collection of instruments, reductive scientific or metaphysical explanations, or universalized techniques of “vibrational healing,” ethnomusicology provides essential tools for understanding the social life of sound healing. In this way, this article argues that the transformative potential of sound baths is better understood through the Greek Pythagorean concept of harmonia, or “fitting together,” in which sound operates in conjunction with ritual structure, meaning-making, and practitioner intention. By tracing the emergence of sound baths and situating them within broader comparative frameworks of ritual and sonic practice globally, this article demonstrates that spiritual transformation within a sound bath emerges not from sound alone, but from the integration of acoustic experience with context and interpretation. This article does not dismiss contemporary sound healing practices; rather, it offers a reframing of the practice as a cultural phenomenon, which opens the possibility for a more critically engaged approach to sound-based wellness practices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation)
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13 pages, 464 KB  
Article
Cantus Firmus and the Auditory Body: Reading Nicolai’s Chorale in BWV 140 as Traditionalization
by Seçil Soytok Nalçacı and Kutup Ata Tuncer
Religions 2026, 17(7), 751; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17070751 - 23 Jun 2026
Viewed by 271
Abstract
In the Lutheran church music tradition, the placement of pre-existing chorale melodies as cantus firmus in new compositions constitutes a stable compositional practice extending from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Musicological literature has generally treated this practice as a formal technique or [...] Read more.
In the Lutheran church music tradition, the placement of pre-existing chorale melodies as cantus firmus in new compositions constitutes a stable compositional practice extending from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Musicological literature has generally treated this practice as a formal technique or theological reference; however, neither its authoritative function nor its embedding within the auditory body of the congregation has been systematically examined within a theoretical framework. This study addresses this gap by taking Johann Sebastian Bach’s use of Philipp Nicolai’s 1599 chorale as cantus firmus in the opening chorale fantasia of Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme BWV 140, 1731 (Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying) as a two-layered analytical case. The study adopts Catherine Bell’s concept of ritualization as developed in Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1992) as its theoretical framework, operationalizing two specific analytical concepts from within this framework: traditionalization (the strategy of legitimizing the new by binding it to the authority of the old) and ritualized body (the embodied internalization of ritual practice). The first concept is employed to analyze the hierarchical contrast between the fixed cantus firmus position of Nicolai’s chorale and the mobility of the surrounding polyphony; the second is developed as an original analytical proposal examining how the chorale may function as a structural spine within the auditory body of the congregation. The article argues that Bach’s gesture of chorale placement can be understood not only as a musical technique or theological reminder, but as both a traditionalization act that strategically invokes inherited authority and a ritual structuring that may have been collectively experienced within the auditory body of the listening congregation. This reading proposes a new perspective on the cultural-strategic and embodied dimensions of compositional practices in Lutheran liturgical music research, and aims to contribute methodologically to the analytical study of Bach’s chorale cantatas at the intersection of ritual theory and musicology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation)
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35 pages, 365 KB  
Article
Sacred Harmony: Foundations and Challenges
by Guy L. Beck
Religions 2026, 17(5), 540; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17050540 - 30 Apr 2026
Viewed by 2776
Abstract
The concept of sacred harmony implies a set of relations between human beings and the natural order that include a divine or transcendental aspect. These types of correspondences as they relate to music are found among many of the ancient civilizations. In the [...] Read more.
The concept of sacred harmony implies a set of relations between human beings and the natural order that include a divine or transcendental aspect. These types of correspondences as they relate to music are found among many of the ancient civilizations. In the West, the principles of sacred harmony emerged in ancient Greece with Pythagoras and Plato, such that the implicit connections between philosophical thought and musical experience laid the groundwork for ideas of sacred harmony and the practices of tonal music that have shaped the development of Western music for centuries. In ancient India, the unity between human beings and the universe was understood through the concept of Brahman, the highest metaphysical truth that encompassed all reality. The spirituality of Indian classical music was based upon the tonal centricity of the sacred syllable of OM, the concept of Nāda-Brahman, Yoga philosophy, and divine aesthetic principles (rasa) embedded in the musical notes and scales handed down by generations of musicians and Gurus. This essay first outlines the basic foundational elements of sacred harmony with examples from ancient Greece and India, followed by particular challenges in the twentieth century imposed by Neo-Marxist thought, Gnosticism, and theosophy, and finally by a return to sacred harmony in the 1960s as reflected in popular music as well as in the proliferation of chant and music from India, each of which has attracted admirers seeking spiritual transformation via a musically ordered universe. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation)
16 pages, 247 KB  
Article
Technologies of Hypnagogia: Altered Perception and Religions in Avant-Garde Electronic Music
by Jason Bivins
Religions 2026, 17(3), 324; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17030324 - 5 Mar 2026
Viewed by 1066
Abstract
One important element of twentieth-century avant-garde composition is the intersection between advances in technology and transformations in religious consciousness and experience. This piece argues that the lineage from John Cage through Pierre Schaeffer, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, and William Basinski make [...] Read more.
