11. Spiritual Subjects

This chapter focusses on and explores the connection between the two core themes at the heart of the book’s research agenda: spirituality and music. Building on broad and intellectually informed definitions of musicking and spirituality, the chapter names three theological categories from the world of Christian theology – Grace, Trinity, and the Ascended Body of Christ – that help ground some commonly-perceived connections between the two, as well as various disciplinary fields from world of music study – musical semiotics, hermeneutics, and history – necessary to explore these connections further. From these preliminary considerations, the chapter makes a case for grounding research into music and spirituality on the source and subject of that work: the very person of the researcher. A reflexive and self-appropriated researcher is the foundation of all useful knowledge and the condition of possibility for its clarity and future development. Drawing on the categories of narrative, biography (Metz), the researcher “in conversion” (Lonergan), and a small test-group of reflective responses from scholars at work in this field, I suggest that more awareness of whence our interest in this field will help bridge gaps and advance our quest to understand music, spirituality and the spaces in-between.