Interview:

Music’s ability to evoke a wide range of moods is well attested, and feelings of spirituality can certainly be induced within individuals by the appropriate kind of music. Religious services traditionally have made extensive use of music to intensify the experience of worship, and we only have to consider the work of Bach to see how powerful the resultant effect can be. Even non-believers can find themselves emotionally very deeply affected by Bach’s masses. It may not be the mysteries of Christian religion that are brought to mind for such a group; more likely what the author Douglas Adams playfully referred to as “life, the universe, and everything”. But we are all disposed to such thoughts on occasion, and Bach is one of the most reliable prompts, at least for a Western listener. It is not only religiously-inspired music that can generate such a response, it can come from literally any musical style. To take just one case: followers of modern jazz will understand why John Coltrane would be singled out as an example of music which can create a riveting sense of the transcendental. There is even a church in San Francisco dedicated to Coltrane, where his records are, quite literally, worshipped. Professed atheists would not want to go so far as that, but would appreciate that music of this kind can take us beyond mundane considerations and into the realm of the creative imagination. It is in that realm that most of us in a secular society will come across experiences that could be classified as spiritual or transcendental, and music is simply one of the best sources.

“Can take us beyond mundane considerations and into the realm of the creative imagination.”
– Stuart Sim, author of “Manifesto For Silence: Confronting The Politics And Culture Of Noise”