On music

"Albert Blackwell's The Sacred in Music makes a compelling case for the "sacramentality" of music itself. Tracing two distinctive Christian sacramental traditions, he draws on both the central theological claim of the Incarnation and the contemplative tradition linking music to silence. Music is sacramental in that it contains the mystery of the inexpressible depth of reality, yet makes it audible and palpable to human sense. Both of these dimensions, he claims, mirror the very idea of the self-incarnation of the invisible God in the physical world of time and space, perceived by human senses. Thus music in its depth dimension bears the sacred mystery of God, who is transcendent spirit, made flesh."

Don Saliers' Music and Theology, Abingdon 2007, p16