One important element of twentieth-century avant-garde composition is the intersection between advances in technology and transformations in religious consciousness and experience. This piece argues that the lineage from John Cage through Pierre Schaeffer, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, and William Basinski make for a compelling addition to the study of religion and sound/music. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation)
41 pages, 3959 KB  
Article
Turkish Religious Music in the Funeral Ceremonies of Sufi Orders
by Mustafa DEMİRCİ
Religions 2025, 16(12), 1578; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16121578 - 15 Dec 2025
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2579
Abstract
In the history of Turkish-Islamic culture, every stage of human life—from birth to death—has been ritualized with profound symbolic and spiritual meanings. Turkish religious music has functioned as a fundamental element in these transitional phases, possessing both aesthetic and devotional dimensions. In individual [...] Read more.
In the history of Turkish-Islamic culture, every stage of human life—from birth to death—has been ritualized with profound symbolic and spiritual meanings. Turkish religious music has functioned as a fundamental element in these transitional phases, possessing both aesthetic and devotional dimensions. In individual rites of passage such as naming, circumcision, beginning school, and marriage, as well as in collective rituals such as bidding farewell to and welcoming Hajj pilgrims or observing religious days and nights, Turkish religious music has held a significant place. Confronting death—an inevitable and sorrowful reality of life—Turkish society has employed religious music as a consolatory and spiritually guiding medium, transforming it into a ritual mode of expression intended to soften the disruptive impact of death and to give meaning to the mourning process. Sufi order funerals represent one of the manifestations of this aesthetic depth. In this context, (Janāza) funeral ceremonies are not merely occasions of farewell but also rites of metaphysical acceptance and surrender. Since death is considered not an end but “wuṣlat,” that is, reunion with the Absolute Truth (al-Ḥaqq), within Sufi thought, the funeral rites of Sufi orders have been shaped accordingly. In Mawlawī, Bektāshī, Jarrahī, and Rifāʿī orders, not only the canonical funeral prayer (ṣalāt al-janāza) but also various forms of religious music are performed, imparting both aesthetic and spiritual depth to the ceremony. This study aims to examine the religious musical practices present in the funeral ceremonies of these four major Sufi orders, all of which have historically maintained a close relationship with music. A qualitative ritual-musicological approach has been adopted; semi-structured interviews were conducted with the Shaykh of the Rifāʿī order, the Zakirbaşı of the Jarrahī branch of the Khalwatī order, and a Dede of the Bektāshī order. The data sources of the study consist of interview materials, archival-based works, literature on the history of Sufism, sources on Turkish religious music, and digital recordings of Sufi orders’ funeral rituals. The limited number of interviews were analyzed through thematic analysis, while textual analysis and contextual interpretation were employed to examine in detail “the musical forms, thematic structures, performance contexts, and symbolic functions” present in these rituals. Preliminary findings indicate that the music unique to Sufi order funerals fulfills multiple functions, including “spiritual consolation, strengthening social solidarity, doctrinal expression of belief in the afterlife, and transforming mourning into a sacred experience.” The funeral traditions of the four orders examined possess distinctive musical structures, and these structures constitute an identifiable aesthetic form within the Ottoman and Turkish religious-musical tradition. It has also been determined that the repertory performed in Sufi orders’ funeral ceremonies is largely rooted in the tekke (Sufi lodge) musical tradition and that various forms of Turkish religious music are prominently represented in these rituals. This study has brought to light the religious musical repertory performed within the funeral rituals of Sufi orders—an area that has remained insufficiently explored to date—and has demonstrated that this repertory exerts positive psychosocial effects on both Sufi adherents and other participants in their approach to death. In this respect, the study sheds light on the repertory of Turkish religious music and offers an original contribution to the scholarly literature. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation)
13 pages, 267 KB  
Article
How Musical Is God?
by Susan Quindag
Religions 2025, 16(10), 1241; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16101241 - 28 Sep 2025
Viewed by 1798
Abstract
In 1973, British musician, social anthropologist, and ethnomusicologist John Blacking published his seminal work, How Musical is Man? In this book, Blacking describes his 1950s ethnographic study of the Venda people in South Africa, which explores how humans develop and interact with music. [...] Read more.
In 1973, British musician, social anthropologist, and ethnomusicologist John Blacking published his seminal work, How Musical is Man? In this book, Blacking describes his 1950s ethnographic study of the Venda people in South Africa, which explores how humans develop and interact with music. For this transcendent autoethnography, I transform Blacking’s book title into a transcendent research question and ask, “How musical is God?” Springboarding off four of Blacking’s principles, I answer this question from the perspective of a Christian and music educator who believes the Bible is the foundation of truth. I explore the mystery of God, humans, and music by referring to the account of the creation in Genesis 1 and 2 and other related verses in the Bible. The exploration encompasses the sonic order wisely created by God, the cognitive system that reflects humans as God’s image bearers, how music is structured reality for things unseen and necessary for faith, and beauty as a God-ordained component for rest. I conclude the paper by answering, “How musical is God?” by reconciling my response to biblical truth in the Christian tradition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Harmony: Music and Spiritual Transformation)
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