Resonating Sacralities: Dynamics between Religion and the Arts in Postsecular Netherlands 9783110559255, 9783110558241

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
2 The Field: Musica Sacra Maastricht
3 Revisiting the Sacred
4 Intertwinements of Religion, Culture, and Heritage
5 Last of the Mohicans: Discourses of Differentiation
6 Curse of the Fire Dance: Ritual and Performance
7 Between Sound and Silence: A Fragile Sacred
8 Conclusions
Appendix A. Annual Festival Themes
Appendix B. Ethnography
Appendix C. Three Groups of Participants
Appendix D. Fieldwork Concert Attendance
Appendix E. Data processing
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Lieke Wijnia Resonating Sacralities

Religion and Society

Edited by Gustavo Benavides, Frank J. Korom, Karen Ruffle and Kocku von Stuckrad

Volume 80

Lieke Wijnia

Resonating Sacralities Dynamics between Religion and the Arts in Postsecular Netherlands

ISBN 978-3-11-055824-1 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-055925-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-055828-9 ISSN 1437-5370 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947451 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

In loving memory of Piety Wijnia-Mollema (1954– 2015) I’m not religious But I feel so moved Makes me want to pray - Madonna, Nothing Fails

Contents Acknowledgements

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 . . . .

Introduction 1 Religion and the Arts 3 6 Postsecular Intertwinements The Sacred in Music 10 Perceptions of the Sacred 13

 . . . . . . .. ..

The Field: Musica Sacra Maastricht 20 (Inter)national Context 20 History 22 24 Organization Program 26 Theoretical Considerations 29 31 Methodological Considerations A Festival as Research Site 32 Three Groups of Participants 34

 . . .. .. .. . .

Revisiting the Sacred 37 Substantive vs. Situational Sacreds 37 Exploring the Situational Sacred 41 41 Two Typologies Building Blocks of the Sacred 45 Discursive Feature 47 The Set-Apart 51 Between the Sacred and Music 54

 . .. . .. .. .. ..

Intertwinements of Religion, Culture, and Heritage Transfer of the Sacred 60 Between Presence and Likeness 65 Negotiations between Religion and the Secular Religious Habitus 70 Habitus and Culture 73 Communication 77 Material Religion and Heritage 83

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Contents

Persistence of Religion 89 Performers’ Associations with Sacred Music Visitors’ Use of Religious Terminology 93 Between Conservation and Innovation 98 Translation: Back to LUTHER 101

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 . . . .. .. .. .. .. . .

Last of the Mohicans: Discourses of Differentiation 111 Community Relationality 114 Dynamics of In- and Exclusion 117 118 Difference Quality 124 Negotiating Quality 129 133 Aesthetics Audience 134 Festival as Contact Zone 137 143 Discourses that Set Apart

 . . . . . .. .. .. ..

Curse of the Fire Dance: Ritual and Performance The Lens of Ritual 149 152 Conceptualizing Ritual Relating Art and Ritual 156 Ritual as Artistic Performance 158 163 Festival: A Ritual Form A Situation of Contrast 165 Performance of Particular Behavior 167 Individual and Collective Identities 171 Orientation on Meaning 173

 . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . .

Between Sound and Silence: A Fragile Sacred A Turn Within 180 Modes of Listening 182 Text and Sound 187 Physicality and Place 191 The Implications of Art Music 196 Experience and Interpretation 198 The Attribution of Meaning 201 What Music Conveys 204 Reflection 207 Conditions 210

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Contents

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Experience of Time 217 Musical Time Festival Time 219

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Conclusions 222 223 Relating Difference Paradox of the Sacred 226 228 Variety in Religion Comparing Sacralities 230

Appendix A. Annual Festival Themes Appendix B. Ethnography Participant Observation Sensory Ethnography Interviews 241

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236 237 238

Appendix C. Three Groups of Participants Program Committee 243 Audience Members 244 246 Performers

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Appendix D. Fieldwork Concert Attendance 248 248 2012: Rites & Rituals 2013: Introspection, Transformation, Conversion 2014: The Awe-inspiring 250 Appendix E. Data processing 252 Acknowledging Subjectivities 252 Processing Data 253 Relation to Theoretical Framework 256 References to Data Set in the Text 257 Bibliography 258 Primary Sources 258 Secondary Sources 259 Index

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Acknowledgements Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore features an intriguing dialogue. ‘Do you think music has the power to change people? Like you listen to a piece and go through some major change inside?’ Oshima nodded. ‘Sure, that can happen. We have an experience – like a chemical reaction – that transforms something inside us. When we examine ourselves later on, we discover that all the standards we’ve lived by have shot up another notch and the world’s opened up in unexpected ways. Yes, I’ve had that experience. Not often, but it has happened. It’s like falling in love.’

I have had the privilege of people sharing profound experiences with me in the context of the research project from which this book results. Experiences that do not happen often, but when they do these experiences can be transformational. I am indebted to the research participants who were willing to share their experiences and thoughts with me. First, the program committee of festival Musica Sacra Maastricht for welcoming me into their midst: Sylvester Beelaert, Stijn Boeve, Fons Dejong, Jacques Giesen, Jos Leussink, and Russell Postema. After finishing my fieldwork and writing up the dissertation, I was invited to become a member of the festival’s program committee. I gladly took up this task for several years, followed by membership of the festival’s supervisory board. Through these various roles the festival has become a fixed and enriching part of my ritual year. I also thank the members from the festival audience for opening up to me about what being at Musica Sacra Maastricht meant to them: Cees and Atie, Cunera, Elly, Han, Jacob, Margot, and (under pseudonym) Ann, Mildred, and Vivienne. And, not in the least, thanks to the performers, for answering my questions about performing at the festival and so much more: Sid Clemens, Michael Finnissy, Andreas Gaida, Hans Leenders, Titus Muizelaar, Jonathan Powell, Jesse Rodin, Mike Svoboda, Boudewijn Tarenskeen, Miguel Trigo Moran and Marcel Verheggen. I extend my gratitude to all for their trust in the project and willingness to let me ask questions about matters of great value. Without their participation, this research would not have been possible. The research began in late 2011 as a Ph.D project at Tilburg University. Martin Hoondert established the groundwork for the project. Together with Paul Post, they supervised my dissertation until the defense in 2016. I am grateful for their guidance and advice along the way. I also extend my thanks to defense committee members Odile Heynders, Anders Petersen, Martijn Oosterbaan, and Ruth Illman. Several of their examination questions have accompanied me in the revision process from dissertation into this book. The dissertation received the second prize in the annual Ph.D thesis awards of Tilburg University – I thank https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-001

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the award committee for this honor. Still in dissertation form, my research was warmly welcomed to De Gruyter’s Religion and Society series by editor Sophie Wagenhofer. I thank Sophie for her tremendous patience with me along this journey. I received useful feedback from two anonymous reviewers, whom I thank for their invested time and effort. Katrin Mittmann’s editorial assistance was invaluable, as well as Katharina Ehlgen’s, in the final stage of making this book a reality. I am grateful for the institutions that have supported me with grants and prizes, enabling my research projects from Ph.D into postdoctoral stage. First and foremost, the Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences at Tilburg University for funding the Ph.D project. Additionally, I received financial support along the way from the Aarhus University Fund; Centre for Religion and Heritage, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at University of Groningen; Rocky Mountain College, Billings Mt.; Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park; Teylers Theological Society; Gladstone’s Library; and the Sormanifonds. The best part about doing research is working with knowledgeable, encouraging, and supportive colleagues, whom I not only encountered in university departments and at academic conferences, but also in museums, heritage institutions, and on social media. My work has benefitted one way or other from interaction with theirs: Allard Amelink, Joanne Anderson, Jonathan Anderson, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, William Arfman, Inge Basteleur, Suzanne van der Beek, James Bielo, Mary Bouquet, Petra Carlsson-Redell, Mathilde van Dijk, Annabel Dijkema, Michelle Fletcher, Uffe Holmsgaard-Eriksen, Rianneke van der Houwen-Jelles, Jacobine Gelderloos, Laurie Faro, Guido van Hengel, Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, Andrew Irving, Hans Janssen, David Janssens, Laurens ten Kate, Dominik Klein, Tanja Kootte, Micha Leeflang, Puk Leering, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Brenda Mathijssen, Nausikaa El-Mecky, Marieke Meijers, Birgit Meyer, Marie Vejrup-Nielsen, Aniko Ouweneel-Tóth, S. Brent Plate, Wouter Prins, Sally Promey, Ben Quash, Simone Regouin, Agmar van Rijn, Carolyn Rosen, Marieke van Schijndel, Inez Schippers, Dimph Schreurs, Dan Siedell, Adrienne Simons, Daniel Soars, Frank van der Velden, Alain Verheij, Katja Weitering, and Tijana Zakula. Three colleagues I would like to thank in particular, for being ongoing and encouraging conversation partners over the past years: Naomi Billingsley, Aaron Rosen, and Todd Weir. With much gratitude to you all. This book is dedicated to my mother, who witnessed the beginning of my Ph.D research, but not the end. The thought of how she would have appreciated the publication of this book, while heartbreaking, I also experience like a loving embrace. I received enduring love and encouragement from my father Jan, my

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brother Sybren, and my husband Erik. For this, I thank them from the bottom of my heart. For my 2015 research stay at Aarhus University, my parents gave me a Stefan Hertmans novel, in which religion and the state of contemporary society are prominent topics. That novel inspired the motto for this book. The cited worldfamous singer, named after a religious maternal archetype, aptly put into words a prominent feature of the zeitgeist in which my research took place. ‘I’m not religious, but…’ May the music last till the very end.

1 Introduction After the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam reopened in 2012 following a yearslong closure and redevelopment, its main slogan was ‘Meet the icons of modern art.’ As one of the major modern and contemporary art museums of The Netherlands, its activities and collection displays centered around the greats of modern art, artists whose works were presented as such to the public. The museum’s slogan produced a mutual reinforcement between the status of the museum itself and the artists of which it holds works in the collection. Resonating names like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol, and Barnett Newman reflect in turn on the quality of the museum itself. They are artists who have been, and still are, seen as undeniable iconic artists. However, early 2021 museum director Rein Wolfs could be seen scraping off the museum’s slogan from its façade.¹ Within not even ten years after the grand reopening, the slogan was deemed to have become redundant and old-fashioned. It was seen to be representative of an outdated approach to art history, one that purports a comprehensive selection of canonical artists and artworks and a defined (predominantly white and male) sense of artistic genius. By scraping the slogan from the façade, the museum meant to demonstrate its commitment to a renewed approach to art history: an approach with more attention for previously non-canonical, forgotten, or ignored artists and voices in art. This commitment also represented another mode of curatorial work. Rather than top-down, what is relevant and important to be displayed in the museum was from then on decided from a more bottom-up approach, in conversation with representatives of previously ignored or excluded groups. This new mode of curating, so is the ideal, will transform the museum from a site of presentation into one of representation. While for the Stedelijk Museum the notion of icons was no longer deemed relevant, just one year before the Kunsthalle in Bremen, Germany staged a major exhibition titled Icons: Adoration and Worship. In this exhibition, its departure point was to explore ‘how the concept of the icon unites aspects of worship, the sacred, and the idea of transcendence’² from a transhistorical perspective. The exhibited objects ranged from Byzantine icons to modern and contemporary artworks and explored how a particular sense of power or presence was commu-

 Hans den Hartog Jager, “Autonome Kunst heeft Afgedaan. Lang Leve de nieuwe Super AvantGarde!,” NRC, 20.01. 2021. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/01/20/autonome-kunst-heeft-afge daan-leve-de-nieuwe-super-avant-garde-a4028308.  Aaron Rosen, “Curator’s Corner: Eva Fischer-Hausdorf,” Image Journal, 102 (2020). https:// imagejournal.org/article/curators-corner-eva-fischer-hausdorf/. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-002

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nicated through artistic objects. The iconic was not only interpreted in terms of religion or spirituality, but also in terms of what philosopher Walter Benjamin has called aura. ³ It considered the iconic in relation to the subject matter of the artworks, reception histories of the artists, and the dynamics of interaction between artwork and viewer. The exhibition showed works of artists that were also part of the Stedelijk Museum’s former characterization of iconic: Kandinsky, Mondrian, Warhol, Newman, as well as Kazimir Malevich, Marcel Duchamp, and Mark Rothko. Yet, another sense of the iconic could be found in for instance photographs from Thomas Struth’s Hermitage series (2005), in which he portrayed museum visitors looking at iconic artworks on display in the Russian museum.⁴ Part of the Kunsthalle’s broad conceptual approach to the iconic was the method of display. Each room in the galleries showed just one work of art (or a small group of related works), to enhance a potentially intense experience between viewer and artwork. “With this show, [the curators] want[ed] to transform the museum into a place of reflection and contemplation.”⁵ These events at the Stedelijk Museum and Kunsthalle Bremen demonstrate different responses to the notion of the iconic. However, both center around the process of sacralization, a process which the iconic entails. This sense of sacralization became troubling for the Stedelijk Museum for being exclusionary and not allowing room for a larger picture. Kunsthalle Bremen embraced it to its full potential for its comparative potential. It also aimed for a connective dimension. This was emphasized in the exhibition design, by staging the displayed artworks in their own rooms, facilitating a one-on-one experience between artwork and viewer. The relationship between artwork and viewer was just as much part of the exhibition’s approach to the iconic, as was the symbolic power attributed to the artworks and their makers themselves. While the intention of the Stedelijk Museum might have been to move away from subscribing to a canonical approach to art history that prefers particular selections of artists over others, in doing so the museum could not deny the power it can exert over artworks when these are displayed in their halls. Curatorial work is selective work, through selection a sense of sacralization occurs. ‘Understood as a political-aes-

 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, trans. Jim A. Underwood, Great Ideas 56 (London: Penguin, 2008), 7.  Eva-Maria Troelenberg, “Images of the Art Museum. Connecting Gaze and Discourse in the History of Museology: An Introduction,” in Images of the Art Museum: Connecting Gaze and Discourse in the History of Museology, ed. Eva-Maria Troelenberg (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017), 12– 13.  Aaron Rosen, “Curator’s Corner: Eva Fischer-Hausdorf,” Image Journal, 102 (2020). https:// imagejournal.org/article/curators-corner-eva-fischer-hausdorf/, retrieved online 14.03. 2021.

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thetic practice (…), sacralization involves concrete acts of selecting, setting apart, designing, fashioning, and inscribing cultural forms as heritage.’⁶ Even when this process of selection works in a more inclusive, bottom-up manner, and selected artists and works are of different nature from before, still, when these works eventually are on display, they are attributed a sense of iconic – or even sacred – status. By its explicitly presented changed way of working, the Stedelijk Museum expressed the aim to expand the scope of where it might find artists and artworks worth sacralizing in their own halls. Its sacralizing power seems to be precisely the reason why the museum expanded their scope in curating and exhibiting.

1.1 Religion and the Arts The events in the Stedelijk Museum and Kunsthalle Bremen reflect a dynamic and pluriform relationship between art and the sacred in contemporary society. It is a relationship that was actively redirected by the Stedelijk Museum, while the Kunsthalle embraced its full scope. It is a relationship that reaches far beyond these two particular institutions, into public cultural and heritage spaces at large. Since the late eighteenth-century up to the present, museums have been called the new churches⁷ and libraries alternatives to cathedrals.⁸ These sites are accompanied by concert halls, as music is regarded as potential substitute for religion.⁹ Such cultural public spaces, or cultural technologies as sociologist Tony Bennett called them,¹⁰ are deemed to function as sites that simultaneously monitor, educate, and elevate the people that make use of them. For its users these sites have the potential to offer a wealth of historical and contemporary artistic production, as sites of education and discovery. Due to the sacralizing

 Birgit Meyer and Marleen De Witte, “Heritage and the Sacred: Introduction,” Material Religion, 9.3 (2015): 280.  Jason Farago, “Why Museums are the New Churches,” BBC Culture, 16.07. 2015. http://www. bbc.com/culture/story/20150716-why-museums-are-the-new-churches.  “Bibliotheken zijn de Kathedralen van Nu.” Interview with Francine Houben, in Met het Oog op Morgen, Radio 1, 29.11. 2015. http://www.npo.nl/nos-met-het-oog-op-morgen/29-11-2015/RBX_ NOS_710429/RBX_NOS_2692007.  Heidi Blake, “Music ‘is replacing Religion’ says Academic,” The Telegraph, 25.03. 2010. http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/7511834/Music-is-replacing-religion-says-aca demic.html; Michael Graziano, “Why is Music a Religious Experience?” Huffington Post, 15.08. 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-graziano/why-is-mozart-a-religious_b_875352.html.  Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum. History, Theory, Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).

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power of cultural institutions, these have been easily and quickly compared with religious institutions. This comparison between art and religion, between cultural institutions and churches often tends to go one way. It stresses how art is the new religion, how museums are the new temples. The implications of this comparison are legion. It means that artists, writers, and composers take over the roles of priests and prophets – something director Rein Wolfs of the Stedelijk Museum openly distanced himself from, by rejecting the notion of iconic artists in his future activities. It means that visitors and audiences display the same behavior as devotees and pilgrims. While in the public domain these comparisons are often easily made, academic research is still exploring what this equation between art and religion actually entails and to what extent it can move beyond these popular comparative and replacement theses. What does it mean when we say the concert hall is the new temple? Is a composer able to convey a prophetic voice in the composition process? And is concert attendance really the twenty-first-century equivalent of hiking a pilgrimage trail like the Camino to Santiago de Compostela? Two implications of the comparison between art and religion are pressing. The first is the assumption that art and religion are interchangeable, that we are talking about two of the same kind. In this formulation, they supposedly serve similar purposes and address a similar potential audience. Due to transforming societal conditions throughout modernity, the spiritual demands of this audience transformed accordingly, which religious institutions could apparently no longer fully cater for. This brings us to the second implication of the comparison: the use of the adjective new implies that religion has disappeared and has been replaced with art. Out with the old, in with the new. Two questions follow from these implications: first, if the arts function as alternative source for religion and the spiritual in the public domain, where does this leave the beliefs, rituals, and objects of institutionalized religious traditions? These do not simply just disappear. Religious institutions possess objects that are not seldomly regarded as art and heritage, by a wide variety of cultural institutions and audiences, religious or not. This leads to the second question: what happens when art and religion encounter one another in newly created, performed, and presented practices? As the comparison between art and religion often sees art as replacement for religious practices, it tends to ignore how religion is – and has always been – imbued with artistic practices. Ever since art has become regarded as an independent entity from religion,¹¹

 This will be further discussed in Chapter 4, drawing from the work of Hans Belting, partic-

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it has been attributed the ability to replace religion. However, the interrelationship between the two has always existed, still does, and will continue to do so – however religious presence in societal contexts might change. Exemplary of this interrelationship is how contemporary religious sites like churches and monasteries present and display their histories, heritage, and collections in treasuries or temporary exhibitions. Religious organizations also increasingly host cultural activities, like art exhibitions, lectures, or concerts – and invite artists to make new work in response to their sites.¹² It results in a view of a much more complex interrelationship between institutions of art and religion than the equation or replacement theses would have it. To move beyond the equation and replacement theses, I approach the relationship between art and religion as inspired by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance.¹³ Art and religion are related, but not identical. Comparisons between practices taking place under these two terms are in order, but differences should not be ignored. Instead of looking at the accuracy of equation and replacement theses, from this perspective it becomes more valuable to look at the reasons why these theses are used at all. Why have they emerged in secularizing contexts and why does their use seem to be increasing over the past years? What is the contemporary resonance of the dynamics between art and religion? This book is rooted in the understanding it is not a simple matter of art as secular activity (an assertion in itself that is questioned throughout this book) that replaces religion. Rather it argues for a reciprocal, resonating relationship between art and religion as sacralized forms.¹⁴ The analysis developed over the course of this book explores the interrelationship between practices of art and religion, their resonating, intertwined, and transformed manifestations in a contemporary context. A central line of argumentation is how arts and heritage allow for a continued presence of religion in secularizing societies.

ularly Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press: 1994).  E. g. Joost de Wal, ed., Hedendaagse Kunst in Nederlandse Kerken 1900 – 2015. Van Jan Dibbets tot Tinkebell (Eindhoven, Amsterdam: Lecturis, 2015); Contemporary Art in British Churches (London: Art and Christianity Enquiry, 2010).  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (London: Blackwell, 1999 [1953]) 32.  I use the terminology of resonance between art and religion to emphasize the ways in which these two factors relate and respond to each other, as well as how they both relate to the world at large. Their relationship, subject to transformation as it may be, has a character of prolongation through reflection – a notion to me expressed with the musical term of resonance. A broader theoretical approach to resonance can be found in Hartmut Rosa, Resonance. A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, trans. James Wagner (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021 [2016]).

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This research is grounded in the study of religion, in order to explore the functions of art, with a focus on classical music, in contemporary culture. And vice versa, it looks at artistic and heritage practices in order to shed light on the place of religion in contemporary, particularly secularized, Dutch culture. To achieve this aim, I conducted research at a site that very directly deals with the interrelatedness of art, religion, and the secular. A site where these notions, and practices performed in their name, meet and merge into things anew: the annual Dutch arts festival Musica Sacra Maastricht.

1.2 Postsecular Intertwinements Since modern time, religion is often regarded as a restrictive, repressive, or inconvenient feature in artistic practices.¹⁵ This perspective is influenced by dominant secularization narratives in which art is a separated and independent entity from religious institutions. However, modernity did not simply foster art as a site of the secular in order to replace religion. In accordance with the efforts of many colleagues in the field of art and religion, it is my aim to contribute to the ongoing work on the understanding of religion (and its related notion of spirituality) in modern and contemporary arts.¹⁶ After all, if the notion and understanding of religion itself is a topic of continuous scrutiny in its own field,¹⁷ its relation to the arts cannot be understood in static terms of replacement or equation. Rather, its relatedness needs to be explored in a reciprocal and mutual manner. And the contexts in which these reciprocal and mutual relations are shaped and  James Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).  E. g. Jonathan A. Anderson, William A. Dyrness, Modern Art and The Life of A Culture. The Religious Impulses of Modernism (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016); Rina Arya, “Contemplations of the Spiritual in Visual Art,” Journal for the Study of Spirituality 1.1 (2011): 76 – 93; Eleanor Heartney, Postmodern Heretics. The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art (New York: Midmarch Art Press, 2014); Maria Hlavajova, Sven Lütticken and Jill Winder, eds., The Return of Religion and Other Myths. A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art (Utrecht and Rotterdam: BAK, Post-editions, 2009); Sally Promey, “The ‘Return’ of Religion in the Scholarship of American Art,” The Art Bulletin 85.3 (2003): 581– 603; Charlene Spretnak, The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art. Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).  The scholarly debate about the use and relevance of religion as a concept is ongoing. Jonathan Z. Smith famously argued how religion is a construct purely invented by and for scholars in their academic endeavors. See: Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion. From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988 [1982]). A more recent example of this debate can be found with Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).

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performed. Both art and religion never take place in a vacuum, but are very much related to, based on, and interacting with socio-cultural environments. In the contextualization of the interrelationship between art and religion, I will use the theoretical framework of the postsecular. The research field of Musica Sacra Maastricht reflects the intertwinement of religion and the secular,¹⁸ as proposed by the postsecular. It offers an intertwinement in which art and religion meet, co-exist, and tend to merge into something new. The conception of such intertwinements between religion and the secular is grounded in the theoretical framework of the postsecular.¹⁹ This concept has seen a large flight over the past years and has been applied in a variety of academic disciplines. This has led to substantial criticism on its use in relation to a wide variety of topics, including conflicting phenomena.²⁰ Yet, the large flight of the postsecular simultaneously demonstrates the need and wish for a conceptual way beyond secularization theories.²¹ The impact of secularization narratives can be recognized in the above described comparison between art and religion, both in the replacement and the equation theses. Rather than reinforcing how religion is disappearing and potentially replaced by alternative phenomena, the notion of the postsecular draws attention to religion’s enduring albeit transformed manifestations in western societies. Although such societies have political and legal structures that are of secular nature, religion remains very much present in socio-cultural structures. The postsecular does not posit that the secular is a feature of a bygone era, or that religion has overtaken the secular as dominant feature in societal structures. As I see it, it rather wants to draw attention to, and find a vocabulary for, the enduring presence of religion and how it interacts with non-religious, secular, or civil counterparts in the public domain. The Netherlands offers relevant examples of this tendency indicated by the postsecular. The country strongly and swiftly secularized during the twentieth century, with fast-declining rates of church attendance and affiliation with reli-

 In this project, the terminology of the secular is used to indicate that which is not predominantly determined by religion or from which religion is actively banned.  Arie L. Molendijk, “In Pursuit of the Postsecular,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 76.2 (2011): 100 – 115.  James A. Beckford, “SSSR Presidential Address. Public Religions and the Post-Secular: Critical Reflections,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51.1 (2012): 1– 19.  Molendijk, “In Pursuit of the Postsecular”; Herman Paul, Secularisatie, Elementaire Deeltjes 59 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018); Lieke Wijnia, “Beyond the Return of Religion: Art and the Postsecular,” Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and the Arts (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018).

