Theology, Philosophy, Psychology, and Music Part 2

 

Theology, Philosophy, Psychology, and Music Part 2

Psychology of Music is the study of the psychological and emotional processes of humans responses to: listening, playing, composing, arranging, and improvising music.  This discipline often utilizes empirical, computational, as well as theoretical methods to derive an understanding of how a person responds to music.  “Psychologists, computer scientists and musicologists all make contributions to this highly interdisciplinary research domain, and their research encompasses experimental work on music perception and cognition, computer modelling of human musical capacities, the social psychology of music, emotion and meaning in music, psychological processes in music therapy, the developmental psychology of music, music and consciousness, music and embodiment, and the neuroscience of music.” https://www.music.ox.ac.uk/research/disciplines/psychology-of-music/

          Although there is much disagreement about there being a connection between theology, philosophy, and psychology, these three disciplines do have connections to the study of how people respond to music that can assist the Christian musician in his or her quest for understanding secular sacred musicing.  The problem with all three of these three ways of studying music is that all of them can be so easily secularized.  Christians who write in all three of these disciplines are all susceptible to being squeezed into the world’s mold.  The way that the world thinks is many times convincing when the Christian musician forgets that the spirit of this age is not a friend of grace.