Interview:

The spiritual significance of music is a particularly difficult topic for a music theorist like myself. You see, as a Christian, I certainly believe in the spirituality of music. Yet the things that most people call “spiritual” in music, I can usually discount. For example, most of the musical elements that people call spiritual within a piece of music are easily identifiable as being the natural results of certain vertical sonorities, specific and predictable combinations of harmonies and rhythmic complexities, or can be explained by the principals of association; certain musical sounds “remind” the listener of certain spiritual associations from the listener’s life. In other words, a music theorist is the spoiler of such a question. What most people call spiritual in music we simply explain in the most natural and boring of terms. Nevertheless, I know that there is much within the musical world that can only be defined as spiritual. I think we are on safer ground when referring to the concept of inspiration. When I hear a Beethoven sonata or a Brahms symphony, it is clear that God divinely inspired the composer to create those specific combinations of musical ideas. It is as if the Lord wanted us to have a glimpse of the heavenly world to come. He gives us music in this natural and temporal world, so that we might have a taste for, and hunger after, the spiritual world that will never end.

“[God] gives us music in this natural and temporal world, so that we might have a taste for, and hunger after, the spiritual world that will never end.”
– Dr. Patrick Kavanaugh, author of “Spiritual Lives Of The Great Composers”