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1 Introduction

gious institutions. Recent research showed how between 2012 and 2017 religious affiliation steadily declined. By 2017, more than half of the Dutch population selfidentified as non-religious: 51 % percent of the population did not affiliate itself with a religious institution or a spiritual movement.²² Within the 49 percent that self-identified as religious, Catholics took up 24 percent, Protestants 15 percent, and Muslims 4 percent. The remaining 5 percent consisted of people who identified with other types of religious or spiritual movements.²³ Declining adherence to Christian faith, church attendance, and church membership are ongoing trends.²⁴ However, this does not mean there is no place for Christianity, its institutions, and its heritage in Dutch society.²⁵ On the contrary, as is argued in this book. In addition to confessional manifestations that have taken on a minority character, the societal orientation on religion has become strongly cultural. The postsecular take on religion includes this cultural perspective. Exemplary for this perspective in Dutch society is the governmental taskforce Toekomst Religieus Erfgoed (Future Religious Heritage). This taskforce concerns itself with devising a sustainable future for religious sites that are no longer used for its original function, or religious sites in need of multiple usage in order to survive.²⁶ The taskforce actively encourages municipalities to bring together religious and civil parties, in order to set-up a plan for church sites in local contexts. In the post-WWII decades church buildings, which were no longer used for religious practices, were largely demolished to make way for other built environments.²⁷ Nowadays, this attitude has turned around. The importance for the national context and local communities of the built religious heritage, the objects these sites house, and their history is reinforced time and again. This outlook makes conservation and repurposing crucial topics in locally fostered discussions. It actively places the notion of cultural heritage in, what sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger has called, the chain of memory that religion consti-

 Hans Schmeets, Wie is religieus, en wie niet? CBS Statistische Trends (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek: 2018), 9.  Idem, 14. While Catholics made up the largest group of affiliates, the study demonstrated that among Protestants active church attendance was much higher than among Catholics.  Ton Bernts and Joantine Berghuijs, God in Nederland 1966 – 2015 (Utrecht: Ten Have, 2016), 219.  Justin Kroesen, Yme Kuiper, Pieter Nanninga (eds.), Religie en Cultuur in hedendaags Nederland. Observaties en Interpretaties (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2010).  Jacobine Gelderloos, Sporen van God in het Dorp. Nieuwe Perspectieven voor Kerken op het Platteland (Utrecht: Kok Boekencentrum, 2018); Elza Kuyk, “Multiple Used Church Building and Religious Communities,” Religious Matters in an Entangled World, 06.09. 2017, https://religiousmatters.nl/multiple-used-church-buildings-and-religious-communities/  Wies van Leeuwen, De Verdwenen Kerken van Noord-Brabant (Zwolle: WBooks, 2017).

1.2 Postsecular Intertwinements

9

tutes.²⁸ As will be discussed later, these cultural and heritage takes on religion not just preserve religious history, but even more so transform and adapt it to changing circumstances. The most important differences in the treatment of religious sites and their heritage from the second half of the twentieth-century rest, first, in the acknowledgement of the enduring importance of these sites and their histories, even if they are no longer used for their original religious functions, and, second, in the involvement of both faith and civil partners in deciding on a sustainable future for these sites. In the twenty-first century, religion has gained a fundamental part in the national conception of cultural heritage, not least reflected in the fact that the taskforce is operated by the Rijksdienst Cultureel Erfgoed (National Heritage Agency). Notably, one of the taskforce programs focused on the use of contemporary art in revitalizing religious heritage.²⁹ In this pilot program during November 2019, projects in various artistic disciplines took place in seven churches across The Netherlands. Although within the taskforce it was a pilot project, the interaction of contemporary art and religious sites is a widespread phenomenon in The Netherlands.³⁰ While Musica Sacra Maastricht is more elaborately discussed in the next chapter, it is worth introducing here how the festival embodies the notion of the postsecular in at least three ways. First, the festival is a partnership between the civil organization of the Maastricht theater that initiates and produces the festival and various church and cultural organizations with which activities are organized. Second, the committee responsible for the festival program takes the notion of the sacred as its departure point, which the committee interprets in terms of both religious and secular sacrality.³¹ Third, this approach results in a festival program that consists of artistic performances dealing with religious and secular or non-religious art, particularly music. These performances take place in religious and other types of cultural heritage sites. As such, the festival brings into contact civil and non-religious groups with religious partners,

 Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans. Simon Lee (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).  Joost de Wal, “Kunst en Kerk hervinden Elkaar,” Toekomst Religieus Erfgoed, 11.01. 2021, https://toekomstreligieuserfgoed.nl/nieuws/kerk-en-kunst-hervinden-elkaar.  Joost de Wal, ed., Hedendaagse Kunst in Nederlandse Kerken 1900 – 2015. Van Jan Dibbets tot Tinkebell (Eindhoven, Amsterdam: Lecturis, 2015).  In scholarship the secular sacred is often interpreted through the lens of national and political affinity. See: Markus Balkenhol, Ernst van den Hemel, Irene Stengs, eds., The Secular Sacred. Emotions of Belonging and the Perils of Nation and Religion, Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

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1 Introduction

performances, and sites by using the notion of the sacred as departure point. While the conceptualization of the sacred is discussed in Chapter 3, the next paragraph introduces relevant theoretical considerations regarding the sacred in relation to music.

1.3 The Sacred in Music The academic treatment of the sacred in relation to music is dominated by the genre of sacred music. This genre implies music written with religious subject matter or sources of inspiration in mind, or music composed for use in liturgical contexts. Yet the concept of the sacred has a larger theoretical potential than as an indicator of the relationship between religion and music. While this potential will be further explored in Chapter 3, for now I would like to focus on two publications in order to convey a first conception of the challenge of loosening the ties between the sacred music genre and the study of the sacred in music. In 2014 theologian Jonathan Arnold published the book Sacred Music in Secular Society. ³² As the title implies, this book seeks to explore the contemporary function of sacred music. In an increasingly secularizing western world the genre of sacred music seems to remain significance and popularity. While people are less and less likely to encounter sacred music as part of religious institutions’ liturgical calendars, they are more likely to become familiar with it during concerts or by means of listening to CD recordings or radio broadcasts.³³ Arnold observed, ‘Our so-called “secular” society is apparently saturated with the sacred and thus I am intrigued by the issue of what sacred music means for people today.”³⁴ He furthermore stated: [T]he popularity of sacred music today presents the opportunity to invite people back to faith who may confuse it with organized, institutional religion. Truly great music, then, whatever the intentions of the composer or context in which it is performed, is ‘sacred’ to the degree that it directs us away from the ego, and which brings a wide appeal because it speaks to a humanity united by shared frailty, doubt, and a desire to admire something transcendent; and in this regard it is a remarkably durable vehicle in which to convey the message of faith, or at least mystery.³⁵

 Jonathan Arnold, Sacred Music in Secular Society (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).  Richard Fairman, “Sacred Music experiences a Revival. New Works are in Demand, despite Religion’s Decline in the West,” Financial Times, 05.12. 2014. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ 2f0d793e-7a2e-11e4-9b34-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3LdLCqQp0.  Arnold, Sacred Music in Secular Society, 2.  Idem, 11.

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11

While Arnold touched upon the possibility of a broader appeal of the notion of the sacred, he limited his project to the study of Western Christian music. By doing so he maintained a binary view of the sacred as opposite of the secular. He positioned religious institutions and their spiritual musical traditions as opposite to secular society in which these institutions have a place. I would argue it is valuable to move away from thinking in binary opposites and use a broader approach to the sacred. This is of use in the understanding of the (potentially sacred) significance of music in both religious and secular domains. It implies an attempt at the inclusion yet simultaneously reaching beyond the sacred music genre, in the development of an argument for the relevance of the notion of the sacred in relation to all musical domains. An attempt to achieve such a broad, non-binary approach to the notion of the sacred in relation to music was presented by scholar in the study of religion Christopher Partridge, in The Lyre of Orpheus. Popular Music, the Sacred, and the Profane. ³⁶ Published in late 2013, Partridge offered an exploration of what he designated as the “fundamentally transgressive” nature of popular music.³⁷ While Arnold focused on the celebratory side of the sacred, Partridge rather focused on its taboo side. He aptly demonstrated how popular music, in his case alternative popular music, is capable of performing edgework. Functioning from a cultural periphery, music is able to challenge and influence the celebrated mainstream at the center. This double-sided character of the sacred has been theorized in terms of the pure (celebrated) and the impure (taboo) sacred.³⁸ Both sides reinforce each other, without the pure there can be no impure and vice versa. Partridge argued how music, through the establishment of affective space in which emotions can be invested and cultivated, invites for the possible challenging and overthrowing of the status quo. While at the beginning of his book, he decided to park the notion of religion, in order to explore the impure capabilities of music, in the final chapter he returned to it. This move demonstrates the importance and complexity of the role of religion in formulating a broad approach to the sacred. Even in his expansion from the study of religion into cultural stud-

 Christopher Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus. Popular Music, The Sacred, and The Profane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).  Idem, 5.  Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2002 [1996]); Mary Douglas & Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Kim Knott, The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (London: Equinox, 2005).

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1 Introduction

ies, Partridge could not avoid a discussion of religion.³⁹ The discussion of the relationship between popular music and religion has a largely comparative character. In his discussion of music lovers Partridge touched upon the resemblance to devotional behavior, while also emphasizing the complex relationship between the concept of religion and the practices in the field. [They] resist the idea that their behavior is “religious” – perhaps to a sensitivity to the notion of “religion” in what they perceive to be a secular culture or perhaps because of a sensitivity to the notion of “idolatry” within a Christian culture – nevertheless, in their veneration of a particular celebrity, they provide constructions of the sacred not very different from those in religion. The commonplace becomes impregnated with the solemn, the serious, the sublime, and the sacred.⁴⁰

In secularizing contexts, the word religion frequently elicits sensitive responses. Yet, as a scholarly construct, religion can be useful to describe particular dynamics in behavioral patterns. This leads to the paradox of scholars calling behaviors or mental constructs religious, while in their own terms those studied would not consider themselves in these terms at all. It raises the question to which extent a concept should reflect the use of the word and practices in the field. In principle a concept is of a different order than the use of the word in the field and these can be seen as two separate entities. Yet, the relationship between theory and the field is of reciprocal nature. A concept is used to provide theoretical understanding of dynamics underlying particular human practices, while the study of these practices is of use in sharpening the parameters of a concept and its implications. Therefore, I would say, when it concerns terminology used in both scholarly contexts and the field, the use of the concept should demonstrate awareness of the use in the field. The difference between the publications of Arnold and Partridge illustrates the complex and intricate relationship between the terminology of the sacred, religion, and music. While the sacred implies a valuation dynamic that reaches beyond the domain of religious institutions, it always includes this domain as well. Additionally, Arnold and Partridge emphasized the marginal positions of the music they each studied and its challenging relationship to mainstream culture. Arnold discussed the question whether sacred music needs to be seen as counter-culture (a topic that is further explored in Chapter 5); Partridge evolved  This argument and a further critical reading of Partridge’s book can be found in: Lieke Wijnia, “Everything You Own in a Box to the Left: Reclaiming the Potential of the Sacred in Music,” Marginalia Review of Books, 09.06. 2015, http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/everything-youown-in-a-box-to-the-left-reclaiming-the-potential-of-the-sacred-in-music-by-lieke-wijnia/.  Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus, 238.

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13

his argument around what he characterized as the history of rejection that surrounds alternative popmusic genres. Overall, the two approaches reinforce the difference between the implications of the genre sacred music and the conceptual approach to the sacred in music. In addition to their different approaches to the notion of the sacred, these two books also demonstrate the kinds of music that can be the subject of studying the relationship between the sacred and music. They reflect a strict divide between popular and classical music. There is something strange about the use of these terms, as if there is no such thing as popular classical music or classic popular songs. Furthermore, there is the question of how terms on the treatment of music have become terms to characterize the content of the music. And even more so, with regard to the relationship between the sacred and music, the topic of study to a certain extent determines the approach in which it is studied. To my knowledge, the sacred music genre has not yet before been studied in the manner Partridge approached popular music. The use of this terminology may have had a blindsiding effect in this context thus far. In this book, I treat all discussed music in similar fashion, deeming all genres and manifestations as possible platforms of the sacred. Throughout, I shall argue for the relevance of using a broad theoretical approach to the concept of the sacred for understanding musical practices – and artistic practices at large. This includes the practices that are categorized within the genre of sacred music, while simultaneously reaching beyond it.

1.4 Perceptions of the Sacred In the discussion above, the sacred-secular binary came to the fore. This binary implies that the sacred is a synonym for religion, while the secular is generally taken to be the opposite of religion. However, a broad conceptual understanding of the sacred includes and moves beyond the notion of religion. As such it is considered a relevant analytical instrument in studying the interrelationship between art and religion. In this study, the notion of the sacred is regarded as a cultural dynamic, capturing both secular and religious perceptions. In this book, the sacred is above all regarded as a dynamic of valuation, which results in the attribution of value that is of ultimate and non-negotiable character.⁴¹ Values are not fixed but are subject to change over time. Yet, individuals and collec-

 C.f. Ann Taves and Courtney Bender, What Matters. Ethnographies of Value in a Not So Secular Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).

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1 Introduction

tives seem to continuously search for things, objects, or persons to value in an ultimate manner. As a concept the sacred denotes the implications of meaning attribution and valuation, of relevance for understanding how people relate and respond to artistic practices. The sacred as valuation dynamic results from, and in, acts of setting apart, that protect from harm and allow for reverence and worship. As a consequence, this act also results in dynamics of taboo and prohibition. The sacred creates boundaries, between pure and impure, between the celebrated and the disgusted, resulting in a balancing act on a fine line that is easily disturbed. Another binary featuring the sacred is that of the sacred-profane. Sociologist Emile Durkheim made this binary pivotal in his standard work Les Formes Elementaires de la Vie Religieuse, published in 1912. In the Durkheimian understanding of religion, there is no categorical distinction between culture and religion, as religion is a symbolic network to which a group relates and adheres. Through this network, meaning and value is generated and ascribed, which ultimately can take a sacred form. The sacred, then, designates that which is protected from ordinary contact from the profane, and deserving utmost respect as it represents either a celebratory or a taboo concern. Ultimately a group’s foundation is rooted in the sacred and allows its members to make sense of their belonging to it.⁴² For Durkheim, the sacred is the central feature in religious (read: social) behavior; the profane is its complementary counterpart, which potentially threatens the sacred in its set-apart, ultimate status. The value dynamic of the sacred remains a prevalent societal, cultural, and political feature to this day. Despite the fact that it requires understanding in terms of fragmentation and change rather than only in terms of a unifying force that allows for shared beliefs. While the formation of different types and less enduring forms of community changes the face and function of religion, the overall yearning for meaning making remains.⁴³ Its different forms consequentially alter the locations where scholars can look for potential topics to be studied in terms of the sacred. In this book I look for it in the context of an arts festival and the musical performances taking place in the festival’s name. In this context I regard the attribution of sacred value as an actively perceived process and discuss perceptions of the sacred. I use the term perception,

 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: The Free Press, 1995).  Jeppe Sinding Jensen, What is Religion? (Durham: Acumen, 2014); Gordon Lynch, On the Sacred (Durham: Acumen, 2012); Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

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because this both includes an active component on behalf of the perceiver, as well as a slightly more passive component of encountering an unexpected or external influence. To reinforce both these aspects in relation to the dynamic of the sacred, I will be using the terms constructing and performing. The difference between these two terms is aptly described by sociologist Nancy Ammerman, in her reference to how experts and laymen deal with religion.⁴⁴ Experts need a congruent argument, a cognitive coherent line of thinking. This can be designated with the term construction. It refers to the intellectual, rationally based thinking about a particular matter. For non-experts, it is much more about the embodied and emotional experiences of particular practices, narration of stories, or performance of rituals. This level of perception can be captured by the term performance. Needless to say, there is no such thing as a purely constructed or a purely performed perception of the sacred. Rather these two notions should be seen as Weberian ideal types,⁴⁵ each positioned at the end of a continuum. In some perceptions the rational has more the overhand, in others the embodied, but a balance between the two generally constitutes perceptions of the sacred. As a scholarly construct, the sacred allows for studying that which is nonnegotiable and ultimately valuable to people.⁴⁶ This research discusses what matters to people through the performance of music, as it is grounded in the conviction that the quest for meaning is an essential part of human life. Scholars have theorized this, for example, as “the rise of a spirituality of seeking”⁴⁷ and the emergence of a “quest culture.”⁴⁸ People work on creating environments, for themselves and for others around them, which are invested with meaning. While these meanings can greatly vary in terms of content, a valuation pattern  Nancy Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 7.  Max Weber coined the notion of idealtypus. This term indicates a methodological approach, which makes ideal types work well as ends of a continuum. “An ideal type is formed by the onesided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct. In its conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. It is a utopia.” Max Weber, “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy,” in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, eds. and transl. Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch (New York: Free Press, 1949), 90.  Ann Taves and Courtney Bender, What Matters. Ethnographies of Value in a Not So Secular Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).  Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven. Spirituality in America since the 1950s (Oakland: University of California Press, 1998), 54.  Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace. Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 46 – 76.

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1 Introduction

is discernable. The notion of the sacred refers first and foremost to this pattern, more so than to the contents that individuals attribute with this value. However, to be able to say something about the sacred as a tool to study this cultural pattern, particular contents or subject matter need to be studied first. This will consequentially enable theorization about the underlying dynamics. Recent studies on contemporary manifestations of the sacred often use the perspective of lived religion: finding dynamics of ritualization, set-apartness, and ultimate valuation in the practices of everyday life.⁴⁹ A significant project in line with this approach was Nancy Ammerman’s exploration of manifestations of religion and spirituality in twenty-first-century United States.⁵⁰ Studying people’s sacred stories relating to contexts of everyday life in the home, the workplace, and the public domain, Ammerman’s concluding observation asserted the suitability of the notions of the sacred and transcendence as tools in detecting and analyzing religious tendencies in everyday practices. I concur with the relevance of the sacred, and its accompanying notions like transcendence and liminality, to get a better grasp at how people experience religion or the spiritual in their lives. However, by means of this research I hope to also emphasize how people’s daily practices relate to larger institutional and societal discursive frameworks. Daily practices of lived religion do not uniquely take shape or exist in isolation. Rather, these respond to, draw from, or oppose discursive frameworks as offered by religious institutions, a public mediated discourse, or by cultural institutions like museums or festivals. The focus on the engagement between spirituality invested in daily practices and the experience through the lens of larger institutional structures, enables a broader understanding of the dynamics underlying contemporary perceptions of the sacred. People do not only find forms of liminality in their daily routines, but also actively seek these in activities offered by cultural and religious institutions. Therefore, I depart from artistic practices, in their set-apart forms as presented during an arts festival that deals with the sacred, religion, and its heritage. These practices elicit an often anticipated, and occasionally realized, sense of transcendence for the audience. While artists and artworks, composers and compositions might be selected to fit within institutional frameworks, audience members experience and process the performances through their own frames of reference. This research sheds light on different perspectives from which expe For a mapping of scholarly approaches to the notion of lived religion, see: Kim Knibbe and Helena Kupari “Theorizing Lived Religion: Introduction,” Journal of Contemporary Religion, 35.2 (2020), 157– 176.  Nancy Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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riencing and valuing the interrelationship between the arts, religion and its heritage occurs. In doing so, it hopes to contribute to the understanding of how setapart, non-ordinary, temporary realities of artworks and/ or religion might eventually be of value in making sense of ordinary, everyday life. As sociologist Robert Bellah argued, the ordinary and non-ordinary cannot be maintained without each other. It is impossible for humans to remain in ordinary, everyday life twenty-four seven. In order to remain capable of doing our jobs and fulfilling our duties, we need to have experiences of non-ordinary realities – which may be provided by activities that allow us time in different realms, like practicing sports, reading books, attending the theatre and the like – that complement our ordinary ones. These two realms co-exist and at times even overlap.⁵¹ These dimensions are enabling conditions. Perhaps the same can ultimately be said for art and religion. Musica Sacra Maastricht functions as a case study in the exploration of the question how perceptions of the sacred are constructed and performed through the interrelationship of religion and the arts – musical performance in particular – in a postsecular context like The Netherlands. With this question in mind, this research moves along various roads of enquiry. First, it presents an exploration of how the concept of the sacred can inform the function and value of artistic practices, and music in particular, in contemporary secularizing societies. In doing so, I will draw from theorizations on the sacred and combine these with an interdisciplinary set of theories regarding the anthropology of images, ritual theory, and heritage and museum studies. Second, this book discusses how artistic practices draw inspiration from religion, while also creating platforms for continued manifestations of religion and its heritage. This constitutes a complex reciprocal relationship between religion and the arts, which in turn has the potential of sacred impact on viewers or participants. A recent theoretical framework that is of importance here, was found in the notion of the religious heritage complex.⁵² This theoretical framework emphasizes ongoing negotiations between religious and non-religious partners in the maintenance and keeping alive of religious heritage, which well reflects the contemporary complexity of the dynamics between religion and the arts. Third, with the analysis of intertwinements of religion and artistic practices I aim to contribute to the scholarly use of the sacred. Consequentially, the theory and the field inform each other in a continuous circle, by which an increased understanding of both aspects will be  Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution. From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 1– 4.  Cyril Isnart and Nathalie Cerezales, eds., The Religious Heritage Complex. Legacy, Conservation, and Christianity (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

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1 Introduction

gained. This reciprocal understanding of performing research has consequences for the data analysis and the conclusions drawn in this research. It means that this research contains both inductive and deductive characteristics. Throughout this book conversations between theoretical frameworks and fieldwork are presented. The field is introduced in Chapter 2, the annual festival Musica Sacra Maastricht. The chapter describes the festival’s history and mission and presents a comparison in relation to other national and international festivals. It also describes the fieldwork conducted during three festival editions (2012 – 2014) and the research methodology in this study of the sacred. The theoretical framework of the sacred is discussed in Chapter 3. The concept has a challenging and dynamic history, with a recent revitalization in various academic disciplines. Especially these innovative approaches to the sacred will be explored in relation to their relevance for the study of Musica Sacra Maastricht – and artistic practices more in general. Chapter 4 explores what happens to the sacred in intersections of art and religious heritage in the postsecular socio-cultural context of The Netherlands. It departs from a festival performance in which translation is an important artistic instrument, which in turn is also a key concept in the theoretical framework of the postsecular. Furthermore, this chapter looks at theoretical approaches that aim to make sense of contemporary complexities around religion: religion viewed from a cultural perspective; how artistic and heritage practices might be seen as part of the chain of memory constituted by religion; and the interaction between civil and religious partners in artistic and heritage production. The following three chapters discuss features that have emerged from the fieldwork at Musica Sacra Maastricht: the notions of counterculture, ritual, and fragility.⁵³ Chapter 5 deals with the sacred perceived as counterculture or transgression. The festival’s program committee, the audience members, and several performers regard the festival and its approach to the sacred as counterweight to mainstream culture. This is analyzed in terms of set-apartness, a crucial feature of the dynamic of the sacred, and through the lens of relationality. Chapter 6 discusses how the festival, and individual performances, are setapart and how this is performatively established by means of the notion of ritual. Both individual concerts as well as the festival in its entirety are explored for their ritual qualities and the fragility of ritually composed performance. Chapter 7 deals with perceptions of the sacred between sound and silence. Music does not only consist of sound, silence is very much a part of performance as well. In a

 See Appendix C for a description of the research participants and Appendix E an explanation of references to the dataset throughout the book.

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dynamic city like Maastricht, however, silence is a rare good. The interaction between sound, silence, and disturbance – and its impact on potentially competing perceptions of the sacred – are at the heart of this chapter, reinforcing the fragile nature of the sacred as it is aimed for in the festival. In the concluding chapter, the broader significance of the fieldwork findings is discussed, particularly its implications for the resonating presence of art and religion in a postsecular context like The Netherlands.

2 The Field: Musica Sacra Maastricht The research site at the heart of this book was selected for multiple reasons. The foremost reason is that Musica Sacra Maastricht is representative for the theoretical outlook of the postsecular. By its use of the sacred as departure point, the festival brings together civil, secular or non-religious and religious partners, performances, and heritage sites. The festival’s engagement with the notion of the sacred occurs from religious and secular perspectives. The notion musica sacra is subject to continuous discussion within the committee that is responsible for the festival program. By means of the selected music, it is the committee’s primary goal to offer explorations of the contemporary relevance of the sacred in its broadest sense. These explorations occur by means of musical performances, but also activities in other artistic disciplines, which draw from religious and cultural heritage. Combined, these aspects make Musica Sacra Maastricht into a relevant site to study contemporary perceptions on the sacred. This chapter first explores the festival landscape in which Musica Sacra Maastricht operates, the festival’s history, and its organizational and programmatic structures. The second part of this chapter sheds light on theoretical and methodological considerations in the navigation of Musica Sacra Maastricht as field of research.

2.1 (Inter)national Context Musica Sacra Maastricht has a distinct character in the Dutch festival landscape.¹ The largest competitor in the field is Festival Oude Muziek (Utrecht Early Music Festival), a ten-day festival of early music. In the public perception, which is also acknowledged by the festival program committee, the two festivals are frequently confused as identical. This occurs not in the least, because the Maastricht festival also has its fair share of early music in the program. Additionally, the term musica sacra is often regarded as a synonym for early music. However, the festival program of Musica Sacra Maastricht also contains significant modern and contemporary portions. Because of this broad range of musical styles, in addition to its particular approach to the sacred, the Maastricht festival takes up a distinctive position in the Dutch festival landscape. Additionally, in terms of

 The following discussion of the (inter)national context, history, and organizational structure of Musica Sacra Maastricht can also be found in: Lieke Wijnia, “Music, Scripture, and the Sacred: Negotiating the Postsecular at a Dutch Arts Festival,” in The Bible and Global Tourism, eds. James s. Bielo and Lieke Wijnia (London: T&T Clark 2021): 221– 241. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-003

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scope, the Sacred Songs festival is also of interest. Founded in 2016 in The Hague, this festival aims to musically reflect the diversity of collective and individual forms of religion and spirituality in Dutch society. In the European context, several festivals use the term musica sacra in their name, yet these festivals all differ from the Maastricht festival. The bi-annual festival Musica Sacra International in Marktoberdorff, Germany, programs ritual and musical performances rooted in the world religions – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It aims to establish and contribute to interreligious dialogue and to foster understanding for unfamiliar cultures through music. Festival Musica Sacra in Austria, held in St. Pölten, Herzogenburg, and Lilienfield, connects performances within the sacred music genre to various faith services held on the Sundays during the festival period of almost a month. Between 2003 and 2013 the weekend-long festival Musica Sacra took place in the Belgian town of Bever. In addition to a range of musical performences, the festival included a hike in the natural surroundings of the town. Traditionally, the festival was closed with a performance of Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen. In the Swiss town of Fribourg, the Festival International de Musiques Sacrees is organized annually and consists of a week-long program of concerts of religious music from the Middle Ages to contemporary compositions. It has the same historical scope as Musica Sacra Maastricht, but stays focused on the religious, without exploring other varieties of the sacred. The focus on the contemporary relevance of the sacred, as maintained by the Maastricht festival, can also be found in the Festival de Fès des Musiques Sacrées du Monde, organized by the FES Foundation. Its mission statement mentions the aim to connect different peoples and cultures by means of sacred music from all over the world. A relatively recent initiative in this field is the Lux Aeterna festival in Hamburg, Germany, which saw its inaugural edition in 2012. Without having the term sacred in its title, this biannual festival in Hamburg appeals to a sense of transcendence by using the notion of eternal light. Its subtitle “music festival for the soul” implies an exploration of the idea that music contains a key to a heightened sense of fulfillment and meaning in life. The frame in which this festival is presented translates connotations of the religious sacred to a secular context. This festival seems to come nearest to the scope of Musica Sacra Maastricht, in that it includes and also reaches beyond religious connotations in addressing the sacred. By the end of 2011, when my research project began, it was a turbulent time for the cultural sector in the Netherlands. Around Europe and beyond, the financial crisis heavily impacted governmental decision-making on cultural funding schemes. As a consequence, many institutions were forced to reorganize or shut down. The 2012 festival edition was the last one in a four-year subsidy

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cycle. That year a new application was submitted to the national Performing Arts Fund for the next cycle – a significant part of the research period. The continuation of a thirty-year festival tradition was at that moment uncertain. In addition to governmental financial support, funding applications were submitted to nationally operating private funds like the VSB Fund and SNS Reaal. In addition, smaller and local private funds were addressed with regard to financial or material support for specific performances. In preparing the festival, drafting the program, and creating agreements with performers, there was always a level of uncertainty concerning the finances. At some point decisions had to be finalized and the program had to be agreed on before all the financial details were known. This uncertainty had, and remains to have, a fundamental presence in the cultural sector overall. Over the course of the research period it has not resulted in any major last-minute cancellations or setbacks.

2.2 History The festival now known as Musica Sacra Maastricht, started in 1983 as Festival for Religious Music. ² That year the director of the Maastricht Cultural Centre was asked to deliver a contribution in the form of a cultural activity to the city’s seven-yearly religious procession, the Heiligdomsvaart. Held in the honor of the city’s patron saint St. Servatius, during this procession the saint’s relics are carried along a route through the city. The first mention of the procession is from 1391. Since then the procession has been celebrated at times, but there were also periods of time the religious treasures remained locked away and no festivities were held. Since 1874 the procession takes place in the form it is known today, with the exception of 1944, when World War II prohibited the procession from taking place. Afterwards, the wait until the next official date in the procession cycle (1951) was considered too long and a new cycle was started in 1948. Since then the procession has been organized every seven years, uninterrupted.³

 The festival has been organized under the following names. Between 1983 – 1984: Festival Religious Music; 1985 – 1987: Euro Festival Religious Music; 1988 – 2001: Musica Sacra; 2002–present: Musica Sacra Maastricht.  For a historical overview of the city of Maastricht, see Pierre Ubachs and Ingrid Evers, Tweeduizend jaar Maastricht. Een stadsgeschiedenis (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2006). For a study on Catholicsm and spiritual innovation in local life, see Kim Knibbe, Faith in the Familiar. Religion, Spirituality and Place in the South of the Netherlands (Leiden, Boston: Brill 2013).

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In 1983, the organization felt the procession alone did not offer a sufficiently attractive program for the citizens and visitors of Maastricht and expressed a wish to expand its activities. In this expansion, the choice for religious music was argued to be a logical choice, being in line with the ritual character of the religious procession. It was thought to be a natural extra dimension to be added to the religious event.⁴ The Festival for Religious Music took place during two weeks and each day had a luncheon- and evening concert. After the first editions the focus was shifted towards the weekends, because the span of two weeks proved too long to attract sufficient audiences. When the festival’s name changed to Musica Sacra became definitive in 1988, the festival period was simultaneously reduced to a weekend. This increase of compactness and intensity was met by higher numbers of visitors.⁵ For later editions of the Heiligdomsvaart, the festival committee would occasionally be asked for advice on musical contributions to the program of activities surrounding the procession. The name change, from Festival for Religious Music to Musica Sacra, was initiated in order to allow for more programmatic space, for the committee to be able to select music dealing with religious or liturgical conceptions of the sacred and music concerned with other conceptions of the sacred. This name change has a parallel in the broadening of theoretical approaches to the sacred, as touched upon in the introduction chapter and elaborated upon in Chapter 3. Since the first edition, the theater now known as the Theater aan het Vrijthof has functioned as the host and heart of the festival. The festival concerts however took place in church buildings throughout the city. The festival initiator wrote in the first festival brochure that the churches ‘are monuments of experiences of faith and cultural history, of architectural beauties, and of living use.’⁶ This close collaboration makes church organizations important conversation partners for the festival. Until this day, Musica Sacra Maastricht provides musical contributions to the services in two Catholic churches and one Protestant church on the festival Sunday. These services, and their musical components, are listed in the festival brochures as festival activities. After the festival’s name change the church buildings still offer the core of the festival locations, while gradually more types of locations were added. Other types of historic locations also proved

 Interview with Kersten, 27.02. 2012.  For more background information on the history of the festival, see: Lieke Wijnia. “Festival Musica Sacra Maastricht: Van het Eerste Uur,” Jubilee Magazine Musica Sacra Maastricht – Rites and Rituals (2012): 18 – 22.  Theo Kersten, “Introductie,” Brochure Festival Religieuze Muziek (Maastricht (1983). The original in Dutch reads: “Deze kerken zijn stuk voor stuk monumenten van geloofsbeleving en cultuurgeschiedenis, schoonheden van architectuur en in levend gebruik.”

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suitable for the festival, like the city hall, the local art museum, and sites of industrial heritage. The relationship between the performances and their locations was, as I will describe later, crucial in the experience of the audience and the performers. If locations were outside the city center, at times a communal walk or bus ride was organized to get there. Furthermore, in between concerts visitors walked or cycled from one location to another, by means of which the streets of the city also became part of the festival landscape. The average visitor number of the festival during the research period was 12.500 per festival edition.⁷ For many of these visitors the festival was a returning aspect in their cultural year. The festival has established a reputation among the visitors to be an event for lovers of challenging classical music, who are looking to discover new and unknown composers, pieces, and performers. During the research period, the visitors’ average age was 62 years and the largest share came from the south of The Netherlands.⁸

2.3 Organization During the research period, the program committee consisted of seven members. The committee members were representatives of the theater that hosts the festival and its national media partner (broadcast associations KRO, which was succeeded by MAX on Radio 4). In addition, a team of theater employees was responsible for the production of the festival program. The program committee met once a month, with exception of the summer, under the guidance of committee president Jacques Giesen. He was the former director of the Theater aan het Vrijthof, former local politician, former director of the Maastricht School of Theatre, and member of several supervisory boards of cultural organizations. As committee president, Giesen was in charge of leading the monthly meetings and he had a great input in terms of discussions on possible themes and the overall focus on the sacred. As a large-scale literary consumer, he kept up to

 The visitor numbers in the research period were: 2012: 14.000; 2013: 13.568; 2014: 10.012. For the following festival editions, the visitor numbers were: 2015: 18.750; 2016: 10.850; 2017: 13.956; 2018: 8.380; 2019: 14.394; 2020: 4.011 (due to Covid19). These numbers were retrieved from Theater aan het Vrijthof.  Elsbeth Willems, Publieksonderzoek Musica Sacra Maastricht. Evaluatie Festivaleditie 2011 ‘De Vreugde der Wet’ & Verkenning Potentiele Doelgroepen, MA thesis (Maastricht University, 2012), 58. See also: Inge Römgens, Audience Research Musica Sacra Maastricht. Edition 2007. Visions of Eternity, MA thesis (Maastricht University, 2008).

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date with publications concerning religion, philosophy, and art.⁹ He had a large network in the Maastricht area, due to his professional career in the theater world and local cultural politics. Driving forces behind the content of the festival program were two representatives of the festival’s media partner, both with backgrounds in musicology. Jos Leussink functioned as an external advisor, was conductor of the Amsterdam chamber choir ASKO, former conservatorium teacher, and former Radio 4 programmer and editor in chief. He had a wide knowledge on both early and contemporary classical music. At the start of the research period, Sylvester Beelaert was employed as researcher and editor at Radio 4 and in that professional position involved in the festival program committee. When his contracts at initial media partner KRO, and later media partner MAX, ended, he got directly employed by the festival. Until the end of 2015 he was also the programmer for the RKK radio show Echo van Eeuwigheid (Eternal Resonance), which aired live from Maastricht on the morning of the festival Sunday. His knowledge primarily focused on Romantic and Baroque music. In addition to their specialties, both Leussink and Beelaert had great general knowledge of western music history and musicology. Furthermore, two programmers employed by the theater took seat in the program committee, Stijn Boeve for classical music and Fons Dejong for dance. Boeve also took up the festival’s project management until September 2014. When Boeve left his job at the theater, Dejong took over the festival project management. Their involvement in the festival was part of their job descriptions, as much as they contributed to other festivals hosted by the theater and the annual theatre programming. On executive levels both production partners were represented: the theater by its director Hugo Haeghens (until 2017) and Radio 4 by Russell Postema, editor in chief for broadcasting company MAX (until 2018).

 During the period this research was conducted, the theoretical framework was enriched with new literature, not in the least by means of interaction with the field. Members of the program committee told me about several publications, demonstrating the committee is both musically and theoretically concerned with the notion of the sacred. The most important reference I received from the field was Christopher Partridge’s The Lyre of Orpheus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). While it focuses on alternative forms of pop music, Partridge’s explorative thinking style was of great use in understanding a wider variety of musical styles in terms of the sacred.

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2.4 Program The festival’s change of name in 1988 provided a widening of opportunities in programming. To offer some direction for both the program committee and festival audience, it was decided in 1990 to begin using an annual theme (See Appendix A for an overview of the festival themes). The annual theme functioned as point of departure in programming performances regarding the sacred. The themes were usually open for discussion and subject to multiple interpretations. They related to traditional religious vocabulary and simultaneously linked to current social topics. Within the wider (inter)national festival landscape, for the program committee one of the defining features in the Maastricht festival’s particular identity was the use of this annual theme, its relation to the notion of the sacred, and the manner in which the theme steered the selection of music and other artistic performances. In each festival, the committee wanted to address all major musical periods in western music history. ¹⁰ The program always covered medieval/ Gregorian chant, early and medieval music, Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, modern, and contemporary art music. These periods were frequently mentioned during the committee meetings as a check to see whether all the different styles had been covered in the program. Additionally, the committee aimed to incorporate at least one or two programs with non-western music. In case they would lack the expertise to fully engage with the type of non-western music that was desired for the festival program, external expertise would be consulted. In the festival’s existence of over thirty years, three types of themes can be distinguished. First, themes that directly referred to the Bible are used, such as Canticles (1990), Genesis (1995), Apocalyps (1998), Psalms (1999) and Job (2001). The themes of these Bible books were explored by means of the programmed musical performances. The themes have served as sources of inspiration for compositions, or they show parallels with performers or styles of performance. For instance, an Afghan lute player who fled for the Taliban was presented as a contemporary Job. And the rappers of the Amsterdam group Osdorp Posse were positioned as deliverers of contemporary psalmody, because they rap their vision on life on what appear to be simple rhythms – a description that was deemed suitable for psalms as well. In addition to direct Bible references, a second group of annual themes can be characterized as religious archetypes, recognizable in re-

 Meeting program committee, 28.09. 2012. JG: “It is a very useful festival to get to know the development of music history. Because in fact you can trace it (…) You can gain a lot of knowledge, medieval music, Renaissance music, modern music.”

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ligious and human societies: Oracles and Prophets (1996), Saints and Idols (1997), Angels and Devils (2005), and Away of the World: Hermits and Conventuals (2006). These themes provided the committee with the opportunity to address social affairs in the programming. For instance, in 2006, the focus was not only on historic hermits and monks, but also on contemporary youth that feels more at home on the Internet than in public life. A third category consisted of themes that referred to certain types of behavior, like Rites (1991), Pilgrimage (2003), and Devotion (2010). At the start of the new millennium, the 2000 festival edition had an appropriate theme: Mystery and Miracles. The underlying reasoning was that despite technological inventions, mysteries would always continue to exist. New discoveries always result in new questions and inexplicable mysteries. This was seen in parallel to experiences of music, as bodily perceptions are not always rationally explicable. At the core of the festival program stood the notion of the sacred. By means of the annual theme the sacred was framed. An example: The 2014 festival was themed Awe-Inspiring. This theme was derived from the scriptural sentence Terribilis est locus iste. ¹¹ This sentence represented the dual character of fascination and fear for that which inspires awe. In its discussions, the committee referenced the approach of theologian Rudolf Otto to the notion of the holy. Otto described that which is holy as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans (a terrifying yet fascinating mystery).¹² That which is too big to grasp is both fearful and appealing. The committee saw these elements as two crucial dimensions of the sacred. SLB: It is about mystery and inexplicability. JG: Yes, but to not end up in the realm of mysticism we should maybe more focus on inexplicability. That which goes beyond us and what overwhelms us.¹³

The description of the 2014 theme sheds light on the way the committee approached the notion of the awe-inspiring, as well as on three fundamental aspects of the sacred as these were used by the program committee. First, the contrast between the festival context and everyday life is emphasized. ‘Everyday life usually offers little scope for surprise. But if we take the time to reflect on some-

 Genesis 28:17. “Awesome is this place. This is nothing other than the house of God; this must be the gate to heaven.”  Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy. An Inquiry into the non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958 [1917]).  Meeting program committee, 24.05. 2013. SLB: “Het gaat ook over mysterieus en onbegrijpelijk.” JG: “Ja ja, maar om niet in het mystieke terecht te komen moeten we het misschien meer over onbegrijpelijk hebben. Dat wat ons te boven gaat, en wat ons overweldigd.”

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thing, truly penetrating its depths, we come to some disconcerting discoveries and as many yet unanswered questions. How is it that, through the workings of our brain, we can form a picture of our actions and our place in the immeasurable cosmos?’¹⁴ Second, the description reinforced, the sacred refers to that which goes beyond human comprehension. ‘The fact that we are increasingly better equipped to chart that cosmos, macro and micro, does little to diminish our realization that we are only a tine part of an overwhelmingly large universe. We are amazed, perplexed and fascinated by what we observe, see, or understand of the natural world around us and in us.’¹⁵ Third, according to the text, the sacred confronts individuals with their limitations in attempting to gain control over what happens to them. In the theme description, a higher and stronger power was acknowledged. And we are forced to admit that it is not us who are the dominating force; it is the powers that govern and shape us which are awe-inspiringly superior to us. We are awed by the realization that although we may be able to divert and sometimes interact with these powers, we cannot control events like natural disasters, wars, disease, and death. This realization can provide the starting point for an ethical reflection about our actions. Yet through the centuries, it has produced some very meaningful art. That is exactly what Musica Sacra Maastricht is concerned with in 2014.¹⁶

Overall, in the realization of the festival program, several steps were followed. Two frequently posed questions in the selection of concerts and other artistic performances were how does it fit the annual theme? and what is the link to the sacred? Practically, the program was dependent on the availability, capabil-

 Ontzagwekkend, Magazine Musica Sacra Maastricht (2014). “Het leven van alledag biedt doorgaans weinig ruimte voor verbazing. Maar wie langer bij iets stilstaat, zich ergens werkelijk in verdiept, komt uiteindelijk uit bij onthutsende constateringen en even veel nog onbeantwoorde vragen. Wie zijn wij, dat we ons door de werking van ons brein een beeld kunnen vormen van ons handelen en van onze plaats in de onmetelijke kosmos?”  Idem. “Dat we die kosmos, macro en micro, steeds beter in kaart weten te brengen, doet weinig af aan ons besef slechts deel te zijn van een overrompelend groot geheel. We staan versteld, zijn perplex en gefascineerd door wat we waarnemen, constateren en eventueel begrijpen van de natuur om ons en in ons.”  Idem. “En we moeten toegeven dat niet wíj de dienst uitmaken, maar dat de krachten waaraan we onderhevig zijn en waaruit we bestaan ons op een ontzagwekkende manier overstijgen. Ontzagwekkend is het besef dat we die krachten, zoals natuurrampen, oorlogen, ziekte en dood, misschien kunnen herleiden, er soms op kunnen ingrijpen, maar niet beheersen. Dit besef kan het startpunt zijn van een ethische reflectie op ons handelen. Hoe dan ook heeft het door de eeuwen heen betekenisvolle kunst opgeleverd. Daar is het Musica Sacra Maastricht in 2014 precies om te doen.”

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ities, and fees of performers. The program committee aimed to refrain from too much repetition of ensembles and composers over the years. Yet, there were preferred ensembles that returned more frequently than others. In addition, the selected pieces were usually not performed during the regular theater season and often rehearsed on top of the usual repertoire of the ensembles. Musica Sacra Maastricht also maintained an intense relationship with local ensembles, of which a number were granted a recurrent position in the programme; others were invited based on their fit with the annual theme. The repertoire was decided in conversation between the committee and the performers (at times represented by conductors or artistic managers). Since the early festival years, attempts were made to include other artistic disciplines. Over the last decade executive decisions were made on this matter and a parallel program of other artistic disciplines has since become a fixed part of the festival program. This additional line in the program primarily consisted of dance, film, theatre, visual arts and lectures or debates. The local art house cinema Lumiere offered a special selection of films during the festival in line with the annual theme. Students of the Maastricht School of Theatre, the Maastricht Academy for Media Design and Technology, and the Maastricht Conservatory delivered contributions to the festival. Such student involvement was part of their educational curriculum. All these program elements constituted an interdisciplinary approach to the notion of the sacred and the annual theme, as well as a widespread presence in artistic, educational, and cultural institutions during the festival period.

2.5 Theoretical Considerations I studied Musica Sacra Maastricht to shed light on the interrelationship between art and religion through the theoretical lens of the sacred. The sacred is a concept that developed in the academic discipline of the study of religion. This does not mean that I have the objective to classify art as religion. Rather, I think the academic discipline of the study of religion offers ground for understanding how people engage with art. And that contemporary artistic practices can shed light on how people engage with religion in a postsecular context. I previously characterized the established connection between art and religion as family resemblance. Between the two, there exists ‘a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: sometime overall similarities,

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sometimes similarities of detail.’¹⁷ Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed to use this notion in the study of specific things or practices designated with one concept, such as games or numbers. None are identical, yet there are enough similarities to establish a relationship. My engagement with the study of religion is rooted in a conviction that art and religion share certain parts of this complicated network by means of their similarities.¹⁸ Yet, simultaneously there are enough differences that prevent a direct equation between the two. Therefore, the notion of a family, be it an extended one, is applicable. The concept of the sacred allowed for studying the valuation dynamics underlying people’s engagement with musical performance. The contextualization by means of the postsecular draws attention to the intertwined nature of religion and the secular/ non-religious in artistic practices. This results in a combination of not only a study of musical performances themselves, but also of how people invest meaning and value through these practices. In public and academic perceptions, both religion and music have been subject to a great deal of subscriptions of mystery and secrecy to the subject matter and in turn for the methodology to study it. Yet, from a strictly academic perspective, it can be safely stated that, ‘religion is not ontologically mysterious nor is it epistemically intractable: religion consists of beliefs and behaviors held and performed by humans. That is all there is to it.’¹⁹ Scholar in the study of religion Jeppe Sinding Jensen also assert that, ‘The fact that many religious beliefs and behaviors refer to imagined entities or agents with strange and mysterious properties is well known. However, they are imagined entities and agents and it is as such that they can be studied: namely as objects of the human imagination.’²⁰ As will be further discussed in the next chapter, the notion of the sacred has been attributed with mysterious and ineffable qualities in a variety of scholarly contexts. These substantive and essentialist interpretations of the sacred have resulted in rejection and disqualification for academic significance. While religion never disappeared from the academic stage, the notion of the sacred is slowly  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (London: Blackwell, 1999 [1953]), 32.  Philosoper Friedrich Schleiermacher called this the “inner affinity” between religion and art. See for an exploration of this inner affinity in terms of metaphor and presence, J. Sage Elwell, “The Metaphor of Religion and Art,” Religion and the Arts 22 (2018): 622– 638. Wessel Stoker also addressed this inner affinity, which he explained as “both are engaged with human existential questions. Art puts in images, sounds or words the human being in its existential depth. Religion provides insights about humanity and the world by means of its holy scripture.” [translation from Dutch by LW]. Wessel Stoker, God Opnieuw Verbeeld. Een Theologische Kunstbeschouwing (Almere: Parthenon, 2019), 13.  Jeppe Sinding Jensen, What is Religion? (Durham: Acumen, 2014), ix.  Ibid.

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but steadily making its return, not in the least due to innovative approaches, for example, in the work of Christopher Partridge and Gordon Lynch. Broader approaches to the sacred also allowed for a broader approach to music, a focus on musical practices without qualitative judgment on what makes good or proper sacred music. While the activities of Musica Sacra Maastricht represent very particular ideas about music, I hope the scope of the theoretical framework will encourage the study of various other types of music as well. In line with Jensen’s cited statement about religion, my research project is grounded in the conviction that the concept of the sacred is valuable when approached as consisting of beliefs and behaviors constructed and performed by humans, in this case through the selection and performance of, and engagement with, music. In order to achieve the goal of clear use of the terms of the sacred and religion, first and foremost a strict distinction between religion as an identifiable phenomenon in the field and as a scholarly construct is required. This is usually referred to as the difference between emic (field) and etic (scholarly) uses of a term. ²¹ A further distinction can be made; word use and concepts can be of different orders. A first-order concept refers to the direct use of the word in the field; the second-order concept refers to generalizations retrieved from that word made in the field; and the third-order concept refers to a concept formulated in scholarly terms.²² While the phenomenon of religion (or institutionalized religion) has a dominant position in the perception of the sacred music genre (first and second order), the scholarly discipline of the study of religion, and its theorization on the sacred, can be of great value for casting light on the cultural and religious significance of music and art (third order).

2.6 Methodological Considerations ‘No one can ever experience a concert by reading the newspaper review. No one can ever say they know a painting by a description only. No words of description

 Kenneth Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior (The Hague: Mouton, 1967); Thomas N. Headland, Kenneth L. Pike and Marvin Harris (eds.), Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate (London, Sage, 1990); Russell T. McCutcheon (ed.), The Insider/ Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader (London and New York: Cassell, 1999).  Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 304– 305; cf. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology (Northvale NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1987 [1972]), 284– 314.

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will adequately capture the true nature of a performance.’²³ While there is a truth to this observation by Jonathan Arnold, description is at the heart of this research project. People’s experiences of, and meaning attributions to, music and its performance was primarily retrieved by means of talking to people about their experiences. In order to convey the meaningfulness and value of perceptions of performances, words are necessary. Musical experience is studied here at the level of interpretation and ascription.²⁴ As such, musical experience is not approached as an independent manifestation, but studied by means of people who perceive it. In order to shed light on people’s perceptions, the primary methodology in this research project is ethnography.²⁵ Through various ethnographic methods (see Appendix B), the festival was approached by means of how people were engaged with the festival. This led to the identification of three involved groups: the program committee responsible for the festival program, audience members, and performers (for an elaborate description of the three groups, see Appendix C). These groups displayed different types of engagement, and thus different departure points for possible perceptions of the sacred. Throughout the book, gathered data from these groups will be brought into conversation with theoretical considerations.

2.6.1 A Festival as Research Site Every research site has its own specific properties for which research methods need adaptation and fine-tuning. A festival is an environment with its own particularities, social dimensions, and artistic philosophies.²⁶ While the notion of

 Jonathan Arnold, Sacred Music in Secular Society (London: Ashgate, 2014), 153.  While experience plays a crucial role in the understanding of these interpretations, my research project is not a phenomenological endeavor. The difference between the two approaches is outlined in: James V. Spickard, “Micro Qualitative Approaches to the Sociology of Religion: Phenomenologies, Interviews, Narratives, and Ethnographies,” in The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, eds. James A. Beckford and N. Jay Demerath III (London: Sage, 2007): 104– 127. See also: Ann Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 18.  The primary ethnographic methods used in this research were participatory observation, sensory ethnography, and interviews (including conversations based on participant diaries).  To my knowledge, festival Musica Sacra Maastricht was not previously functioned as a research site for extensive fieldwork. The festival was subject of a course taught at Maastricht University, regarding the notions of the sacred and the secular. However, this course did not require students to do any fieldwork during the festival. Therefore, no precedents were known. During

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festival will be further discussed in Chapter 6, its three main characteristics are important in terms of methodological considerations. A festival is primarily a cultural event; it has a ritual character (both with regard to the event as a whole as to the separate events that take place within the festival period); and there is a ludic or playful character to it.²⁷ Furthermore, a festival is a returning event, taking place within a set period of time. In addition, a festival often has a thematic character. It consists of a combination of activities in a more or less ordered program. By means of the festival, a parallel dimension to the world of daily life is created.²⁸ A music festival is a produced event in which the organizers anticipate the reception of the program. Especially with regard to the parallel programming of performances, it is anticipated which concerts will attract more visitors than others, resulting in the drafting of different scenarios. A large part of the audience consisted of returning visitors. Some critics reviewed the festival every year, but were also dependent on the availability of word counts or airing time. Performers were primarily engaged in a professional manner to the festival. However, some more than others were familiar with the history of Musica Sacra Maastricht, also attending concerts in their free time during the festival. Many parties were involved in setting up the festival program, in producing the logistics, and in making sure the festival actually took place as planned. All these parties were involved to enhance the experience of the festival visitor. In studying the visitor perception, it was beneficial for me to have insight in the decisions made during the production process. Therefore, the roles of all these parties needed to be explored, and if possible distinguished and identified, during and after the festival. This allowed getting a grip on the different flows of power and decision-making from which the festival resulted. Furthermore, the common denominator between all those parties involved in the festival were the individual performances. Even though the degree of involvement differed – from professional musicians to first time visitors – everyone took part in musical performances and established a relationship between the individual performance and the festival as a whole. Therefore, as ethnographer my presence during and in

the research period, I studied three festival editions. The first edition functioned as an introduction to the field, the second and third as peaks in the data gathering.  André Droogers, “Feasts: A View from Cultural Anthropology” in Christian Feast and Festival. The Dynamics of Western Liturgy and Culture, ed. Paul Post and others (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 79.  Described by Paul Post in his heuristic instrument of sacred zones, festivals are part of the cultural zone. Paul Post, “Fields of the Sacred. Reframing Identities of Sacred Places,” in Sacred Places in Modern Western Culture, eds. Paul Post, Arie L. Molendijk and Justin Kroesen (Leuven: Peeters, 2011): 36 – 38.

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between the concerts was required in order to get an understanding of the way the festival worked and the context in which people constructed and performed their perceptions. As the festival program demonstrated a large density and parallel sessions, it was impossible to attend all the performances during one festival edition. Selections were made beforehand. The choice of performances reflected a balance of local and international performers, of locations where the concerts were performed, of vocal and instrumental performances, and of well-known pieces and premieres.²⁹ The selections were always open to change when the field required it. This happened for instance during the 2012 festival, when I was urged by a program committee member to attend the concerts of Slagwerk Den Haag in the old industrial complex of the Timmerfabriek on the Saturday morning and that of the Matangi Quartet performing Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic (2008) in the Theater aan het Vrijthof on the Sunday afternoon. The percussion concert on Saturday morning resulted in valuable data concerning the intensity of instrumental music and how this concert had the ability to move one visitor to tears, while another visitor ran out of there. The concert by the Matangi Quartet provided insight in the decision-making process of the program committee as this Dutch premiere was labeled as unique and very special beforehand. Attending the concert increased my understanding of its evaluation afterwards.

2.6.2 Three Groups of Participants In order to gain access to the field of Musica Sacra Maastricht, the festival was approached by the identification of three groups of participants – the program committee, audience members, and performers. These groups all engaged with and contributed to the festival. Each of these groups required specific strategies to enable data gathering. Primarily, it needs to be addressed here that the terminology of groups does not relate to the identification of the involved people as sound groups. This concept was coined by ethnomusicologist John Blacking, identifying a group of people that strongly favors a musical repertoire, linking this to certain ideas and values about life and social structures. While Musica Sacra Maastricht primarily featured classical music, there was not one particular sound that the entire group identified with. However, what Blacking proposed as method for analysis is of interest. He stated that, ‘a crucial analytical procedure is not so much to fit the music into a social system, but to start with a musical

 The fieldwork concert attendance is listed in Appendix D.

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system and its symbols, with styles and sound groups, and then to see how and where society fits into music.’³⁰ This approach offered a useful fundament for studying musical performance in terms of the sacred, but it needs to be emphasized that the group aspect remained topic for debate. The individual voices within each group were strong and variable. Thus it remained to be seen to what extent these groups could be regarded as collectives of any coherent nature. Blacking acknowledged the diversity of opinions that may exist within a sound group, because these members are primarily connected through their music preference, however varied the reasons for these preferences may be. He used the notion of sound group to study the social values and implications carried by the relationship between the group members and the music. While the music programmed at Musica Sacra Maastricht was too varied for the use of the term sound group, the analytical elements Blacking proposed were relevant. At the Maastricht festival, the main research interest concerned the perception of the performed music that was presented in a framework of the sacred. The intricate relationship between the performed music and the underlying valuation dynamic was studied through perception and how people described this in their own terms. If something was expected to connect the group members and the groups among each other, it was exactly this engagement to the concerts and the festival. The groups were identified to create a framework that allowed a positioning of their practices. By linking these practices to a type of involvement, an entrance was created to study the festival as a whole. The gathered ethnographic data was used as an entry point to understanding the sacred potential of musical performance. Instead of studying the individual musical works themselves, the perceptions of participants in the festival were used to gain access to the question of how music actually works in terms of the sacred. The presented references to the data throughout this book reflect the results of the analytical process (described in Appendix E). I aimed to present the groups for their diversity and variety. Each participant had strong individual opinions, the groups are not perceived as coherent wholes. It is impossible to say something about the program committee or the audience. Rather I have wanted to shed light on how the performed music worked for those involved, how those involved related to the performed music. As far as the analyses have a reductionist character, it was not to state something about the research participants themselves, but about how music and its performance can function as possible platforms of

 John Blacking, Music, Culture, and Experience. Selected Papers by John Blacking (Chicago: Chicago University Press 1995), 234.

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the sacred. The next chapter introduces several theoretical approaches to the sacred, that offer remarkable theoretical resonance with the developments of the festival (moving from religious music to musica sacra). This theoretical exploration is followed, from Chapter 4 onward, by fieldwork findings that are brought into direct conversation with theoretical considerations in order to further the understanding of perceptions of the sacred through the interrelationship of art and religion.

3 Revisiting the Sacred Since the early twentieth century, the notion of the sacred has been a heavily debated topic in the study of religion. These debates provided the sacred with a rather moot character. Some scholars dismissed the notion all together; others continued to carefully use the notion under strict parameters. These discussions are rooted into two approaches. The first evolved around the question whether the sacred is an entity, a power that manifests itself and has a presence independent of other factors, a mystery of predominantly experiential and directive quality. This tradition can be related to the phenomenology of religion and lies at the heart of Christian theology. The second approach regards the sacred as a construct that results from human behavior, a concept used to describe the highest and collectively most cherished values within a particular semantic system, and the variety of practices that uphold these valuations and the system in general. First, this chapter outlines these two approaches to the sacred and the choice for the situational approach in the context of this research. Second, several situational approaches are presented: two typologies that attempt to grasp the multi-facetted nature of the sacred; a building blocks approach that has the aim of studying the sacred across times, cultures, and religions; and the idea of the sacred as a discursive feature. Third, the shared feature in all these approaches, the characteristic of the set-apart, is discussed. Finally, a formulation of a preliminary working definition of the sacred is presented, on which analyses in the following chapters will build.

3.1 Substantive vs. Situational Sacreds In the study of religion, the proponents of both approaches have been in discussion with each other. The two-fold academic development of the notion of the sacred has become an object of study in its own right.¹ The development of these approaches to the sacred has been identified in different terms. Scholars in the study of religion David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal distinguished  David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal, eds., American Sacred Space (Bloomington, Indianapolis; Indiana University Press, 1995); William E. Paden, “Sacrality as Integrity: ‘Sacred Order’ as a Model for Describing Religious Worlds,” in The Sacred and Its Scholars. Comparative Methodologies for the Study of Primary Religious Data, ed. Thomas A. Idinopulos and Edward A. Yonan (Leiden: Brill, 1996): 3 – 18; Arie L. Molendijk, “The Notion of the ‘Sacred,” in Holy Ground. ReInventing Ritual Space in Modern Western Culture, ed. Paul Post and Arie L. Molendijk (Leuven: Peeters, 2010): 55 – 89. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-004

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what they called a substantive and a situational approach to the sacred. The substantive approach to sacred is described as an independent, powerful manifestation. ‘Familiar substantial definitions – Rudolph Otto’s “holy,”² Gerardus van der Leeuw’s “power,”³ or Mircea Eliade’s “real”⁴ – might be regarded as attempts to replicate an insider’s evocation of certain experiential qualities that can be associated with the sacred. From this perspective, the sacred has been identified as an uncanny, awesome, or powerful manifestation of reality, full of ultimate significance.’⁵ The situational approach is characterized as result from human practices, and thus situationally dependent on context. This approach: can be traced back to the work of Emile Durkheim, has located the sacred at the nexus of human practices and social projects.⁶ Following Arnold van Gennep’s insight into the “pivoting of the sacred,”⁷ situational approaches have recognized that nothing is inherently sacred. (…) [The sacred is] a sign of difference that can be assigned to virtually anything through the human labor of consecration.⁸

In terms of academic disciplines, the different approaches of the substantive or essentialized sacred and the situational or constructed sacred may be related to the fields of respectively theology and the study of religion.⁹ The connotations of the substantive sacred regarding its experiential and non-empirical characteristics, are not acknowledged by scholars working with a situational approach. Much of the academic writing on the situational sacred demonstrated an intention of reclaiming the sacred from its substantive connotations and re-formulating its situational value.

 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958 [1907]).  Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation. A Study in Phenomenology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986 [1933]).  Mirca Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane. The Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., 1987 [1957]).  Chidester and Linenthal, American Sacred Space, 5 – 6. References to the individual scholars within the citation have been added by the author.  Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: The Free Press, 1995 [1912]).  Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (New York: Routledge, 2010 [1960]), 12.  Chidester and Linenthal, American Sacred Space, 5 – 6. References to the individual scholars within the citation have been added by the author.  The Durkheimian approach to the sacred is also designated with the term functional. Yet, I chose to use the term situational to emphasize the constructive nature of the sacred, incorporating both functional and non-functional dimensions.

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This can be recognized in an article by scholar in the study of religion William E. Paden with the telling title Before “The Sacred” became Theological. ¹⁰ As Paden stated elsewhere, ‘Though the concept of the sacred has come under attack for being too theological, sacrality as a factor or a set of factors in cultural behavior and the ways humans appropriate their worlds is too important to simply dismiss or ignore.’¹¹ My research of Musica Sacra Maastricht is meant as an exponent of this reclaim. I have grounded the project in the conviction that the notion of the sacred carries relevant theoretical potential for understanding the relationship between artistic practices, religion and its heritage, and valuation processes in contemporary culture. In reclaiming the theoretical potential of the sacred, the roots of the entangled development of the two approaches need to be distinguished. Although their profiles fundamentally differ, it is fruitful to question how the two approaches inform and relate to each other. When looking at sacred-making practices, or, in the words of Chidester and Linenthal, the human labor of consecration, the field is not as neatly defined as the theory would have it. The interconnectedness of the two approaches has been touched upon by Arie L. Molendijk. One could say that Durkheim, to some extent, substantialized the sacred by attributing “power” to it. The main difference, of course, is that Van der Leeuw and certainly Otto related the power of the sacred to the numinous or the sphere of the gods, whereas Durkheim related it to society and collective ideals. The first view implies an interest in religious experience or even the numinous itself, whereas the situational view focuses on human activity (ritual) and how place is sacralized.¹²

Molendijk reinforced the crucial position of experiential qualities when it comes to the notion of the sacred, which result from human practice. Whether this experiential level should be conceptualized as an independent manifestation, as done in the substantive approach, is a different question. I would argue it is most fruitful to discuss the sacred by focusing on the human behaviors that construct and perform these experiences. Therefore I positioned this project within in the situational approach. Experiences of music and art are studied here on an

 In this article, Paden does not use the distinction between substantial and situational, but he dubs it the difference between respectively the “mana model” and “an index of a system of behavior.” In later work, as will be described below, he uses the terminology of “mana model” and “sacred order.” William E. Paden, “Before ‘The Sacred’ became Theological: Rereading the Durkheimian Legacy,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 3:1 (1991): 10 – 23.  Paden, “Sacrality as Integrity,” 3.  Molendijk, “The Notion of the ‘Sacred’,” 105.

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interpretative level, on the level of how people talk about them and attribute value to experiences. This allows a position for experiential qualities, but only by means of the interpretations of those who experienced them. Paden formulated his take on the situational approach by means of the terminology of sacred order. By means of this he pointed at human activities that are eligible for the study of their sacred character, whether they are of religious nature or not. He understood sacred order as ‘the constraint of upholding the integrity of one’s world system against violation.’¹³ It relates to the practices through which members of an order uphold its core values and protect it from harm. ‘In itself, the analytical use of the term “sacred” is morally and religiously neutral (…), every cultural system filling it in with its own normative values.’¹⁴ Whether or not this order deals with supernatural or non-empirical subject matter, sacralizing practices and their underlying social dynamic are at the core of the study of the sacred. Overall, the situational approach to the sacred aims to include and move beyond the study of practices of religion. It demonstrates the relevance of the concept for studying the valuation process of human practices at large. The confusion in the use of the sacred in academic contexts primarily results from the prototypical status of religion in this matter.¹⁵ While the work of Durkheim is regarded as one of the main roots for the situational approach to the sacred, the theoretical (third-order) equation of religion and culture in his work has been cause for much of the confusion. For Durkheim, culture consisted of two domains: one sacred, one profane. All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present a common quality: they presuppose a classification of things – the real or ideal things men represent for themselves – into two classes, two opposite kinds, generally designated by two distinct terms effectively translated by the words profane and sacred. The division of the world into two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane, is the hallmark of religious thought.¹⁶

Durkheim is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the discipline of sociology. Yet, the social dynamics he discerned through his research, he in turn analyzed in terms of religion. This has resulted in a tradition of studying the sacred departing from data on (first-order) religion. However, just because the phenomenon of religion in the field has functioned as a prototype in the study of the sa-

   

Paden, “Sacrality as Integrity,” 4. Idem, 6. Idem, 16. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms, 34.

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cred, it does not follow that the discerned underlying dynamics are unsuitable for the study of other first-order sacralization practices. As Durkheim himself claimed, ‘Sacred things are not simply those personal beings that are called gods or spirits. A rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word anything, can be sacred.’¹⁷ It all depends on whether or not these things are subjected to sacralizing practices. The practices that are central to this book are the performances – and how these are perceived – at Musica Sacra Maastricht. It explores whether the notion of the sacred is of use in understanding the implications of artistic performances and their meaning to those engaged in the performances. For this aim, the situational approach offers the relevant trajectory. In the context of artistic practices and music performances, Chapter 4 explores how the experiential character of the sacred can gain a form of presence in the situational approach. This presence is found in the relational, generative potential of artistic performance.

3.2 Exploring the Situational Sacred A range of situational approaches to the sacred is of interest here. In an attempt to offer parameters for analyses of the sacred, the typology seems to be a popular instrument. I shall highlight two typologies, each covering one important aspect of the concept of the sacred: experience and taxonomy. It deserves emphasis that both typologies address the sacred on an interpretative level. The first attempts to grasp the variety of interpretations attributed to experiences, the second the variety in the use of the term sacred.

3.2.1 Two Typologies To grasp the particular nature of the sacred, scholar in the study of religion Jay Demerath developed a typology of what he called the varieties of sacred experience.¹⁸ This title is an overt reference to William James’ iconic 1902 lecture series The Varieties of Religious Experience. Demerath argued for a broadening of the concept of the sacred to make it suitable for the study of both religious and secular experiences. He argued that, ‘religion is only one model – or rather only one

 Idem, 34– 35.  N. Jay Demerath, “The Varieties of Sacred Experience: Finding the Sacred in a Secular Grove,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39:1 (2000): 1– 11.

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array of related models – and that other sources of the sacred can be equally valid even though far more variegated.’¹⁹ Consequentially, he admitted that, ‘Almost any social experience, process or phenomenon may qualify [to be experienced as sacred]. In fact, charting the sacred involves an exploration of inner space that is every bit as challenging as the astronomer’s exploration of a continually expanding outer space.’²⁰ Demerath first distinguished between two kinds of sacred experiences: confirmatory and compensatory. Confirmatory experiences are those ‘that reinforce our standing and affirm our identity by providing support, assurance, and security,’ while compensatory experiences offer an alternative for the experienced status quo, by supplying ‘release or relief from demeaning or unfulfilling rounds by providing alternative commitments and communities.’²¹ A second distinction is made between experiences that are either marginal or institutional. Marginal experiences affect those who ‘either are or perceive themselves to be outside of the mainstream,’ institutional experiences ‘occur within a culturally vested collectivity.’²² From these distinctions the following typology of sacred experience emerged (fig.1). Figure 1: Demerath’s typology of sacred experience (2000) Confirmatory

Compensatory

Marginal

Integrative

Quest

Institutional

Collective

Counter-Culture

This typology emphasizes, on the one hand, the social context in which experiences take place and, on the other hand, the effects or intentions of the experiences. When these two sides collide, Demerath formulated four types of valuation that can be characterized as sacred. ‒ Integrative: marginal, confirmatory; ‘a great array of rituals that bring individuals out of the cold and into the warm embrace of a social unit;’ ‒ Quest: marginal, compensatory; ‘attempts to seek new meanings and experiences for those who find the old inadequate;’ ‒ Collective: institutional, confirmatory; ‘the institutional version of the confirmatory syndrome;’

   

Idem, 3. Idem, 4. Idem, 5. Ibid.

3.2 Exploring the Situational Sacred

‒

43

Counter-culture: institutional, compensatory; ‘movements, organizations, and communities that offer a distinct – and sometimes aggressive – alternative to the societal mainstream.’²³

This typology is based on the idea that people have a continuous desire for affiliation with a social or cultural group, whether it is a smaller social unit or larger collectives. As Demerath reinforced, the constitution of social groups, the role of an individual in such groups, and the socio-cultural context that either reinforces or rejects these groups, are important factors in what is or might possibly be regarded as sacred. Where Demerath’s typology approached the sacred as categories of experience and reinforces how these categories can be interpreted, another typology presents the sacred as a taxonomic indicator. Sociologist Matthew Evans departed from the variety in the use of the term.²⁴ He distinguished three categories: the sacred is used in terms of the religious, transcendent, and set-apart. By acknowledging the third-order quality of the set-apart, Evans proposed to restrict the use of the term religion to ‘systems that concerned in some way with the divine or supernatural.’ From this followed an approach ‘to define religion as substantively concerned with the supernatural, but the “sacred” as referring to the “set apart”.’²⁵ The benefit of such an approach is that it ‘allows one to recognize the sacred in religion – and other spheres – without necessarily finding religion in everything sacred.’²⁶ The transcendent refers to a realm of supernatural beings, of extraordinary or otherworldly powers. The sacred, then, does not so much refer to the beings, as well as to the presence of the power itself. Being the primary feature in his typology, Evans described the notion of the set-apart by means of several characteristics. ‘The feature common to the setapart sacred is its valuation beyond utility, and that this mental setting-apart of certain things, sometimes accompanied by a literal setting apart, is largely based on non-rational (which is not necessarily to say irrational) features, like their emotional value.’²⁷ The first axis in Evan’s typology is that of the sacred holder, representing those performing the setting apart. This may occur by an individual or by a collective or group. The second axis is the context to which the set-apart is related, which Evans sees as source of the attribution of the sacred.

 Demerath, “The Varieties of Sacred Experience,” 5 – 6.  Matthew Evans, “The Sacred: Differentiating, Clarifying and extending Concepts,” Review of religious research 45:01 (2003): 32– 47.  Idem, 35.  Idem, 36.  Idem, 39.

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This context may be the everyday world as well as a perceived supernatural world.²⁸ Evans presented the resulting constructs as sensitizing concepts. ²⁹ These offer a means to rethink the research problem of defining and clarifying what is exactly designated when talking about the sacred. When the two axes meet, four categories of the sacred emerge (fig.2). Figure 2: Evans’ typology of the sacred as a taxonomic indicator Natural

Supernatural

Individual

Personal

Spiritual

Group

Civil

Religious

This typology does not depart from experiences and does not take the effects of sacrality into account like Demerath’s typology. Evans looked at the wide range of usage of the term and then explored the origins of these usages. Whether it concerned a personal or a collectively held value or feeling, whether it was related to the divine or to the natural world. This resulted in the identification of four types of sacrality: ‒ Personal (individual, natural) ‒ Spiritual (individual, supernatural) ‒ Civil (group, natural) ‒ Religious (group, supernatural) Evan’s typology is foremost an acknowledgement of the variety of ways the term of the sacred is used to designate particular kinds of behaviors and valuations following from them. The value of these two typologies is that they outline key features in the study of the sacred. They offer tools to identify experiences or attributions of meaning or value that can be designated as sacred. Within the instrument of the typology, I would argue the features as formulated in the axes are of most interest. The resulting categories or boxes when the axes collide have a rather static nature, while the field is often more dynamic. The typol Idem, 39 – 40.  Anthony Giddens coined the term sensitizing concepts, which “may be useful for thinking about research problems and the interpretation of research results. But to suppose that being theoretically informed – which it is the business of everyone working in the social sciences to be in some degree – means always operating with a welter of abstract concepts is as mischievous a doctrine as one which suggests that we can get along very well without ever using such concepts at all.” Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), 326 – 327.

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ogies are of most relevance for identifying particular subject matter deemed suitable to be studied from the perspective of the sacred. Other scholars have attempted to create tools for further research after this identification process.

3.2.2 Building Blocks of the Sacred Ann Taves, scholar in the study of religion, developed an analytical instrument to address questions why things, persons, or events may be experienced or called sacred. Like Demerath and Evans with their typologies, she aimed to study the sacred across cultures and religions. Also, she aimed to bridge the gap between the academic disciplines of psychology of religion and the study of religion. Taves’ approach consists of the identification of four buildings blocks of sacralities. In exploring what is called sacred, the process of how this occurs, and the reason why, the building blocks are meant to offer an analytical tool in distinguishing the sacred as an ultimate category of that which is already valued as special. Taves proposed that: We should adopt a building blocks approach to sacralities in which we identify more basic elements and processes, which, although not uniquely specifying “the sacred,” are nonetheless typically mixed and matched by people to generate things they view as sacred. As will become apparent, the indeterminacy of that which people deem sacred is inherent in the processes of valuation that leads to the specification of sacrality in any particular instance. Insofar as individuals or groups embrace different systems of valuation, that which they deem sacred will differ as well. Still, identifying the basic elements, and processes – building blocks of sacralities – will allow us to set up more precise comparisons across times and places (…).³⁰

In describing how value and belief systems work, and the position of the sacred in these, Taves evoked an understanding of systems of value and belief, consisting of different parts that all relate, to smaller or larger extent, to each other. A value system then exists of parts, which can fluctuate in importance and transform in content. The participants in the system more strongly engage to some parts than others. The whole, then, offers numerous possibilities for its participants to construct their own realities within and around the value system.³¹

 Ann Taves, “Building Blocks of Sacralities. A New Basis for Comparison across Cultures and Religions,” in Handbook of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, ed. Raymond F. Paloutzian and Crystal Park (New York: Guilford, 2013), 139 – 140.  Idem, 140 – 141.

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The first building block consists of the notion of setting things apart. This can be applied to virtually anything, which is then set-apart from the everyday or ordinary. According to Taves this is the most basic process on which the performance of the sacred is based. Three important points are to be noted. The setapart is not a definition of the sacred, but a process people undertake to mark things they value as non-ordinary. Setting something apart does not imply a radical break with the ordinary and everyday, but occurs on a continuum and is dependent on context and use. While the set-apart regards non-ordinary worlds or powers, the process of setting apart does not occur in another, non-ordinary world, but within the ordinary world. There is always a relation between the ordinary and that which is set apart.³² Next, there are two general classes of things set-apart: non-ordinary powers and non-ordinary realities or worlds. The non-ordinary character of power deals with several aspects; it regards an impersonal kind of power, it can be attributed to anything whether animate, inanimate, natural, or human-made; and the power in question is perceived as extraordinary or special and thus adds something unusual to that which is set apart. There are different kinds of powers and the capacities that inform these powers. Taves distinguished the capacity to act intentionally, the capacity to act, and the capacity to produce an effect. ³³ The extent to which people attribute, believe and experience these types of powers is crucial in understanding the capacities of perceived powers. These non-ordinary powers are often linked to the experience of, or belief in, non-ordinary worlds or realities. This concerns not only what is set apart, but also about where the setting apart occurs. Taves proposed to look at non-ordinary worlds within the known world. She evoked an image of worlds within worlds. What is in- and excluded in non-ordinary perceptions results from a particular hierarchy, in which a link to the ordinary world is always present. The everyday world may influence how people attribute values of non-ordinary character. The question then becomes how perceptions of ordinary matters may become non-ordinary, and vice versa.³⁴ The fourth building block draws attention to how people rank and order non-ordinary, set-apart matters by means of processes of valuation. Taves suggested that there are many different valuation systems. Religions, philosophies, ideologies can all be construed as such. She stipulated that:

 Idem, 144. This also brings to mind Robert Bellah’s description of the balance between the ordinary and the non-ordinary. See Chapter 1, note 46.  Idem, 145 – 147.  Idem, 148 – 152.

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In their more highly elaborated instances, we can conceive of them as systems or frameworks for assessing, ranking, manipulating, and sometimes transcending things that matter. Whether people consider a special thing as, for example, religious, mystical, magical, superstitious, spiritual, ideological, or secular will depend on preexisting systems of belief and practice, the web of concepts related to specialness, and the way that people position themselves in a given context.³⁵

The practices of assessing, ranking, manipulating, and transcending can all occur with regard to art and music, and are not only related to the performance, but also to its contextual features. The question is then in which ways these valuation processes occur, if particular goals are specified, and how value is designated. To look at the how and why of these practices means to explore the choices of valuation made in the process of setting apart. Taves aimed to create an overarching theory that both includes and reaches beyond religion when studying the sacred. In the formulation of her building blocks approach, religion and spirituality are two possible products from mixing and matching processes. Other, less definable value systems may also be the result from these processes.

3.2.3 Discursive Feature Like Evans, scholar in the study of religion Veikko Anttonen departed from an interest in language and the different usages of the term sacred in particular cultures over time. He urged scholars to look at the ‘meanings of the terms denoting “sacred” in different languages – present and past ones – and study their relation to categories of cultural value in such contexts in which these terms have turned into religious concepts.’³⁶ Furthermore, like Taves, he argued that the notion of the sacred designates a universal dynamic in human behavior, however culture-specific the content of what or who is valued as sacred may be.³⁷ Anttonen aimed for his research to find the cultural logic underlying sacred-making behavior within a particular symbolic system. It has resulted in the following description of the sacred: ‘The sacred is a special quality in individual and collec-

 Idem, 153.  Veikko Anttonen, “Rethinking the Sacred: The Notions of ‘Human Body’ and ‘Territory’ in Conceptualizing Religion,” in The Sacred and Its Scholars. Comparative Methodologies for the Study of Primary Religious Data, ed. Thomas A. Idinopulos and Edward A. Yonan (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 36.  Veikko Anttonen, “Does the Sacred make a Difference? Category Formation in Comparative Religion,” in Approaching Religion, ed. Tore Ahlback (Turku: Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 1999), 10.

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tive systems of meaning. (…) Sacrality is employed as a category-boundary to set things with non-negotiable value apart from things whose value is based on continuous transactions.’³⁸ Anttonen furthermore emphasized that people engage in ‘sacred-making activities and processes of signification according to paradigms given by the belief systems to which they are committed, whether they be religious, national or ideological.’³⁹ This type of categorization and valuation is a dynamic ‘which at the same time “separates” and “binds”.’⁴⁰ That which is regarded as sacred is separated because of the ultimate value attributed to it. Simultaneously, all those who uphold this valuation share it together, in turn resulting in a group dynamic, creating a sense of collectivity. The use of the term sacred, and the connotations of value it carries, implies an immediate boundary between that which is sacred (how it is supposed to be treated and by whom) and that which or whom is not (which may possibly threaten the sacred). By designating the sacred as a category-boundary, Anttonen simultaneously directed attention to the profane and its relationship with the sacred. Where Anttonen urged the study of the linguistic use of the sacred and its implications, anthropologist Roy Rappaport approached the sacred as a property of discourse. Sanctity (…) is a property of religious discourse and not of the objects signified in or by that discourse. In this usage it is not Christ, for example, who is sacred, but the liturgical works and acts proclaiming his divinity that are sacred. (…) It is the unquestionable quality of this discourse, and not the objects of this discourse or their putative qualities, that I take to constitute sanctity.⁴¹

This approach is in line with the previously described focus on sacred-making activities, rather than the idea that objects or persons have intrinsic sacred qualities. Rappaport also created a difference between the sacred, as a quality of discourse, and the numinous, with which he designated a non-discursive, experiential feature. For him, the sacred (the rational) and the numinous (the nonrational) together constitute the holy, which is at the core of symbolic belief systems like religion.⁴² I acknowledge the importance that Rappaport designated to the numinous, namely the non-rational, non-discursive quality that he signified

 Veikko Anttonen, “Sacred,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (London and New York: Cassell, 2000), 280 – 281.  Ibid.  Anttonen, “Rethinking the Sacred,” 43.  Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 281– 282.  Idem, 371.

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with this term. However, I do not use the term in the same way. Rather, I position both the discursive and the non-discursive features within the term sacred. This reflects my aim to keep this study on the interpretative level; of incorporating the perception of mystery and experiential qualities in a situational approach to the sacred. Rappaport also coined the term Ultimate Sacred Postulate (USP). With this, he designated ‘the ground, deeper than logic and beyond logic’s reach, upon which cosmological structure can be founded.’⁴³ USPs are ‘remote from social life. (…) They sanctify, which is to say certify, the entire system of understandings in accordance with which people conduct their lives.’⁴⁴ According to Rappaport, discursive and non-discursive structures result from a foundation constituted by USPs. They are upheld for their unquestionable character and in representations and expressions they are perceived as ‘changeless and without alternative, and thus, certain.’⁴⁵ The notion of USP indicates a fixed content, which is designated with an eternal and intrinsic sacred value. It is an approach to the sacred that results from studying predominantly first-order religion, taking the phenomenon of religion as a prototype for theorization on the sacred. As argued before, it is the type of approach that I intend to move away from in this project. However slow and reluctant it might be, as sacred forms result from active construction, they are subject to change and are thus potentially with alternative. Still, the notion of USP will return in later explorations of ritual and the analysis of musical performance. The perception of unchanging foundations as indicated by the concept of USPs, is one of several perceptions in response to the festival. Sociologist Gordon Lynch, who approached the sacred as a form of communication, offered another manner of positioning the sacred for its discursive quality. He described the sacred as ‘a way of communicating about what people take to be absolute realities that exert a profound moral claim over their lives.’⁴⁶ For Lynch the notion of morality is intrinsically part of the sacred. It echoes Rappaport’s notion of USP, in which ultimate truths of a particular cultural group are grounded. Rather than interpreting these as unchanging and fixed meta-forms, Lynch regarded contemporary communicative forms for their potential function as moral compasses. These forms consist of the use of specific symbols. The emotional identification with these symbols and their connotations are, in turn, realized through physical and institutional practices.⁴⁷     

Idem, 265. Ibid. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 286. Gordon Lynch, On the Sacred (Durham: Acumen, 2012), 11. Ibid.

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Rappaport pointed at the communicative character of the sacred as well, and gave it a Durkheimian flavor by pointing at its social potential. ‘In speaking of the sacred and the sanctified we are speaking of properties of certain discourses. The sacred and the sanctified are thus aspects of communication. It is of interest that the terms “communicate” and “community” are obviously cognates.’⁴⁸ Lynch emphasized the social and consequential moral implications of sacred communicative forms. He traced these forms back to the late Neolithic and Copper Age (around 4500 – 2500 BCE), from which the first known evidence of symbolic thinking and societal consciousness dates. Reflecting evolving social structures, Lynch developed notions to indicate the transforming structures of the sacred: starting as the localized sacred, it changed from about 1000 CE into a dynamic called the imperial sacred, into the present-day structure of the fragmented sacred. ⁴⁹ The field of Musica Sacra Maastricht can be seen as an exponent of the fragmented sacred, in which abstract symbols and concepts are primarily connected to individual feelings and emotions, while grand institutional claims, characteristic of imperial sacred times, continuously decreased in authority. New forms are found to express the experiential and transforming character of sacred claims. While the imperial type of symbolism still exists, its meanings are less widely shared. The imperial has become one fragment in a fragmented reality characterized by multiplicity. Lynch’s formulation of a broad socio-cultural perspective on the sacred includes but is not restricted to a first order understanding of religion. These approaches to the sacred – the typology, the building blocks, the discursive approach – form attempts to grasp how the sacred is constructed and perceived. The approaches share one common characteristic: a focus on the set-apart. While the catch phrase ‘that which is set-apart’ does not suffice as a definition of the sacred, it is a prevalent feature in its theorization. Often the activity of setting apart, and the consequential status that is received through this activity, is mentioned as a rather self-evident characteristic. However, this selfevidence does not cover the aspects of what occurs when something is set apart and the requirements for maintaining a set-apart character. While I use elements of all the previously mentioned theoretical approaches in further analysis, the notion of the set-apart deserves more attention, especially in relation to the performance of music.

 Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 326.  Lynch, On the Sacred, 39 – 67.

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3.3 The Set-Apart In his definition of religion, Durkheim described sacred things as ‘things set apart and forbidden,’⁵⁰ indicating their separation from the ordinary world and possible threats. Theoretical questions regarding the sacred and the setapart are 1) how the two elements are related; 2) which one follows the other; and 3) how the connection between the two notions is maintained. Studying the sacred by means of ethnography requires a distinction between the process of setting apart and the, in Durkheimian terms, things that are set apart. In the attribution of non-negotiable or exceptional value, things are set-apart, admired, and treated as sacred. At the moment it is set-apart, something is regarded as sacred. However, the valuation of particular content is not set in stone. Ideas regarding or experiences of that which is set-apart can transform over time. The sacred needs to be regarded as a dynamic: a continuous cycle of attribution and experience. As Anttonen observed: In postmodern western societies, there are millions of people who no longer accept the inherited religious traditions of their parents and ancestors as a grand theory for their lives. (..) The old religious structures have become desacralised and new or unconventionally defined forms of religious sacralisation invented. People have greater intellectual and moral freedom to create their own “sacred” moments within their secular cosmology, by setting apart specific times, places, events and persons and marking their significance by specific symbolic means. (…) [V]arious forms of performance can be comprehended in terms of the category of the sacred.⁵¹

Not everything that is regarded to be of value can be studied under the notion of the sacred. The sacred indicates the ultimate, top end of the valuation process. Anttonen analyzed that, ‘The sacred has been used as an attribute whereby distinctions have been expressed between those things that possess a special cultural value and those that do not demand particular attention or specific rulegoverned behavior.’⁵² Ultimate valued things require rule-governed behavior. Once something is set-apart, it continuously demands particular attention and specific behavior; in other words, a longer lasting ritual context is required. As will be further explored in Chapter 5, theoretical approaches to ritual are of relevance in studying the sacred.

 Durkheim, The Elementary Forms, 44.  Veikko Anttonen, “Toward a Cognitive Theory of the Sacred: An Ethnographic Approach,” Folklore. Electronic Journal of Folklore 14 (2000): 42.  Ibid.

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It was previously reiterated by Evans and Taves particularly, the process of setting apart is not only a physical but equally so a mental process. If the sacred can potentially be found everywhere or in everything, the set-apart is not a prerequisite for the sacred. Rather, the set-apart can be seen as a feature in the attribution of ultimate value. If the attributed value is of hors categorie in comparison to other designated values within a particular symbolic system, I would argue that it is the meaning itself that is non-negotiable or unquestionable, rather than the thing, person, or idea. Which brings us back to the discussions on whether or not things have an intrinsic sacred character. Thus, in line with the previous discussions, it is argued here that the pivotal role of the set-apart does not concern the things regarded as sacred, but concerns the value that is given to these things. In the context of artistic practices, the interplay between the set-apart and the sacred is of particular relevance. Notably since the twentieth-century, artists have used ordinary objects and turned these into something non-ordinary in their art. The difference between these non-ordinary objects and their ordinary counterparts are not always visibly discernable. Rather the added value that creates a boundary and requires rule-governed behavior has a presence in the temporarily established frame by means of an artistic practice. Through the frame of the artwork, people are more likely to look with a different eye or listen with a different ear, and experience different embodied meanings.⁵³ This embodiment occurs through the viewer or listener, resulting from a process invited by the artist or composer. The question, then, is whether art and music per definition invite for the possibility of an attribution of meaning with a set-apart character. Furthermore, the notion of the set-apart invites the question what this attributed meaning is set-apart from. It reiterates the relationship between the ordinary and the non-ordinary as stipulated by Robert Bellah.⁵⁴ These notions should not be regarded as constituting two different worlds, situated in isolation from each other. Rather they are related dimensions: without the one, the other would not exist. Think of Marcel Duchamp’s Urinal (1917) or Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box (1964). These pieces only make sense (and only mean something to people), because there is a counterpart to which the artworks can be related and from which they can be differentiated. I explore whether and how art, particularly music, can generate or reinforce the value marker of the sacred. This marker does not only indicate matters of cel-

 Cf. Arthur Danto, What Art Is (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014).  Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution. From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 1– 4.

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ebratory nature, but can also indicate the forbidden or the taboo. Many scholars of religion and ritual have explored this dual nature of the sacred, leading to a distinction between the pure and the impure sacred. With his study on (alternative) popular music, Christopher Partridge primarily explored the significance of the impure sacred for the social and cultural function of music.⁵⁵ Through its function in – in Demerath’s terms – the compensatory margins, Partridge argued that music has the ability to shock and violate, in addition to its abilities to purify and celebrate. Lynch distinguished two traditions of enquiry with regard to the pure and impure sacred. Studies on the pure sacred often address ‘sacred forms as cultural structures, exploring not only the content of specific sacred forms, but also the circulation, reproduction, and contestation of these structures through social life.’⁵⁶ Research on its impure nature rather regards the sacred ‘in terms of experiences and states that arise precisely through the suspension or transgression of cultural structures.’⁵⁷ Within the field of Musica Sacra Maastricht, l explore the structural, the practical, and the experiential dimensions of music perception. In each of these dimensions, transgression can be a feature. There are performances that celebrate, just as much as those that violate, or are violated. The often-fragile boundaries of a music performance of the type cherished at Musica Sacra Maastricht, are increasingly difficult to be guarded, as will be discussed in Chapter 7. In relation to Musica Sacra Maastricht, it is explored whether this relationship between the non-ordinary and the ordinary can also be cultivated when it comes to art and music that is less exemplary of reality than the mentioned artworks of Warhol or Duchamp. For now it is observed that the notion of the set-apart, in relation to the sacred, does not concern the act of setting apart itself, but concerns the relationship, which it enables, the relationship to the non-setapart. It is a technique of differentiation, which allows those using it to attribute meaning and value of set-apart and perhaps even sacred character, exactly because it can be related to something that is not necessarily sacred. After these theoretical explorations, in the context of this research the sacred is approached as a marker of ultimate, nonnegotiable value that relates perceptions of ordinary and non-ordinary character. The attribution of this value marker and how this can establish relationships between the ordinary and the nonordinary, is explored here in the interrelationship between artistic performance,  Christopher Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus: Popular Music, The Sacred, & The Profane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).  Gordon Lynch, The Sacred in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 19.  Ibid.

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religion and its heritage, and how this interrelationship potentially functions as platform for the sacred.

3.4 Between the Sacred and Music The theorization of the sacred has witnessed a conceptual and disciplinary expansion. Yet research on the relationship between the sacred and music is mostly dominated by studies of sacred music, and, almost self-evidently, focuses on the relationship between religion and music. However, the theoretical expansion that took place in the fields of the study of religion and sociology is of relevance here too. If the sacred is a form of communication, music can be studied as one such communicative form. If there is such a thing as sacred-making activities, attending concerts or festivals can be regarded as such. The relationship between the sacred and music is complex and multifaceted, both inside and outside academia. The ways to approach music are numerous: by means of composition, intentions of the composer, reception history, performance practice – to name just a few. The different ways of studying the many musical genres and styles have resulted in several academic disciplines accordingly, such as musicology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, and performance studies. Traditionally, the notion of musica sacra is regarded as sacred music, interpreted in terms of the genre, implying a direct relationship with the first-order concept of religion. It has become the topic of religious, ritual, and liturgical studies. However, I use a broad approach to the sacred and relate this to musical practices. This study does not only deal with the genre of sacred music, but rather concerns the sacred in music. I aim to refrain from a normative approach to what is good music, a plea in favor of classical music over and against popular music, or a judgment on what is proper sacred music. In writing about music, qualitative judgments form an easy pitfall. Yet, this research is neither about presenting a normative scale on music, sacrality, or a combination of the two, nor about defining what is good musica sacra. Rather, the attribution of value in whichever form is crucial here. To that end, author and music critic Alex Ross asked: ‘So why has the idea taken hold that there is something peculiarly inexpressible about music?’⁵⁸ His answer directs him not toward music itself, but toward people listening to it. ‘The explanation may lie not in music but in ourselves. Since the mid-nineteenth century, audiences have routinely adopted music as a sort of sec-

 Alex Ross, Listen to This (London: Fourth Estate, 2011 [2010]), xiii–xiv.

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ular religion or spiritual politics, investing it with messages as urgent as they are vague.’⁵⁹ By embracing this sense of urgency and the vagueness, the notion of the personal takes up a particular role in my research project. Urgency relates to the meaning and value people ascribe to the performed music. This often occurs through their experiences of the music, which are in turn related to that vagueness, due to their intangible character and difficulty of being put into words. In this research endeavor of analyzing perceptions of the sacred through musical performance, the personal is primarily reflected in the methodological approach. People involved in the festival (organizers, audience members, and performers) were asked about the ways they perceived the performed music. The parallel between the study of the sacred and that of music is unmistakable. On the one hand, the effect of music can be described as a powerful, out-ofthis-world experience. The terminology used for description often relates to a sense of the extraordinary.⁶⁰ On the other hand there is the material, practical side. Both the sacred and music can be researched for their experiential character, their inexpressible, non-rational, and non-discursive quality. Moreover, these notions are realized through practices, grounded in rational, discursive, or at least discernable qualities. In creating a larger theoretical understanding of the sacred, the study of a field consisting of musical practices is considered beneficial. Both the practical act of performance and its experience by participants are able serve as platforms of non-negotiable and ultimate value. This value should be regarded in terms of the attributed meaning, not as intrinsic element of the music itself. There is no such thing as intrinsically sacred sound. As festival music programmer Sylvester Beelaert described it, the sacred in music primarily relates to the function of music.

 Ibid.  Psychologist Alf Gabrielsson offers an inventory of how people describe musical experiences. His collection of almost a thousand accounts, demonstrates the large variety of places, situations, moments, and emotional states in which people can have strong experiences with music. Descriptions of these kinds of experiences consist of mentioning for instance the strengthening of self-confidence, providing new insights, relief of physical pain, visions of other worlds, meeting the divine, negative feelings ascribed to the topic or the music itself and out of body experiences. This collection reflects the variety in which musical pieces can be described, musical performances can be experienced, and how a sense of power can be ascribed to music through its experience. Alf Gabrielsson, Strong Experiences with Music. Music is Much More than Just Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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It is all based on associations. (…) Music never really is sacred. If you did not know anything about it, the same music, so to speak, would not be sacred. (…) So, sacrality really is more of a function. When people still really maintained religious beliefs, their ideas were, how to say, composed along. But, in all honesty, if you ask me, how to hear in music that it is sacred, if you did not know, does it really have a presence? I have to remain guilty of the answer, I really do not know.⁶¹

Beelaert also regarded musical experiences like those offered by the festival, as replacements for religious experiences. In his view, people increasingly turn to art instead of religion. Artistic experiences do not explain or solve any of the grand mysteries either, but they indicate a particular kind of mystery to which people like to relate. ‘Music is a mystery. How does tonality, which did not even exist in early days, resonate in us so deeply that we experience it as a creation of nature? While it actually is not. It is rooted in acoustic phenomena, but it is still a construction of human cognition and has deep connections with how our mind works.’⁶² For Beelaert, there were two types of associations with the notion of the sacred. On the one hand, the historic context of the music was important. If a composition was inspired by religious subject matter or used in a religious context such as liturgy, then Beelaert would call it evidently sacred. On the other hand, listening to music has the potential to evoke a particular kind of mystery that Beelaert related to the sacred. This mystery can be reflected in physical, embodied experiences or lead to a state of reflection. This duality is of crucial importance in how the sacred has been perceived by all involved groups in the festival, as will be demonstrated throughout the rest of the book. Such perceptions are based on negotiations, on associations, not on intrinsic, ontological truths. As Lynch put it: ‘[E]ven cherished forms of the sacred (…) can be understood not as timeless truths, but as the products

 Interview with SLB, 14.05. 2012. “(…) het zijn allemaal alleen maar associaties, (…). Muziek is nooit echt sacraal. Dezelfde muziek zou bij wijze van spreken, als je het niet wist, niet sacraal zijn. (…) Dus sacraliteit is echt meer een functie. In de tijd dat mensen nog echt geloofden, hoe moet ik dat zeggen, hun visie op het geloof werd mee gecomponeerd. En, maar eerlijk gezegd, als je aan mij vraagt, hoe hoor je aan muziek dat het sacraal is, als je het niet zou weten, zit dat er echt in? Daar moet ik je het antwoord op schuldig blijven, dan weet ik het echt niet?”  Idem. “Muziek is een mysterie. Hoe komt het dat tonaliteit, dat vroeger niet eens bestond, zo diepe resonanties heeft in ons, dat we het ervaren als een natuurverschijnsel. Terwijl dat het niet is. Het is wel geworteld in akoestische fenomenen, maar het is toch een constructie van de menselijke geest, en omdat het een constructie van de menselijke geest is, heeft het diepe connecties met hoe onze geest helemaal werkt.”

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of particular histories whose preservation and extension demand ongoing cultural labor.’⁶³ This ongoing labor is found here in musical performances, the organization, and engagement with the festival that is at the heart of this book.

 Lynch, The Sacred in the Modern World, 43.

4 Intertwinements of Religion, Culture, and Heritage Sint Janskerk, Sunday September 22, 2013. Between 15.30 – 16.30, the world premiere of the new composition LUTHER by Boudewijn Tarenskeen takes place. It is a composition inspired by, and to a certain extent, in honor of the protestant reformer Martin Luther (1483 – 1546). It is located in Maastricht’s prominent protestant church, located at the Vrijthof square and dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The composition consists of several roles. Baritone Michel Poels sings the role of Luther and actor Titus Muizelaar performs the part of a translator. The choir Cappella Amsterdam has a multifaceted role. Tarenskeen described it in the concert brochure as a ‘multiheaded monster that polarizes relationships as art choir, as poetic tragic choir, as opportunistic community, as festival audience, and as “the world”.’¹ Tarenskeen had embarked on this composition because of his interest in the person of Luther and the literary qualities of his writings. In the resulting composition, Luther was presented as a person with both strong convictions and internal doubts.² In the first part of the performance Luther sang a selection of Theses in a muttering and stammering voice, followed by a translation of an interpreter. The choir, positioned behind the audience, responded by singing hymns and psalms. In the second part, after an organ intermezzo, Luther sang his Theses with a clear and convinced singing voice. The translator again offered translations of the Theses. Luther ended with a so-called madness aria and an aria of based on Psalm 22, which expressed his returning feelings of despair and the questioning of his own devotion. During the performance, the translator increasingly gained a position of authority and superiority over Luther, turning his initial translations eventually into personal interpretations. In an epilogue after the second part, the translator directly addressed the audience in a monologue in which he questioned the role of religious authority in contemporary society. During this monologue the choir members walked from the back of the church, where they had been singing under the organ, over to the church choir. At the very end, the choir represented the festival audience evaluating the performance. This was hardly audible as the

 Boudewijn Tarenskeen provided a description of the performance in the concert brochure (2013), 1– 3.  The description of the performance that follows was first published in Lieke Wijnia and Mirella Klomp, “Tarenskeen’s LUTHER: Allowing for New Forms of Sacrality,” Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies 30 (2014): 243 – 259. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-005

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singers went to the far back of the choir, but the text was printed in the program booklets.³ In this composition Tarenskeen wanted to create a reinterpretation, not only of the persona of Luther, but also of the musical format of the oratorio. This format has a rich tradition in liturgical music. It was Tarenskeen’s intention to contribute to this tradition, by questioning and challenging its usual standards. During an interview, he explained, ‘It is such a hermetic construction, which fascinates me, because I want to explore why it works so well, but also why it is so boring and which opportunities it offers.’⁴ Tarenskeen called the new composition an oratorio as well, to make this relationship clear. His main focus was to explore the relationship between the individual solo performers and the masses – traditionally the orchestra, in this case the choir. He explored this relation, ‘until [he] reached a kind of movement that one does not know anymore whether one is in an oratorio or in something else.’⁵ To create this movement between forms, between individuals and the collective, Tarenskeen introduced a translator. This translator functioned as a link between the audience and the solo baritone who performed the role of Luther. Tarenskeen described this as follows: I thought of the translator as a good idea. It creates a breakthrough. In an oratorio you never really know what it is about. Well, you have a suspicion that it is about the Bible, and about good and evil, or about sin, or about redemption – all those oratorios. People do not really follow it anymore. They think, sure it is beautiful. And then I thought, we should get an actor who interrupts everything, by stating: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this is what he is saying!’ He literally translates the text.⁶

 In addition to the musical arrangements by Tarenskeen, author Gerardjan Rijnders wrote the text for the significant epilogue. Baritone singer Michel Poels performed the role of Luther and actor Titus Muizelaar played the translator. The choir Cappella Amsterdam represented the roles of an art choir, an opportunistic crowd of people, the festival audience, and the world. Organ player Gerrie Meijers performed the instrumental section. Parts of the performance were filmed and used for a trailer of the production. See LUTHER trailer, 24.03. 2014. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=eG8bRoe6aIQ.  Interview with Tarenskeen, 27.05. 2014. “[H]et [is] zo’n hermetische constructie, wat mij fascineert, omdat ik wil kijken waarom het zo goed werkt, maar ook waarom het zo saai is en wat je er dan mee kan doen.”  Idem. “[N]et zo lang dat we een soort beweging krijgen dat je niet meer weet of je in een oratorium zit of in iets anders.”  Idem. “En daarom vond ik die tolk wel een vondst. Je doorbreekt het meteen. In een oratorium weet je toch nooit precies waar het over gaat. Nou ja, je hebt een vermoeden dat het over de bijbel gaat en over goed en slecht, of het gaat over schuld of over verlossing – ál die oratoria. Mensen kijken ook niet meer mee, die denken: ja, dat is mooi. En toen dacht ik: laten we maar een acteur laten onderbreken, van: ‘dames en heren, dit zegt die man!’ Die vertaalt lettelrijk die tekst.”

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The composer developed, as he called it himself, a secular approach to both the persona of Luther and to the traditional music format of the oratorio. In doing so, he held potential, imagined audience response in the back of his mind. How he thinks people listen and respond to the traditional format of the oratorio. And how he wanted to shake things up, to the extent that the audience is not just listening in at face (or ear) value, but is actively processing the content and implications of the music they are listening to. By means of this new approach that the composer aimed to develop, while calling the resulting composition an oratorio, he deliberately placed himself as an innovator within this particular tradition. In doing so, LUTHER embodies the crucial character of the postsecular: the dynamic between religion and the secular, how these dimensions might intertwine and result in things anew. What, then, happens to the sacred in this dynamic? How do such intertwinements impact perceptions of the sacred, and how to these perceptions relate to, or depart from, conceptions of the sacred within religious traditions? This chapter explores how the dynamic between religion and the secular has been theorized, with a particular focus on culture, heritage, and the arts. First, the prevalent notion of the transfer of the sacred from the field of religion into the domain of the secular will be discussed. Approaches based on this notion of transfer imply how religious perceptions of the sacred might be lost to a certain extent or even disappear completely when the sacred is found in a cultural or societal domain interpreted as secular. Second, the dynamics between religion and the secular are explored through a lens that considers the parties involved in such interactions, shedding light on the complexities of negotiations taking place between the two domains. Examples from the field underline the persisting role of religious institutions, traditions, and vocabulary in such negotiations, even if these negotiations reflect efforts of broadening the scope of the sacred. Within these complexities, the notions of conservation and innovation play important roles, which will be discussed next. As embodiment of postsecular innovation, LUTHER is presented as a case study in order to discuss the dynamic of translation. This dynamic is a crucial concept in interactions between religion and the secular, especially when these interactions are understood in terms of conservation and innovation. In what follows, the perception of art and heritage as sacralized entities is elemental.

4.1 Transfer of the Sacred This chapter departs from the question what happens to the sacred in intersections of art, religion, and its heritage in postsecular contexts. The use of the term

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postsecular indicates the focus on intertwinements between religion and the secular. Such intertwinements occur when, for instance, religious discourse, values or material culture finds its way into domains that are explicitly regarded as not religious, or secular. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, societies in western Europe have been analyzed from the perspective of secularization theory. This theoretical framework presents, according to historian Herman Paul, a grand narrative about how religion increasingly turns into a concern of private nature, while simultaneously displaying an overall tendency of decline.⁷ The more modernized a society would become, the more secularized its character would be – and thus the less religious. From this perspective, through the interaction between religion and the secular, the religious sacred underwent a transfer into new, secular domains – where the religious sacred became replaced with secular values, values that in turn gained a sacralized status. In such transformations, religion would become, one way or another, something of the past. In their introduction to The Religious Heritage Complex (2020), editors Cyril Isnart and Nathalie Cerezales emphasized how with the rise of nation states such sacralization indeed took place at the cost of the powerful position of institutional religion. ‘[T]he broader European historical process of secularization [led] monarchic, authoritarian, or democratic states to use the tools of the Christian church to perform, manage, and maintain their power over people.’⁸ They referenced the work of social historians John Bossy and Mona Ozouf, who demonstrated how in respectively England and France such transfers of the sacred took place. Societies came to be regarded as an “independent and autonomous body,” which began to generate their “own sacred values.”⁹ Although the content of these values might differ, these new state organizations used the instruments and symbolism of religious institutions before them.¹⁰ To give expression and weight to their new sacred values, rituals and material culture were (re)invented and became widespread. This was not only to enhance social cohesion in the name of the new state, but also to make citizens forget or abandon their traditional religious affiliations. In France, ‘[l]eaders sacralized the spiritual appeal of the revolution, giving force, legitimacy, and materiality to the existence of the

 Herman Paul, Secularisatie, Elementaire Deeltjes 59 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018). 9.  Cyril Isnart and Nathalie Cerezales, eds., The Religious Heritage Complex. Legacy, Conservation, and Christianity (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 2.  Ibid.  Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), 268 – 269.

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new French society.’¹¹ Ozouf called this process “a transfer of sacrality,”¹² to emphasize how the traditional religious sacred became replaced with new forms of civic sacrality. ‘[I]n a world in which Christian values were declining, [it expressed] a need for the sacred. A society instituting itself must sacralize the very deed of institution. If one wishes to found a new order, one cannot be sparing of the means to do so; beginning a new life cannot be imagined without faith.’¹³ Visual imagery and symbolism were crucial instruments in imagining and embodying this sense of faith. Art historian Robert Rosenblum addressed this in his history of romanticism in modern art. Not only the French Revolution offered new forms of the sacred in itself, the civil sacred became an instrument applied to succeeding forms of government as well. ‘The pseudo-Christian martyrs of the Revolution were succeeded by the pseudo-Christian deity of Napoleon.’¹⁴ Rosenblum observed how Jean Dominique Auguste Ingres’ famous portrait of Napoleon from 1806 echoes Jan van Eyck’s God the Father from the Ghent altar piece, completed in 1432. The symbolism of the deity on the throne with a similar body posture and blessing hand gesture is unmistakable. Generalized as “secular translations of sacred Christian imagery into the language of modern semi-divinities,” Rosenblum observed how this tendency of translation was present “throughout Western art of the Romantic era.”¹⁵ Do note how Rosenblum tied the sacred to Christianity, while the modern translations are described in more general terms of the divine. The use of the terms pseudo- and semi- indicate how the discussed symbolism of religious and civil imagery were thought to work in similar fashion. But the difference in vocabulary also addresses, as Ozouf observed, how religious images express a different type of content from imagery representing political leaders and civic values. Heritagization, including the application of the label “art” on historical objects, has long been, and to a certain extent still is, regarded as a significant process of secularization. Heritage sites themselves, whether these concern religious objects or not, provide a different kind of value to objects, once these are deemed as collection pieces or heritage objects. This was also referred to in the introduction chapter, in the description of the impact of exhibiting art objects in museums. Walter Benjamin argued how an art object like a painting, when it en-

 Isnart and Cerezales, Religious Heritage Complex, 2.  Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 271.  Idem, 276.  Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition. Friedrich to Rothko (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983 [1975]), 16.  Idem, 17.

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ters a museum, loses its “cultic value,” which is replaced with “display value.”¹⁶ The presence of the work of art, its existence in time and space, becomes replaced with aesthetic and political values. In turn, these values in a secularizing context have come to be regarded as sacred values in and of themselves. Although Isnart and Cerezales concurred with the transfer of the sacred as a relevant exercise to think with, they simultaneously reinforced the difference between the types of sacred under discussion. While civil, political, or aesthetic values might be treated as sacred, this sacrality is of a different nature from the religious sacred. ‘The sacredness conferred on heritage objects and sites only shares the name and the notion of the sacred with religion, for they are not religious themselves.’¹⁷ They elaborate on what the difference with the religious sacred entails. ‘[T]he terms “sacred” and “sacralization” are not intended to mean that heritagization confers religious traits onto items or places; they have no efficient supernatural qualities and are not able to contact with non-human entities in order to offer healing and/ or salvation.’¹⁸ While throughout this book, I aim to challenge the statement that non-religious sacred objects (or rituals, symbols, performances) cannot offer healing or salvation, for now I will agree to the described difference between forms of the civil and religious sacred. The civil sacred does not engage with the supernatural in the ways manifested through expressions of the religious sacred. The understanding of sacralization here is rooted in broader, sociological approaches to the sacred, as discussed in the previous chapter. Such approaches regard the sacred and its accompanying process of sacralization as a shared element between the religious and non-religious, or secular. In the emergence of the sacralization of political or cultural manifestations, in a context like France it was explicitly the aim to eradicate organized religion, predominantly Catholicism, from the public domain and from any of its previous societal importance. However, as Ozouf has excellently shown, not only did institutional religion offer instruments for the new civic sacrality, religion also did not completely disappear. Instead, institutionalized religion adapted itself, albeit reluctantly, to its transformed position. And, religion became regarded through the lens of culture. Although this is a tendency that already emerged in modernizing societies, it gained increased scholarly attention in the first decades of the twenty-first century – note the rise in interest with the emergence of the notion of

 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Great Ideas 56, trans. Jim A. Underwood (London: Penguin, 2008), 12– 13.  Isnart and Cerezales, Religious Heritage Complex, 3.  Ibid.

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the postsecular. The phenomenon of “culturalized religion” reflects similar aims as the use of the postsecular – working towards greater understanding of the ‘enduring presence and influence of religious identities, values, and institutional forms in secularizing and diversifying societies.’¹⁹ Sociologists of religion Avi Astor and Damon Maryl observed, ‘What is distinctive about culturalized religion, (…) is that it is perceived or portrayed as “culture” rather than “religion,” despite its ongoing links to “traditional” religious forms.’²⁰ Heritagization takes up an important part in the phenomenon of culturalized religion.²¹ A concrete example is when religious objects or artefacts end up in museum collections. When religious objects, which originally functioned in liturgical contexts, are transferred to a heritage context like a museum, they undergo a transformation process. The terms of Benjamin are applicable here. Such objects lose their original liturgical (or cult) value, because they no longer serve the purpose which they were made for. From then on, such objects are regarded as heritage objects, or even as art (exhibition value). They become appreciated for their aesthetics, their makers, or the narrative that can be told with them, over their original liturgical purposes. For long, it has been observed that such objects, by turning into heritage or art objects, lose their sacred nature. While transformation tends to include a sense of loss, at the same time, it can also be argued that part of their religious significance lives on²² – in their aesthetics, the biographies of their makers, and the narratives that are told with them from then onward. This observation has two implications. On the one hand, it is a challenge to the automatic connection that is often made between the sacred and religious (or liturgical) function of objects. On the other hand, it extends an invitation to identify religion in a transformed or challenged way in such transformation processes.

 Avi Astor and Damon Mayrl, “Culturalized Religion: A Synthetic Review and Agenda for Research,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 59:2 (2020): 209 – 226.  Idem, 210.  Marian Burchardt even used the term “heritage religion.” Marian Burchardt, Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020).  Crispin Paine has been one of the first to discuss how recently more curatorial attention and sensitivity has been paid to the religious and spiritual aspects of objects, source communities are increasingly involved in the display of such objects, and how people of faith are provided with opportunities to worship in museums. Crispin Paine, Religious Objects in Museums: Private Lives and Public Duties (London: Bloomsbury 2013).

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4.1.1 Between Presence and Likeness One manifestation of such a transformation process deserves more attention, with art historian Hans Belting’s analysis of the transformation of the religious image. Although the majority of this book by means of its central case study is dedicated to the perception of the sacred through music, I consider both heritage and image theory of relevance in shedding light on such perceptions. The notion of the image moves beyond that of the artwork, that of the visual, and even that of the material.²³ Rather, images can be materialized in objects and be present in mental renderings. Images can be understood as spaces, as rooms to be inhabited. Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk conceptualized this perception of images by means of the notion of spheres, which are created, sustained, and inhabited by humans.²⁴ This broad approach to images offers a relevant parallel to what Christopher Partridge described as affective space. Affective space (or sphere, if you will) is rendered during performances of music and are shaped and influenced by the performed sounds, memories, individual’s biographies, collective and societal structures – a multifaceted space of perception through which people experience music or other artistic performance.²⁵ I view perceptions of visual imagery and musical performances similarly through the theoretical lens of the sphere, or the image. In his seminal book Likeness and Presence (1994), Belting offered an exploration of the transformation of the image (particularly the Holy Image, or portrait) that took place after the end of the period known as the Middle Ages. Belting’s proposed moment of transformation is of interest here. Until the late Middle Ages, the image served the purpose of veneration, of worship, and had a function within religious communities. Such images demanded they be dealt with in a particular, prescribed manner. Also, access to the image was highly regulated. ‘When the image was venerated, a ritual memory exercise was (…) performed. Often, access to an image was permitted only when there was an official occasion to honor it. It could not be contemplated at will, but was acclaimed only in an act of solidarity with the community according to a prescribed program on an appointed day.’²⁶ Such practice with and around the image is

 Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images. Picture, Medium, Body, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011 [2001]), 2.  Peter Sloterdijk, Bubbles. Spheres I, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge MA.: MIT Press, 2011).  Christopher Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus. Popular Music, The Sacred, & The Profane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 37– 38.  Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 13.

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what Belting characterized as cult. The image was accompanied by a multitude of narratives, legends, to verify the veracity of the person depicted and underline the status of the image and its (potentially divine) origin. Images were ascribed with power, they did not merely re-present the saint or god whose face they carried, but actually channeled the depicted person’s presence and significance. Such ascription of power was lost after the Middle Ages and during the Reformation, when ‘art took on a different meaning and became acknowledged for its own sake – art as invented by a famous artist and defined by a proper theory.’²⁷ The image lost its revelatory power, its potential of presence. ‘Into its place steps art. (…) Art becomes the sphere of the artist, who assumes control of the image as proof of his or her art.’²⁸ As art, images are used in a different manner. People ‘seize power over the image and seek through art to apply their metaphoric concept of the world. The image, henceforth produced according to the rules of art and deciphered in terms of them, presents itself to the beholder as an object of reflection.’²⁹ Presence has an unmediated and uncontrolled character, which can be discovered and experienced through ritualized engagement with the image. Reflection, instead, places control with the person who is engaging with the image – whether it is the artist or the viewer.³⁰ ‘Form and content renounce their unmediated meaning in favor of the mediated meaning of aesthetic experience and concealed argumentation.’³¹ As the title of his book indicates, Belting described the manifestation of religion in the cult image as presence, while religion’s likeness is apparent in the art image. This difference in perception of images can be illustrated by means of, on the one hand orthodox iconography and early Sienese paintings as embodiments of cult or presence. And on the other hand, Renaissance paintings by for instance Caravaggio or Raphael as embodiments of art or likeness. The difference in designations of the various types of images is also apparent: the former is indicated by means of object type or locale where it is from, the latter by means of identified art period and individual artist names. This contains exactly the transformation Belting meant to identify. Similarly, such differences can be identified in music history. Plainchant – of which Gregorian chant is best known and most

 Idem, xxi.  Idem, 16.  Ibid.  Reflection and the change of focus from an outer force to an inner control reflects what Charles Taylor has called the transformation from transcendence to immanence. See Chapter 15 on the immanent frame, in Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).  Belting, Likeness and Presence, 16.

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widespread but also Ambrosian chant and Mozarabic chant are known forms – can be seen as exemplary for a cultic engagement with sound and singing. This music was a significant element in liturgy and as such performed as ritual performance. Contrary, the artistic engagement can be found in, for instance, polyphonic masses composed by Josquin des Prez or Gregorio Allegri. Generally, it could be argued, that the development from cult to art music can be found in the development from monophonic to polyphonic music – when music became an artistic form in and of itself. Such polyphonic masses would be performed within liturgical contexts, while they were simultaneously seen as platforms to express artistic virtuosity and innovation. Similarly, Caravaggio and Raphael painted altarpieces and chapel decorations that offered a context for liturgical performance. As such, both the visual and musical expressions fit the art era as identified by Belting. The impact of art, as a lens through which objects are viewed, was already touched upon above in the context of heritagization. In addition to Belting’s analysis of the transformation of religion – from presence to likeness – in the understanding of images, I propose it is valuable to also consider art’s sacralized status that emerged in early modern societies. Especially in secularizing contexts from the nineteenth century onward, this sacralized status takes up an important role in societal and cultural contexts. Even though this sacralization is of different nature than the supernatural or divine orientation of the religious sacred, it nevertheless functions as a form of the sacred. In its own right art begins to function as a potential generator of the sacred. And in this generative form, religion has a place. Despite its transformation from presence to likeness, it remains a source of meaningful engagement. While some would conceptualize this as a loss of religion or the divine, I would not (and neither does Belting) address this transformation in a normative sense. Likeness is not merely religion as superficiality or façade.³² Rather it manifests religion in a transformed, but nevertheless meaningful and significant manner. A manifestation in which religious engagement, the experience of divine presence, is an option, but not the only manifestation or prerequisite in engagement with the image. This argument reflects Gordon Lynch’s approach of the fragmented sacred (discussed in Chap-

 As it has been approached, for instance, by philosopher Jean-Luc Marion in his analysis of the spiritual dimensions of abstract art – particularly the Rothko Chapel in Houston. See: JeanLuc Marion, In Excess. Studies of Saturated Phenomena (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 76.

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ter 3), in which institutionalized religion and its engagement with the supernatural serves as one of the fragments among many.³³ Simultaneously, in secularizing contexts, art has begun to function in a way that can be paralleled to, or even identified as, a cultic manner. While this observation is further elaborated upon throughout this book, at this stage I would like to reinforce how in this cultic functioning of art, religion – e. g. its rituals, images, sounds, and symbolism – continues to play a meaningful role.³⁴ Exactly its transformed presence, and not complete absence or eradication, underlines this. One of the main lines of enquiry within this study is to analyze how artistic forms may in fact have something to offer for the continuity, (perhaps survival even) of religion in secularizing societies. Such continuity is subject to ongoing negotiation and re-negotiation, formulation and re-formulation. In the next section the crucial role of negotiations in and between religion and the secular, between religious and civil institutions, is explored by means of examples from Musica Sacra Maastricht. In such negotiations on the sacred, and how it can be constructed and performed through music and other artistic forms, the notion of religion, its institutions, and its language has a crucial place.

4.2 Negotiations between Religion and the Secular The emergence of the postsecular and its conceptual framework reflects the reorientation of secularization theory. The use of the term post in this concept does not necessarily indicate that societies are no longer secularized, or that the secular is a bygone era. Rather the term expresses how the long-dominant convictions in which secularization theory was grounded need to be re-scrutinized and adapted through the study of current societal phenomena, in order to achieve a theoretical framework that better reflects contemporary complexities. Theoriza-

 This was also observed by Cyril Isnart and Nathalie Cerezales, who state that, ‘The Durkheimian perspective leads us to consider religious sacredness as one among many other social domains (political, moral, ecological, or heritage-related) that are often disconnected.’ Isnart and Cerezales, Religious Heritage Complex, 3 – 4.  For studies about continued and transformed manifestations of religious narratives and symbolism, see Alena Alexandrova, Breaking Resemblance. The Role of Religious Motifs in Contemporary Art (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017); Maria Sabina Draga-Alexandru and Dragos Manea (eds.), Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture. Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality. Studies in Religion and the Arts 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2021); Aaron Rosen, Art + Religion in the 21st Century (London: Thames & Hudson, 2015).

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tions of particularly the dynamics between religion, art, and heritage demonstrate similar developments. Initially a transfer of the sacred from the religious into the secular domains of politics and culture has been argued for. However, more recently scholars have begun formulating approaches to, instead of focusing on transfer and replacement, indeed emphasize the complexities and negotiations from which the sacred results.³⁵ The previously mentioned concept of the religious heritage complex by Isnart and Cerezales is an important step in the theorization of such complexities. ‘Instead of taking for granted the separation of religious sacredness and the artistic aura of cultural heritage, the religious heritage complex describes the continuity between the habitus of conservation of the past within religious traditions and a conscious policy regarding the care of the past in heritage contexts.’³⁶ This conceptual framework aims to shed light on the complexities of both religious institutional and heritage practices and what happens when these two fields interact. Religious institutions maintain practices of conservation and preservation. In establishing and maintaining religious traditions, crucial elements that make up a tradition are conserved and passed along, like rituals, knowledge, scripture, and symbolism. In that sense, religious institutions and heritage organizations have a shared concern. While their purposes for conservation might ultimately be different, both are driven by the significance and meaningfulness the preserved aspects hold for them and their broader communities. ‘The religious heritage complex is a theoretical tool to capture the coexistence of two different layers of values attributed to religious practices and materiality. Analyses that look only for the influences of heritage policies on religious sites, or that simply enact the split between religion and heritage, undermine (…) the drive to uncover the various interactions between the heritage and spiritual forces at play within the theater of religious heritage-making.’³⁷ The focus on intertwinement resonates the previous discussions of the postsecular and fits this era of scholarly interest in the complex, ambivalent, and dynamic place of religion in secularizing societies. Negotiations are of crucial importance in this complex. In the field of Musica Sacra Maastricht, such negotiations took place at various levels. Internally, with the program committee members among each other negotiating about the selection of music, performers, locations. And externally, between the committee and external parties like performers, conductors, and location managers. The nego Arie L. Molendijk, “In Pursuit of the Postsecular,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 76.2 (2011): 100 – 115.  Isnart and Cerezales, Religious Heritage Complex, 6.  Idem, 6 – 7.

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tiations often related to the quality and suitability of the proposed musical programs under the annual theme and the notion of the sacred. In the perception of the program committee, high quality was directly related to the sacred, in having the potential to generate perceptions of the sacred. Contrary, popular music or music without sufficient depth and quality was thought to never reach this potential (this will be further discussed in Chapter 5). In what follows, I explore various instances of negotiations that took during Musica Sacra Maastricht. The analyzed negotiations are informed by various themes distinguished by Isnart and Cerezales that embody configurations of the religious heritage complex. They identified five such themes: the religious habitus of conservation, tourism, material religion and heritage, imagined communities, and heritage practices of religious communities. Particularly three themes are of relevance here, which are discussed below and interpreted from perspectives that emerged from the fieldwork: religious habitus is used to shed light on practices of respect for, and maintenance of, tradition; tourism is perceived as communicative practices with the aim of appealing to and attracting an audience as wide as possible; and material religion and heritage is interpreted here as the interaction between materiality and its counterpart of immateriality – notably when it comes to space, place, and religious architecture.³⁸

4.2.1 Religious Habitus In safeguarding its ideas on the sacred and music, Musica Sacra Maastricht’s program committee employed diplomatic and strategic skills. In creating an annual festival program, continuous navigation was required between thoughts on the ideal festival program and the practical context of negotiations and collaborations with the festival’s many partners. In addition to practical limitations and opportunities, this organizational aspect of the festival is of importance in exploring how perceptions of the sacred occurred. In the most practical situations when the committee’s ideas on the sacred, and its accompanying perceptions about quality or authenticity, were challenged, it became clear how such perceptions were constructed and performed. The program committee maintained a broad approach to the notion of the sacred. As it was described by the committee members, they wanted to present an exploration of the sacred in a range of religious and secular perspectives. For them the religious perspective was grounded in institutional traditions, with a

 Idem, 7– 13.

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strong focus on Christianity. In planning performances in churches and chapels, the committee members generally adhered to the rules and codes of conduct in these buildings. When a performance required a dancer moving in a church’s choir area and around the altar, the first question was whether this would be allowed (not, for instance what the artistic significance would be of such a part in the performance). Or when a minister expressed the wish to solely have organ concerts in his church, the committee would not push for other kinds of concerts to take place there. A self-evident form of respect existed for that which was regarded as sacred (and its consequences) within institutional contexts. This attitude towards the religious institutions and their traditions resonates with what Isnart and Cerezales called the religious habitus of conservation. This notion incorporates sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus that refers to ‘a set of shared and enduring attitudes, which frame individual thoughts and practices and obey social norms.’ It ‘regulates how people feel, perceive and react to the world, using a collective and shared interpretation of what is supposed to be common sense, without intellectual calculations.’³⁹ While this religious habitus was strongly present in the committee, especially in relation to Catholicism, this did not mean that no boundaries were trespassed in the resulting festival programs. Especially when compared to institutional religious contexts, secular perspectives on the sacred offered a diverse and relatively unstructured territory. It was a greater challenge for the committee to grasp and to adhere possible codes of conduct there. A telling example was when the committee planned a concert in Maastricht’s city hall. An entrance fee was applicable to this concert. After the concert had taken place, a representative of the city council informed the festival’s project lead that the committee was not allowed to host events with an entrance fee there, because the city hall was regarded as public space and should be accessible at all times for everyone.⁴⁰ When the festival began in 1983, one of the main challenges was to host concerts with an entrance fee in church buildings, because churches, in principle, needed to be accessible for everyone during the day. Throughout its existence, the festival has overcome this challenge, not in the least because of changed attitudes in the church communities themselves with regard to the use of church buildings by external parties. Fifteen years after its start, the festival was confronted with another sacred framework of public space, how this public good was valued, and how it should

 Idem, 7. Isnart and Cerezales based their description of habitus on Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977).  Meeting program committee, 23.09. 2013.

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be treated accordingly. The city hall manifested itself as a secular sacred place, which the festival needed to consider. In the festival’s broad approach to the sacred, the boundaries of the relationships with church communities were often tried. This offered practical challenges to, for instance, the use of space for rehearsals and performances. Instrument cases lying around on the altar or dancers in the church were regarded as out of line with the sacred character of the building.⁴¹ There was a continuous awareness of possible tension between the different sacralities of institutional religious contexts and of the festival. The participating religious communities especially experienced this toward the festival, the festival’s perceived secular status became an aspect for the program committee to deal with. While this offered practical challenges and required diplomatic skills, at the same time the roots of such challenges reflect the heart of the festival’s subject matter. In addition to this convergence of different ideas on the sacred, the Sunday masses and services in the festival weekend saw a musical contribution from the festival. This contribution to the liturgy was always negotiated beforehand with the priest or reverend, who in turn also aimed to use the annual festival theme in sermons. Throughout the festival, the committee wanted to present a diversity of musical and intellectual approaches to the theme. The musical contributions to the church services and masses received a new context by means of the liturgy. A telling example was a discussion on a contribution to the Protestant service during the 2013 festival. The reverend saw the annual theme Introspection, Transformation, Conversion as a useful and appealing theme for his sermon. When one of the committee members said it was not necessarily the aim to propagate a particular kind of conversion through the sermon or the musical contribution, the reverend responded, ‘yes, of course it is. It is a permanent theme, conversion.’⁴² This conversation marked the difference in approach between the representative of the religious community, propagating one particular conviction of the sacred, and the festival, exploring a diversity of sacreds and its aim to refrain from moral judgment (despite the fact, that, of course, in their selections certain moralities were communicated).⁴³

 Meetings program committee, 09.03. 2012 and 08.02. 2013.  Meeting program committee, 14.03. 2013. “FD: Het is natuurlijk niet de bedoeling om de inkeer of de bekering te propageren. JB [the reverend, LW]: Ja, juist wel. Dat is een permanent thema, de bekering.”  Meeting program committee, 13.11. 2012. JG: “We don’t want to provide moral judgment, we want to show. (…)” FD: “But we don’t decide not to show things because we think it is questionable.” JL: “Show that it exists.” FD: “Others should decide what is questionable. And if you can create an exciting dialectic with it.”

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As the Sunday liturgies were part of the festival schedule, festival visitors joined these in addition to the congregation members. As many of the festival visitors came from the Maastricht area, some of them were part of the congregations to which the festival contributed. They attended service or mass from a different departure point than the people who attended it as a segment in the festival program. The congregation members felt the opening up of their house of worship to the festival visitors was a hospitable act. Some of the festival visitors said to experience this hospitability, while others felt to be outsiders. The musical contributions did not transform the liturgy into concerts, while simultaneously they received another character than the regular Sunday liturgy. It became a mixture of liturgy and concert, negotiating a new context for both the congregation members and the festival visitors.

4.2.2 Habitus and Culture When it came to the selection of composers and compositions, two crucial points of consideration were the biography of the composer and the intentions of the composer for the musical piece. For the festival themed Introspection, Transformation, Conversion, the committee selected particular pieces because their composers were well-known converts or at some point radically changed their lives. This change was not always directly notable in their music, but their biographies offered enough criteria for selection. Furthermore, the intentions with which a composition was written and its historical context had a non-negotiable positioning in the decision-making process of the committee. When asked whether a concert of Gregorian chant could ever take place in another location than a church, the responses were divided. The president of the program committee was not against this idea, if only for the sake of the experiment. In contrast, the music programmer did not see any reason why this would be a good idea, since ‘the music is written for a religious purpose. So, there would have to be a real good argument regarding the content of the music to do this. But I can’t think of any argument that would make sense.’⁴⁴ For the program committee, music and space related to institutional religion was per definition regarded as sacred. Masses or liturgical chants were characterized as rituals with connotations of the sacred. This was an indicator of the

 Meeting program committee, 05.11. 2013. SLB: “De muziek is geschreven voor een religieus doeleinde. Dus dan zou er muziek-inhoudelijk wel een heel goed argument moeten zijn om dat te doen. Maar ik kan geen enkel zinvol argument bedenken.”

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committee linking ritual and the sacred. The notion of the religious sacred had a fundamental presence in the program committee’s thinking. This fundament had a particular sacrality of its own and its presence unsurprisingly caused the persistent idea in the public domain about the festival being a religious music festival. Additionally, the program committee put in all efforts to present their ideas on the diversity of the secular sacred. This resulted in programming a wide array of topics and music styles. As their perceived strict one-on-one relationship, the religious sacred had a more dominant presence in the committee’s decision-making process than the secular sacred. While all committee members felt the urgency of incorporating approaches to the secular sacred, it required more focused effort on their behalf. This was exactly one of the reasons why in 1988 the name changed from European Festival for Religious Music to Musica Sacra Maastricht: to broaden the scope of music selection and allow for a broader approach to the sacred. An interesting combination of religious habitus and the culturalization of religion was found in the composition Die Bücher der Zeiten (2010/2014) by Mike Svoboda, which was performed during the 2014 festival. For Svoboda, writing this piece was a personal matter: it was a birthday present to himself. While the departure point was to write a piece that could be performed in a church, he did not want the piece to deal with an overt religious subject matter. About the start of the project he recounted: I asked a friend of mine, could you find me a text that is somehow sacred, but does not have the word God or Jesus or any of this stuff? [Because] I am not a religious person, I am not a Christian. Although I was raised as one, it is just part of my culture. I see it more as, like when you go to Vietnam, people are Buddhist. But they are not really religious, it is just part of their culture. Or even Judaism, a lot of people are not practicing Jews, but that is just their heritage. For me that is kind of the connection.⁴⁵

Svoboda demonstrated two different ways in which the notion of religion can be regarded: as a living, confessional practice and as a historic, cultural presence. He wanted his piece to relate to religion in the second category, to allude to the historic and cultural dimensions without having any relation to confessional practices. Svoboda continued: [My friend] found me a text from (…) Friedrich Hölderlin, (…) in which he describes all the beautiful and horrible things that humans do (…). The only time that the reference to God comes is the word Herr, Lord. That comes three times in the beginning and that is it. (…) This text he wrote when he was seventeen. In a way it is a little pubescent, with all this

 Interview with Svoboda, 20.09. 2014.

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energy and roughness, and that is reflected, and I kind of like that too. I have a lot of sons and the connection just worked.⁴⁶

Svoboda felt a sacred text would allow him to achieve his aim of alluding to the cultural dimensions of religion, which was in turn also present in his desire to write a piece to be performed in a church. In his description of sacred text, Svoboda made a direct connection to Christianity. But because he personally had no affinity with any religion, he did not want it to be an overtly Christian text. The words should not consist of too much Christian vocabulary. The text by Hölderlin lived up to this premise, while simultaneously offering a reflection on the wellbeing and wrongdoing of humankind. Additionally, Svoboda experienced a connection to his personal life, completing the relevance of the text for his aims with the composition. For Svoboda, in order for a musical piece to be performed in a church building, the text could not be dealing with just any other subject matter. Rather the text was pre-eminently suitable to address grander themes, to offer a perspective on humankind. This approach allowed him to relate to the heritage character of religion, instead of the confessional practice. However, also in relation to this heritage approach, Svoboda felt a particular code of conduct was required with regard to the content and performance of the piece. ‘There is nothing violent or sexual to it. It is in a framework that would be fitting in a church, respectful for the church atmosphere. Some things would be really stretching the boundaries a bit. Everything has been done in a church, [but] I also wanted to write a piece that was going to be played in places without having to sign forms.’⁴⁷ This sense of respect was prevalent in Svoboda’s ideas on the notion of the sacred, even though he simultaneously equated it with religion. ‘As far as the religious aspect of the piece, like I said, I am not a Christian really. But somehow, I feel like (…) – it depends on your concept of God – anything could be religious. Anything could be sacred if you just treat it that way.’⁴⁸ This notion of special treatment was one of the crucial elements in how Svoboda approached his composition, which he wanted to be suitable for a church building and convey a particular sense of the sacred. While he did not want his piece to be of any confessional meaning, Svoboda felt he needed to regard the special character of the type of space for which he intended his piece.

 Idem.  Idem.  Idem.

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Another example comes from two visitors that negotiated between religion and the secular in their perceptions of music performances. On the one hand, the performed music was related to religious tradition and its implications. On the other hand, visitors seemed capable of distinguishing between these implications (and their opinions towards these) and the performed music as artistic practice. In her festival diary, Cunera wrote about the location of the Zusters onder de Bogen, a chapel in close proximity to the Sint Servaasbasiliek. She wrote how she did not feel particularly sympathetic towards nuns, but how she objectively felt the space to be suitable for the concert. When asked about this passage during the interview, she explained how her mother had negative experiences with nuns and she grew up hearing about these. While raised within the catholic tradition, she turned her back on it as an adult. ‘But I do really love the heritage of Christianity, I studied art history and then you cannot avoid it. It is European heritage and I still think that is very worthwhile.’ Her attachment to the topic of her education was not necessarily influenced by personal experience. She continued, ‘I have negative feelings towards the frightening [character] of the Pope and the bishops (…) and the nuns, but that does not stop me from attending a performance.’⁴⁹ For Cunera, the implications of the religious tradition were predominantly found in its heritage, which enabled her to take pleasure and appreciation from it. By appreciating the concert location for its architecture and its acoustics, instead of its confessional function, she was able to enjoy the concert to a greater extent than if she would be taking the institutional connotations into account. A similar tendency was found with Han, who strongly emphasized he was an atheist, but simultaneously well aware how in much of the festival music the notions of religion and God had a presence. He stressed that for him religious composers did not necessarily express particular religious convictions through the music, but rather the feeling of believing, and being convinced by this belief.⁵⁰ His Catholic upbringing allowed him to empathize with the feelings implied by religious music, but he had this feeling of recognition much less in for instance

 Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “[M]aar ik houd wel heel erg van het christelijke erfgoed, ik ben kunstgeschiedenis gaan studeren en daar kun je dan niet zonder. Het is Europees erfgoed, en dat vind ik nog steeds heel erg de moeite waard. Het enge van de paus en de bisschoppen en (…) de nonnen, daar heb ik wel negatieve gevoelens bij, maar dat weerhoudt me niet om naar een stuk te gaan.”  Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “I am not a religious person, [but in the music] it is really a feeling that accompanies that and also the feeling that this man [the composer, LW] really believed in what he wrote. He does not bring across faith, but rather the feeling that accompanied it.”

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world music. ‘There is much world music that I like, but to feel the religious [aspect] in that, in the form of the sacred, that takes much more effort for me.’⁵¹ He later wrote about his experience of the percussion performance of Strange and Sacred Noise (1997) by John Luther Adams (1953), which Han connected to non-western rituals. ‘Since that concert, I understand how members of “primitive tribes” may reach a state of trance by means of drumming sounds. Well, not only they [can do that]: so can I. It was truly overwhelming.’⁵² He furthermore described an emotional experience when discussing a performance of fifteenth-century modern devotional music. ‘You can really empathize with the late medieval believer with his/ her simple, deep faith. It touches me, despite my convinced incredulity.’⁵³ Han related his experiences to the assumed emotions and feelings that he thought religious rituals and convictions could elicit, without the desire to get into the content of these rituals and convictions. Such rationalized distinctions made by visitors between their experiences and their knowledge or personal affinities, it is useful to maintain a distinction in types of experiences. This distinction can be indicated by using the terminology of religious experiences and experiences of religion. The first type consists of experiences that affirm, reassure, or relate to beliefs regarding a supernatural entity or deity, while the second type covers experiences in which the notion of religion has a presence, but the experiences as such are not necessarily deemed religious. At the very least, the presented visitor response to their experience sheds light on the variety in which the notion of religion can be experienced in musical performance, and how this variety sees influences from both religious and secular domains.

4.2.3 Communication One level on which the program committee was continuously seeking position was the relationship between the festival and the world beyond the festival. This relationship was primarily established through communication outlets about the aim of the festival, what it stood for artistically and thematically,

 Idem. “Er is wel veel wereldmuziek die ik mooi vind, maar het religieuze daar, in de vorm van het sacrale, invoelen daar heb ik dan veel meer moeite mee.”  E-mail correspondence with Han, 15.10. 2012. “Ik snap sinds dat concert ook hoe leden van ‘primitieve stammen’ in trance kunnen raken door tromgeroffel. Nou, niet alleen zij [kunnen dat]; ik dus ook. Het was ècht overdonderend.”  Festival diary Han, 24.09. 2013. “Je voelt echt mee met de late middeleeuwer met zijn/haar eenvoudige, diepe geloof. Raakt me, ondanks mijn overtuigde ongelovigheid.”

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and its topical relevance. A returning discussion among the committee members concerned the festival name. The use of the notion musica sacra resulted in many preconceptions about the character of the festival, as for many it carried strong connotations to institutional religion in general, and Christianity in particular. ‘It can effectively be stated that after 29 years people still think that Musica Sacra [Maastricht] is a religious music festival. (…) How can we communicate this better, to a broader audience? We try to shape the urgent value of sacrality. That urgency of sacrality is very important.’⁵⁴ This urgency was continuously put forward in the discussions. It was linked to a sense of longing for fulfillment and meaningfulness. JG: Many people call it contemplation or spirituality, but it is something that is buzzing in society. JL: As long as you clearly state that the sacred is something different from what the reverend prescribes. JG: If [the festival] would not have existed yet, it would be initiated now. It has a contemporary urgency.⁵⁵

The challenge in the communication about the festival’s approach to the sacred has a dual character. On the one hand, it aims to reflect but also move beyond religious connotations with the sacred. On the other hand, it wants to acknowledge the omnipresent longing for spirituality and sense making in current society, but it should not express associations with the field of new age and pagan spirituality. Therefore, the use of the term spiritual was not an option for the committee members.⁵⁶ SB: We need to sharpen our communication. The sacred is more important than the religious. It is possible to clarify the universal character of the notion of musica sacra. SLB: This is all about perception, but for a lot of people who perceive us, the difference between sacrality and religiosity is completely irrelevant. They do not ask that question.

 Meeting program committee, 09.01. 2012. SB: “Het is effectief zo dat je moet vaststellen, dat na 29 jaar men nog steeds denkt dat Musica Sacra een religieus muziekfestival is. (…) Hoe kunnen we beter communiceren, naar een breder publiek. Actuele waarde van sacraliteit proberen we vorm te geven. De actualiteit van de sacraliteit is heel belangrijk.”  Idem. JG: “Veel mensen noemen het bezinning, of spiritualiteit, maar het is iets wat knettert in de maatschappij.” JL: “Als je maar duidelijk maakt dat sacraal iets anders is dan wat de pastoor goed vindt.” JG. “Als het er niet zou zijn, zou het nu opgericht worden. Het is nu actualiteit.”  Idem. SLB: “With spirituality, you’ll end up in a completely different field. And you don’t want to be there.”

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FD: They just want beautiful music.⁵⁷

In addition to the quality criteria applied to the music selection, this quality label was also applied to the approach to the sacred and how to communicate about it. In the communication the committee tried to negotiate its approach to the sacred. This negotiation occurred first and foremost through the selected music. Every concert came with an extensive program booklet in which the applicability of the annual theme and the musicological and historical contexts of the concert program were discussed. These booklets shed light on why the committee thought the music to be suitable for a context of the sacred. Due to the complex character of some of the musical pieces, it was felt the visitors should be presented with this information before the start of the performance. Simultaneously, the committee members recognized how it required time and effort to fully grasp the position of each concert in the context of the festival. This effort was implicitly expected from visitors. The committee wanted to appeal to a broad audience, while it also fiercely wanted to preserve the depth and complexity of the program. A change in the festival communications reflected this duality. During the period of this research, the PR strategy changed with the appointment of a new communications officer. In 2012 the theatre communications department took care of marketing outlets, for which the committee members wrote the content. With the appointment of a new PR officer in 2013, some decisions were made beyond the committee. While the new strategy resulted in increased visibility and online presence, some committee members missed the festival motto in the flyer. JL: That is something we have done for years. It provides depth to the programming. SLB: I think it is a pity, because I feel it is depth that is part of it right from the start. JL: There is a danger in the complexity of marketing the content of Musica Sacra. And that it will start to look like something that it is not. I think it is our strong point, that against popular trend we stand for essence and depth. And that is something I would like to see from the start. Because now it is like, aaawh Musica Sacra, nice.⁵⁸

 Idem. SB: “Of we moeten het scherper naar voren brengen. Het sacrale meer naar voren, dan het religieuze. Het universele van het begrip musica sacra valt wel te duiden.” SLB: “Het gaat nu over perceptie, maar voor heel veel mensen die ons percipiëren, is het verschil tussen sacraal en religiositeit volledig irrelevant. Die stellen die vraag niet.” FD: “Die willen gewoon mooie muziek.”  Meeting program committee, 28.06. 2013. JL: “Dat is iets wat we al jaren doen. En dat geeft een diepgang aan de programmering.” SLB: “Ik vind dat jammer, want ik vind dat de verdieping er in de eerste fase er al bij hoort.” JL: “Er dreigt een gevaar, en dat is dat de inhoud van Musica Sacra moeilijk te vermarkten is. En dan gaan we het laten lijken op iets anders dan wat het is.

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This conversation demonstrates how, in the eyes of the committee members, the notion of the sacred was urgent and deserved widespread attention, but in all its complexity could never be popularized. The committee wanted the communication outlets to demonstrate the sense of reflection and depth aimed for in the festival. In the selection of annual themes, the religious connotations of the themes were always apparent. However, in both the festival programming and the marketing communications it was attempted to reduce this religious, predominantly Christian, character as much as possible. Instead the program committee tried to address – just like with the notion of the sacred – the current urgency of a theme, its importance in contemporary society and culture. Paradoxically, the program committee attempted to overrule the religious interpretations with secular connotations, without diminishing the religious ones. The urgency and current importance of a theme was primarily addressed in the introductory texts in the festival brochures and to a certain extent in the concert descriptions in the festival magazine and the program booklets. An example of this was the theme of 2013, Introspection, Transformation and Conversion. ⁵⁹ The primary idea was to use the notion of conversion as the theme, but it was soon thought to have too strong religious connotations. It was then suggested to use the more open term of transformation, followed by the decision to broaden the theme by combining it with the notions of introspection and conversion. To the program committee this option covered all possible interpretations. The notion of transformation was deemed to be “more prosaic and more secular” than conversion, which was seen as “purely religious.”⁶⁰ The reached compromise for this festival theme well demonstrates the duality in which the program committee operated and what the notion of the sacred meant for them. With regard to the descriptions of the festival plans for 2015 and 2016, the committee president as primary author of the texts even said he attempted to “de-christianize”⁶¹ the texts as much as possible, in order to let them be appealing for a broad audience. This

Maar ik denk dat het ons sterke punt is, dat we tegen de stroom in op de essentie en de diepte gaan. En dat wil ik graag van meet af aan zien. Want nu is het, aawh Musica Sacra, leuk.”  The theme in Dutch was Inkeer, Ommekeer, Bekering. In the English communication of the festival it was decided to only use the word Transformation. I have added the notions of Introspection and Conversion in the description of this festival theme, because these played a prominent role in both the festival program and its decision-making process.  Meeting program committee, 11.06. 2012. JG: “Maar we hebben ook inkeer toen gekozen, en daar moet je goed op letten dat jullie dat niet vergeten zijn, dat het wat prozaïscher is, wat seculierder is. Bekering is gelijk weer puur religieus.”  Meeting program committee, 14.04. 2014.

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situation reflects an interesting ambiguity. While the program committee found it important to connect religious heritage with contemporary secular culture, the committee also realized that religious subject matter would possibly put off potential audience.⁶² It resulted in a communicative challenge to convey what the festival stood for. An important partner in the communication strategy was the national media partner. When the festival started, this was the Catholic broadcasting company KRO. In 2012 broadcasting company MAX became the new partner, the broadcasting company for a fifty-five plus audience. MAX organized three events within the context of the festival, one of which was incorporated in the festival program; the other two were scheduled as parallel programs. While the committee was very pleased with the media attention these activities generated (MAX has a nationwide outreach), simultaneously worries emerged about a misfit between the events and the theme of the festival. The concern was that the festival would be taken over by external parties, which not necessarily held the notion of the sacred as primary aim. However, such concerns were overridden by the appreciation of the effort and potential impact of a national media partner. Due to receiving national exposure on radio and television, with the additional importance of having a national media partner in funding applications, in this instance the safeguarding of the boundaries of the committee’s approach to the sacred was loosened.⁶³ The concerns with regard to the religious image of the festival are reflected in the critical reception of the festival, in which the notion of religion had a complex presence. Not in the least because of the associations with the term sacred. An announcement in De Volkskrant demonstrated the challenge resulting from the festival’s broad approach to the sacred: it was not easily captured in a tagline, but in need of more room for explanation. The announcement read: ‘The Maastricht Vrijthof is the epicenter of Musica Sacra, the five-day-long festival for religious music; at least that is how Musica Sacra once started. Nowadays the festival presents itself with an elaborated program in which both old and contemporary, religious and secular come together.’⁶⁴ Other reviewers used the

 Meeting program committee, 09.03. 2012. JL: “I’m sure for a particular part of our audience, or potential audience, the locations in the churches works as a barrier. (…) For certain categories in our society the church is so passé, that you also don’t go there for a concert.”  Meeting program committee, 23.09. 2013.  “Musica Sacra,” Volksrant, 19.09. 2013. https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/mu sica-sacra~b2540094/.

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description “festival for sacred music” without further explanation⁶⁵ or stated that it was a “festival for religious music.”⁶⁶ These all together ignored the broad approach aimed to achieve in the festival program. Two online reviews offered an attempt to describe what the festival was about. On the website Jazz Enzo author Rinus van der Heijden stated: ‘[Musica Sacra Maastricht] exists since 1983, when it started as European Festival for Religious Music. While the name evokes different expectations, this is not a festival of religious music, but a worldly festival about religious music.’⁶⁷ According to Philippe Grisar, blogger for Klassiek Centraal, the festival was “a secular festival about sacred music.”⁶⁸ The challenge in finding an adequate characterization of what it is that the festival set out to do, demonstrates the difference between the dominant first-order use of the word sacred, which the media both influenced and used, and the program committee’s broad approach. Despite the acknowledgement of the many performances of secular music in the festival program, the reputation of being a religious music festival remained dominant. Taking place in Maastricht, with its rich Catholic history, the festival was also quickly characterized as a Catholic festival. This was for instance notable in Jansen’s surprise when he wrote, ‘Even the church reformation of Luther had a presence in the world premiere of an oratorio of Boudewijn Tarenskeen during this once so catholic festival.’⁶⁹ Music critic Floris Don described “the soul of festival Musica Sacra Maastricht” as “Catholic through and through.”⁷⁰ When asked about this characterization of the festival’s soul as thoroughly Catholic, Don referred to the fact that the festival program contained Catholic masses. I responded that the festival was indeed a contributor to two catholic masses and a protestant service, but also contained raja, a performance celebrating the name of Allah ninety-nine times, and plenty of secular art music. Don replied to this in

 Kasper Jansen, “Onwaarschijnlijk hoge Sopraannoten,” NRC Handelsblad, 23.09. 2013, https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/09/23/onwaarschijnlijk-hoge-sopraannoten-1295593-a667058; Biëlla Lutmer, “Musica Sacra,” De Volkskrant, 25.09. 2013, https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuwsachtergrond/musica-sacra~b1e2c80f/.  Vikkie Bartholomeus, “Zachtjes galmt het ‘Fukushima’,” in De Limburger, 22.09. 2014.  Rinus van der Heijden, “Musica Sacra legt verband tussen Arvo Pärt en Jazz,” Jazz Enzo, 21.09. 2013, http://www.jazzenzo.nl/?e=2533.  Philippe Grisar, “Arvo Pärt, Kanon Pokajanen. Een concert aan de vooravond van het Maastrichtse festival Musica Sacra,” Klassiek Centraal, Webstek voor de Muziekliefhebber, 06.10. 2013, https://klassiek-centraal.be/recencies/concerten-recencies/arvo-part-kanon-pokajanen/.  Jansen, “Onwaarschijnlijk hoge Sopraannoten.”  Floris Don, “De Ziel van Musica Sacra komt tot Bloei in Extatische Bayan,” NRC Handelsblad, 22.09. 2014. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2014/09/22/de-ziel-van-musica-sacra-komt-totbloei-in-extati-1421761-a1066387

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a changed tone, acknowledging the above-mentioned festival events, but emphasized that for him some program segments and locations emphasized “a special bond with Rome.”⁷¹

4.2.4 Material Religion and Heritage The material turn in the study of religion has been successful in reinforcing how ‘the very intimate and foundational elements of the religious experience are not always feelings, intellectual contemplations, or dogmatic representations.’⁷² Rather, of equal importance, at least, are the material manifestations of religious configurations, notably ritual objects and sacred places. This resonates the importance of shedding light on the reciprocal relationship between immaterial and material dimensions of heritage. The strong connection with the religious and cultural heritage of the city provides Musica Sacra Maastricht with a distinct character. It reinforces the theme of material religion, in relation to its immaterial counterpart, as embodiment of the religious heritage complex. This reciprocal relationship between the immateriality of sound and the materiality of, predominantly, the sites where the performances take place, was of crucial importance in the perceptions of the festival’s audience members. In the descriptions of their experiences, multiple respondents linked the perceived music to the concert locations. The majority of the venues have institutional religious connotations, such as churches, monasteries, and chapels. In addition, there are secular/ non-religious venues of which the theatre, the city hall, and the conservatorium are prominent in the festival program. The role of the materiality of place in the respondents’ experiences can be regarded on two levels. First, there is the personal affinity that people have with particular locations and how they position this affinity in relation to the festival performances in these locations. Second, there is the dynamic between the venue and the music, two elements co-existing in a reciprocal resonance. The venue influenced the experiences of the performed sounds, while the sounds influenced how the venue was experienced.

 Twitter conversation between Floris Don and author, 23.09. 2014.  Isnart and Cerezales, Religious Heritage Complex, 12. They base this description on the work of among others David Morgan, “The Material Culture of Lived Religion: Visuality and Embodiment,” in Mind and Matter: Selected Papers of Nordic Conference 2009, ed. Johanna Vakkari, Studies in Art History 41 (2010): 14– 31; S. Brent Plate, ed., Key Terms in Material Religion (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

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There are numerous approaches to the notions of space and place. Some scholars use the two terms interchangeably. Others see space as an undefined and unused entity, where place is defined and used space.⁷³ For the purpose of this study, the following distinction is used. Place is used to refer to the physical and tangible places, in which the festival is hosted. It is a referent to the festival locations and buildings. The term is used to discuss physically built and identifiable environments that are, in this case, temporally occupied by the festival. Space, then, is used to refer to the virtual, intangible, and temporal space that is created by means of the festival. The festival space creates, as it were, a virtual layer over the city of Maastricht, which during that weekend is the domain of the festival. If someone is not aware of the festival, the presence of this virtual layer goes unnoticed. While, awareness of the festival weekend, and taking part in it, makes it feel like the whole city is the festival for that specific weekend. In this particular context, space refers to the experienced network that is created by the notion of the festival. Both the physical buildings and this virtual network had a strong presence in the way the respondents talked about their musical experiences, but also in visitors’ concert selections when they had to decide which concerts to attend. For visitor Margot the locations had a leading role in her selection of festival activities. Even if she was not particularly fond of the programmed music, she would pick the concerts that took place in particular locations like the Keizerzaal and the Cellebroederskapel. ‘I really want them in my selection, even if it is a performance that does not necessarily appeal to me. But I just really want to be able to look at these church buildings.’⁷⁴ Furthermore, in her selection she tried to avoid the theater, because this location was also accessible throughout the year and it lacked the atmosphere found in the historic locations. About the Keizerzaal she wrote, ‘[It is] magical. A performance there is a CELEBRATION, no matter what. Even if I have no idea what to expect.’⁷⁵ As she had meaningful personal memories of two previous concerts in the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek, Margot decided to attend the closing concert of the 2012 festival edition, which also took place in that basilica. She related her expectations for the concert to her previous experiences. ‘I think it will have a very good atmosphere. Perhaps [there will] even be a performance on the level of the abbess. That was so mar-

 Phil Hubbard and Rob Kitchin, eds., Key Thinkers on Space and Place (London: Sage, 2011).  Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “En die moet ik er dan bij hebben al is het een voorstelling die me niet aanspreekt op zich. Maar die moet ik er gewoon bij hebben, moet ik naar het kerkje kunnen kijken.”  Email correspondence with Margot, 03.09. 2012. “(…) de feëerieke Keizerzaal. Een voorstelling is daar bij voorbaat een FEEST. Al weet ik niet wat ik er moet verwachten.”

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velous back then, really impressive.’⁷⁶ Yet, the memories had almost become so strong, that future concerts might only stand in their shadows. After a performance she did not like at all and thought badly located, she wrote in her festival diary: ‘In the early nineties I attended Musica Sacra concerts of the Hilliard Ensemble and the Tallis Scholars in the Sterre der Zee. ⁷⁷ These are engraved in my memory. (…) These will always stay with me. This concert was completely insignificant compared to that.’⁷⁸ In a different manner, Elly also used the criterion of place in her selection of the dance performance The Pilgrim Project #2: Yatra. She usually rarely attended dance performances during the festival or during the rest of the cultural season. However, during the 2013 festival edition she decided to visit Yatra, because it was located in the Lambertuskerk. This church had long been closed and was during the 2013 festival still subject to renovations. The production team created temporary seating arrangements and a stage area to turn it into a festival venue. As Elly had never been inside of this church, this performance was an opportunity to feed her curiosity. She liked the dance performance, but appreciated the opportunity to be inside this church building more.⁷⁹ Concert locations were not only invested with festival memories, but could also be subject to biographical memories. Growing up in the surroundings of Maastricht, in an email Cunera referred to this several times, for instance in her choice for a concert in the Matthiaskerk. ‘[It is] a premiere [and] a beautiful church (across from my ancestors’ house [and] my parents married in this church…). Very familiar and a very good ensemble.’⁸⁰ The experience of such personal ties with particular concert venues created a feeling of homecoming in an unusual setting. The venue was half the experience and whether the music was appealing was seemingly not of the greatest importance. The concerts offered opportunities to perceive a place in non-ordinary ways.

 Idem. “Dat lijkt me ook heel sfeervol. Misschien nog wel eens een uitvoering op de verdieping van de abdis, wie weet? J Dat was toen zo schitterend, echt heel indrukwekkend.”  Sterre der Zee is another name for the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek.  Festival diary Margot, 23.09. 2013. “Begin jaren ’90 heb ik Musica Sacra concerten van het Hilliard Ensemble en de Tallis Scholars in de Sterre der Zee bijgewoond. Die staan in mijn geheugen gegrift. (…) Dat blijft me altijd bij en dan valt dit helemaal in het niet.”  Interview with Elly, 04.10. 2013. “To be honest I went there because I wanted to see the interior of the Lambertuskerk. I had never been there. When we moved here I think it was already closed, and with the open monuments day I could not go. Now I had the chance to see the interior of the church, but I did like the dance as well.”  Email correspondence with Cunera, 28.08. 2012. “[Ik wil] nog graag een kaartje kopen voor de Matthiaskerk. Een première, prachtige kerk (tegenover mijn voorouderlijk huis, mijn ouders trouwden in deze kerk…) Heel bekend en zeer goed gezelschap.”

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Margot had similar personal sentiments toward the festival as whole and toward particular locations. She frequently attended the festival with her mother, who later passed away. Her frequenting the festival was a part of her cherishing the bond with her mother. She especially contributed this feeling to the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek, which she called “my most beloved church.” Her fondest memories of the festival regarded a concert visit with her mother.⁸¹ This memory had a prominent role in her selection and the experiences she had of later festival concerts. In addition to personal memories that evoked particular feelings towards a place, the history or function of a place also impacted the way it was experienced. Cunera stated in her festival diary that the Sint Martinuskerk, where an oratorio about Mary Magdalene was performed, felt very catholic. She clarified this later on during the interview. ‘It is because of that space and what I know of that space. One of the strictest pastors of Maastricht is based there. And you can feel it, this space is contested for me.’⁸² These thoughts did not prevent her from attending a concert there, but they did influence the way she experienced being present in the building. In both cases, whether the personal connotations were positive or negative, the experience of the physical site was combined with the experience of the festival. Place and space co-existed and at times interfered with each other and had a prominent presence in the perceptions of the performed music. Generally, the concert locations were referred to for their atmosphere and acoustics. These were crucial elements in the way a concert in a particular location was experienced. Margot described her concert experiences as consisting of a great sense of calm, reflection, and intensity. This atmosphere was established because church buildings were used as concert venues. For her the main reason to return to the festival each year was to be part of this atmosphere and temporarily reside in these buildings.⁸³ In her diary of the 2013 edition, she described how the ambiance of a particular venue made her very relaxed. ‘The frugality, the angels, the wonderful painting on the ceiling, the beautiful white bouquet of flowers. Make sure not to look at the third singer from the left, he is making

 Festival diary Margot, 23.09. 2013. “[Dat is] mijn dierbaarste kerk en ik [heb] daar hele warme herinneringen aan MSM samen met mijn 18 jaar geleden overleden moeder.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “Dat komt ook door de ruimte, en wat ik weet van die ruimte. Een van de meest strenge pastoors van Maastricht die daar zit. En dat voel je dan toch, die ruimte is toch beladen voor mij.”  Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “For me it is the atmosphere, in the churches as well as in the city. Beautiful music and the calm, reflection and intensity. Which is why I am saying, for me it is really all about the churches.”

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funny faces J.’⁸⁴ Elly made similar remarks in her diary regarding a performance of Gregorian chant by Schola Maastricht. She wrote about how the singers were positioned well within the priest choir of the church. Furthermore, she appreciated them wearing their white habits – another aspect of the materiality of this performance – which she saw as part of the atmosphere established during the performance.⁸⁵ With regard to the performance of Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen (1997), Cunera mentioned how the choir entered from one corner of the church, walking and singing, eventually positioning themselves in a circle in the middle of the space. She felt that this entrance strengthened the sacred character of the performance.⁸⁶ Rather than that it had to be developed during the performance, this spatial, perhaps even theatrical, approach to the performance immediately set the atmosphere that lasted the rest of the evening. In addition to how performers move around and make use of the venue, the sound’s resonance in the concert venue was important for the visitor experience. Ann recalled the aptly-titled performance of Resonance (2012), a participative project initiated by composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven. It took place in the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek during the 2013 festival. Groups of performers were distributed within the church and produced vocal sounds; no words, only tones. The people in the audience were invited to sing along. Ann felt this was a very exciting performance, ‘I found it quite the experience, the way such a church captures the sounds, and how the sounds keep resonating, moving up, coming down.’⁸⁷ Through the setup of the performance, for her the architecture of the church merged with the structure of the composition. The match between the concerts and the locations was not always perceived as ideal. Han mentioned this with regard to Mark Wilde’s performance in 2013, during which he felt the large theatre hall was not suitable for the performed type of music. ‘A more intimate place would have better fitted the music. The presence of the singer as communicator is very important. He delivers more  Festival diary Margot, 23.09. 2013. “De soberheid, de engelen, de prachtige plafondschildering, het mooie witte boeket bloemen. Alleen de derde zanger van links niet aankijken die staat gekke bekken te trekken J”  Interview with Elly, 04.10. 2013. “I thought that was really beautiful, on the priest choir. The entourage fitted really well. And the clothes as well. Yes, I thought it was really beautiful. They were wearing a white habit.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “The way of entering, of getting on the stage, strengthened the sacred. The performance strengthened the sacred. That there was already a sound when they entered, followed by them standing in a circle.”  Interview with Ann, 01.11. 2013. “Vond ik een hele belevenis, hoe zo’n kerk, hoe het geluid daarin kan hangen, omhoogstijgen en weer terugkomen.”

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than just the text and melody. But then you have to be in close proximity to be able to communicate.’⁸⁸ Elly mentioned another kind of spatial misfit during the 2012 Kashôken performance in the Sint Janskerk. Since there was no stage, the small and delicate rituals that were performed on the floor were hardly visible beyond the first few rows.⁸⁹ The feeling that a concert was wrongly located, was not only based on perceived mismatches between the music and the location, but could also be based on personal feelings toward the location. Again, Margot attributed an important role to place in her festival experiences. Bearing her memories of a previous Tallis Scholars concert, she was very excited to attend their concert during the 2013 edition. However, she wrote in her diary that she was unable to “land,” because the sound could not escape the architecture and kept lingering in the venue. In her opinion, sixteenth-century music was best performed in a place that already existed in those times. The music seemed to primarily function as an instrument to let her experience the locations in a particular way. ‘Otherwise I’ll put on a CD at home and enjoy this intensely with my eyes closed. (…) A woman next to me said it was godly, but [if it would have been located] in the Sterre der Zee, it would have been heavenly.’⁹⁰ Cunera mentioned another aspect that led to a mismatch for her. When she attended the performance 100 Nachten, 100 Jaren (2013) by composer Klaas de Vries in the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek, her sight was limited because of a pillar blocking in her view. This made her ‘stay outside of the performance, while [she] could have been [in] there.’⁹¹ She experienced it as a failure of full engagement with the performance, because she felt physically and visibly left out. While before she mentioned that she was capable of intensely enjoying a musical performance with her eyes closed (and sometimes even preferred this), she wanted this to be her own decision and not feel forced by the environment. Jacob experi-

 Festival diary Han, 24.09. 2013. “Een meer intieme ruimte had beter gepast bij de muziek. De aanwezigheid van de zanger als communicator is heel belangrijk. Hij brengt meer over dan alleen de tekst en melodie. Je moet dan wel dicht genoeg bij hem zitten om te kunnen communiceren.”  Email correspondence with Elly, 09.09. 2012. “Too bad that during the performance of the monks in the St. Jan, we weren’t able to see what was going on on the choir. [It] was too low and we (on row 9) only saw other people’s heads. We missed the small ritual gestures.”  Festival diary Margot, 23.09. 2013. “Het geluid kon voor mijn gevoel niet weg, de kerk was te klein. Het is een mooie kerk, maar muziek uit de 16e eeuw moet je ook laten horen en zien (oog wil ook wat, anders zet ik thuis wel een CD op en geniet intens met ogen dicht) in een kerk die er in die tijd ook al [was] (…). Een mevrouw naast me zei dat het goddelijk was, maar in de Sterre der Zee was het hemels geweest.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “Daar ben ik niet ingekomen en ik vond het doodzonde, dat ik er buiten bleef, terwijl ik er bij had kunnen zijn.”

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enced this performance in a similar fashion. He also described in his diary how he was not sucked into the performance. He stated that ‘the location [was] beautiful, but not suitable for this piece.’⁹² The spatiality of the concert venue interfered here with the spatiality created by the music. The dominance of the first prohibited these two visitors from entering the presence of the second.

4.3 Persistence of Religion Although the festival committee aimed to offer an exploration of both religious and secular sacreds through musical and other artistic performances, religion has a dominant, persistent presence in the festival. I use the term persistence, because even in contexts that are deliberately dealing with secular perspectives on the sacred, the comparison with religion is never far away. Or the actively expressed claim that the particular performance or aspect of the festival is not about the religious sacred. The persistence of religion within the negotiations of the program committee, in the form of religious habitus, has been discussed above. Next, the persistent place of religion in performers’ perceptions of the sacred music genre are discussed, followed by visitors’ use of religious terminology in descriptions of their festival experiences.

4.3.1 Performers’ Associations with Sacred Music Performers had strong ideas about the genre of sacred music, traditionally linked to music written for religious or liturgical contexts. Their ideas about the sacred in relation to music demonstrate a persistence of (the relation to) religion, in particularly Christianity. In his discussion on the sacred nature of music, conductor and musicologist Jesse Rodin distinguished between historic connotations of Renaissance music and the associations that contemporary audiences may have during his performances with the ensemble Cut Circle. With regard to the historical context of the music, he said: I study both sacred and so-called secular music, but of course in the late medieval period the line is not clear between the two anyway. (…) The secular music that I study, love songs, polyphonic songs, French chansons: they are always on courtly love themes, but you can always imagine the woman is married and make it sacred. And the songs are often used as

 Festival diary Jacob, 21.09. 2013. “Het toneelspel had kracht maar je werd er niet in getrokken. De locatie (prachtig) maar niet geschikt voor dit stuk.”

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the basis for a mass or something like that. So you will be listening to a polyphonic mass and hear the song, or at least know it is there, the singers will know its there. So, there is a very seamless order between the two.⁹³

In the distinctions between subject matter and performance contexts, Rodin used the binary opposites of sacred and secular music, in which he equated the sacred with the notion of religion. He maintained this usage when discussing his own music practice, identifying different potential dimensions in music practices to which the sacred is related. Concerning the sacrality, it is tricky. I am sure that there are just plain music lovers who could care less what the words are. And then there are some for whom its meaningful. And some for whom it is meaningful in a more abstract way; who are not actually catholic, because they do not speak Latin, but who appreciate it that it was created in a sacred context. Sort of in a more universal way.⁹⁴

This quote demonstrates that in his line of thought, Rodin connected the category of sacred music to music with lyrics dealing with religious subject matter, and music that was originally written for liturgical contexts. Whether or not the sacrality of music is experienced, depends on the listeners’ religious convictions, knowledge, and sensibilities. Tarenskeen linked the notion of the sacred in music not primarily to the convictions of the audience or to the musical function of the compositions. When asked whether LUTHER was a sacred piece of music, he replied that this was a difficult question, because he was not a religious person. ‘I think it has to do with whether a composer is religious. When he is religious (…) you can speak of sacred music. Stravinsky had a religious period in which he wrote a lot of masses (…), they call this his sacred period. That is right, because his convictions coincided with his notes.’⁹⁵ When creating LUTHER, he took the implications of the notion of the sacred into account. ‘No, it is not a sacred piece. It is more like the St. Matthew Passion, an attempt to disconnect the audience from the weight that sacrality implies.’⁹⁶ Tarenskeen wanted his music to explore and challenge the assumptions carried by the attribution of the notion of the sa Interview with Rodin, 17.09. 2014.  Idem.  Interview with Tarenskeen, 27.05. 2014. “In mijn geval ligt dat wat lastiger, want ik ben niet gelovig. (…) Ik denk dat het te maken heeft met of de componist gelovig is. (…) Stravinsky heeft een religieuze periode gehad waarin hij heel veel missen (…) schreef, dat noemen ze ook zijn sacrale periode. Dat klopt want zijn overtuigingen vielen ook samen met zijn noten (…).”  Idem. “Nee, het is geen sacraal stuk. Het is juist zoals de Matteuspassie dat ook was, een poging het publiek zich los te koppelen van het gewicht wat het altijd heeft bij een sacraliteit.”

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cred to particular pieces of music, persons, or events. Composer Michael Finnissy also related his reflections on the sacred character of music to the intentions of the composers, by means of referring to a theory about the work of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872– 1944). It was always said of Mondrian, that his paintings looked very abstract and geometric and so on, but actually Mondrian was using this to communicate the essence of God. He was very interested in (…) this idea of God as an abstraction, beyond human experience.⁹⁷ So I think Mondrian was, like many other abstract artists, interested in communicating an essential sacred experience. But not to make it pictures of Jesus or of the Virgin Mary. To distill, without having, or not very easily, having interpretative, figurative elements. The problem with that is how much the audience understands that premise.⁹⁸

With this parallel to abstract art, Finnissy addressed the differences between the intentions of the composer and the perceptions of the artists, as well as how there were different musical languages and forms of creating a dimension of the sacred in music. While Rodin looked primarily at the textual content for sacred meaning, Finnissy explored additional options of compositional formats, the use of musical languages, and the creation of atmospheric settings. Organ player Marcel Verheggen was the only performer who did not explicitly relate the notion of the sacred in music to religion. He acknowledged many people might interpret it as such, but he did not use this in his own constructions. To him the sacred: is a very broad notion. It is a kind of metaphysical notion, very large, [an] overarching term for everything that stands for that which you cannot express in an everyday manner. And it does not have to be something religious per definition or to refer to a god or a church institution. No, it is primarily to make people think, about that they are beings on this earth,

 The relevance of Finnissy’s quote on Mondrian is that it offers a useful parallel to what he wants to convey about abstract and figurative elements in music. It needs to be noted that his formulation is of personal nature. It is known that Mondrian had a great interest in theosophy and the writings of Madam Blavatzky and Rudolf Steiner. And he was interested in developing a visual language through which he could express the essence of art and life. By means of his visual vocabulary he tried to penetrate to the deepest essences and harmonies of which life consisted. See Marty Bax, Het Web der Schepping. Theosofie en Kunst in Nederland van Lauweriks tot Mondriaan (Amsterdam: SUN, 2006); Lieke Wijnia, “Piet Mondrian’s Abstraction as a Way of Seeing the Sacred,” in Religion and Sight, eds. Louise Child and Aaron Rosen (Sheffield: Equinox, 2020): 143 – 159.  Interview with Finnissy, 19.09. 2014.

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which have questions of whatever kind. In any case, that one does not walk this earth without questions and reflection. That is what the festival does.⁹⁹

Other interviewees equated the notion of sacred music with religious music. When asked about his associations with the term sacred music, pianist Jonathan Powell was very brief. To him, obviously sacred music is religious music.¹⁰⁰ To conductor and composer Hans Leenders the name of the festival did not convey a particular or special meaning. ‘Musica sacra is such a general term. Out of ten festivals that deal with religious music, nine are called musica sacra festival.’¹⁰¹ For him it related to the genre of sacred music: ‘Yes, with musica sacra I do think about religious music. It is not like I think that a pop concert will take place there.’¹⁰² Interestingly, in addition to the characteristics of religious subject matter in the texts or original liturgical function, Leenders implied that sacred music cannot possibly be popular music, but has to consist of classical music – or, perhaps more precise: western art music. Art students of the ABK art academy, who produced their exam project as a commission for the 2014 festival, also demonstrated the dominant character of the genre sacred music in their interpretations. German student Andreas Gaida was very determined in how he felt about sacred music. ‘I know exactly what sacred music sounds like, and what to expect during the festival. Which is why I do not go, because I do not like it.’¹⁰³ His fellow group member, Dutch student Sid Clemens concurred: ‘I really don’t like the choir music.’¹⁰⁴ A third group member, Spanish student Miguel Trigo Moran, identified the problematic character of the word in relation to music and the festival. ‘Sacred is such a strong word. So even if the festival shows different kinds of music,

 Interview with Verheggen, 06.02. 2015. “Het is een heel breed begrip. Het is een soort metafysisch begrip, heel groot, overkoepelend begrip voor alles dat staat voor wat je niet meer op een alledaagse manier kunt uitdrukken. En het hoeft ook niet perse meteen iets religieus te zijn, of te verwijzen naar een god of een kerkelijke instantie. Nee, het is vooral dat je mensen aan het denken zet, dat ze wezens zijn die op de aarde staan, met vragen, van welke aard dan ook. Maar in elk geval, dat je niet zonder vragen en nadenken hier op de aarde bent. Dat doet dat festival wel.”  Interview with Powell, 17.09. 2014. LW: “So you link the notion of sacred music to religious music?” JP: “Yes, one would usually.”  Interview with Leenders, 09.01. 2015. “Music sacra vind ik dan wel zo’n algemene term. Van de tien festivals waarin religieuze muziek centraal staat, heten er negen musica sacra festival.”  Idem. “Ja, met musica sacra denk ik wel aan religieuze muziek. Ik denk dan niet dat daar een popconcert gaat plaatsvinden.”  Student presentation meeting, 06.06. 2014.  Idem.

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people do not expect it because of the name. The name is a problem.’¹⁰⁵ The name was regarded as such, because on the one hand it implies the genre of sacred music (i. e. western art music, predominantly derived from the Christian tradition), and on the other hand it implies religion (predominantly Christianity) being a defining characteristic in the relationship between the sacred and music.

4.3.2 Visitors’ Use of Religious Terminology Music has a strong immaterial character due to its temporality, immaterial, and sensory nature. In the search for adequately explaining musical experiences, research participants often relied on vocabulary associated with religion. On the one hand this may seem obvious, because religion has a prominent position within the festival context. On the other hand, this also appeared in descriptions of concerts dealing with secular approaches to the sacred, or in descriptions by people who did not wish to associate their experiences with religion. Terminology related to religion took up a dominant position in speech and thought about musical experience. Especially, the use of the term heavenly by festival visitors stood out in descriptions of their experiences. Margot described her state of mind towards religion as having a special bond with higher dimensions, but not as religious. She had no preference for one religious denomination over another, but felt there was more to life than what can be witnessed on earth. For her, classical music played an important part in evoking feelings she associated with these higher dimensions. This could occur during a live performance in the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek that she greatly cherished, during which she established a direct association between the beautiful music and her dearest festival memories. Yet this evocation could also occur while listening to the Sunday morning radio show of priest Antoine Bodar titled Echo van Eeuwigheid on Radio 4. ‘It is just the beauty, I call it heavenly, without wanting to sound vague, being moved I think, being intensely moved.’¹⁰⁶ By

 Idem.  Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “(…) I have a good bond with upstairs and I am not a church goer. But I do believe there is something more (…), which might as well be in Buddhism as in Catholicism, it does not make much difference to me. [Classical music is] what makes you emotional. I can tear up while sitting in the OLV basilica, because of the intensity (…) in combination with the memory of my mother. My first visit to Musica Sacra was with my mother, but it can also happen during a Sunday morning on the couch while listening to Echo van Eeuwigheid. It is just the beauty, I call it heavenly, without wanting to sound vague, being moved I think, being intensely moved.”

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means of the term heavenly, Margot captured the intangible character of music, the notion of beauty, and the evocation of memories and emotions all at once. This was immediately followed by a statement that she was not religious in any institutional sense. However, other vocabulary seemed to fall short in capturing the immaterial and non-ordinary character of her perception of the music. Vivienne used the term heavenly to describe her first impressions of the performance of Aleph (2013), a program alternating Renaissance lamentations and contemporary art music, performed by Capilla Flamenca and the Hermes Ensemble. In her festival diary she wrote: ‘This is so beautiful, it is almost godly or heavenly.’¹⁰⁷ However, this heavenly stature did not hold up. ‘It was perfect, faultless, unbelievable. In the beginning, I was really amazed they could produce [the sounds] this way. After that, it became more of the same. It is a bit like hiking in the mountains. The first few mountains you see amaze you, but after a while you get used to them.’¹⁰⁸ Even that which on first impression might be judged as heavenly because of its extraordinary character can turn into something ordinary if it becomes repetitive, and because of that unadventurous. For Vivienne the quality expressed by means of heavenly did not last long, because in her opinion the music was not able to live up to the expectations implied by this term. In her festival diary, Ann used the term in a description of her experience of the performance of Resonance, in combination with the term fearful. Remarkably, when later asked about the use of this terminology in relation to the musical performance, she said: ‘[W]ell, that are those kinds of comments, right. Uhm. I think it was the contrast in the sounds. I would not use the term heavenly very quickly [to describe] music.’¹⁰⁹ She almost displayed a kind of embarrassment for having used the word. It did not properly cover her experience of the performed music, but at the same time she could not find any other words that reflected what she intended to say. This was a persistent phenomenon in the respondents’ descriptions of their musical experiences, a major reason by means of which the persistence of religious terminology might be explained. The terms of the sacred, sacrality, and musica sacra were usually directly associated with music related to institutional religions. While the sacred may be

 Festival diary Vivienne, 20.09. 2013. “Dit is bijna goddelijk of hemels, zo mooi.”  Interview with Vivienne, 21.10. 2013. “Ja, het was perfect, volmaakt, ongelooflijk. In het begin dacht ik echt dat dit echt zo kan. Maar toen werd het daarna meer van hetzelfde. Het is een beetje zoals je in de bergen wandelt, de eerste paar bergen die je ziet denk je wauw, ongelooflijk, en op een gegeven moment raak je daaraan gewend.”  Interview with Ann, 01.11. 2013. “Jaa, dat zijn zo van die opmerkingen tijdens he. Ehm. Ik denk dat het gewoon het contrast in het geluid was. Hemels zou ik niet snel gebruiken voor muziek (…).”

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increasingly sought and found in activities in other cultural domains in addition to the religious domain, the vocabulary surrounding the notion of the sacred is still very much linked to this domain, especially when it comes to music. The respondents felt they needed to justify whether or not they were religious when discussing their experiences of the festival performances. When asked during the focus group meeting, most respondents felt that the sacred was connected to notions of faith and religion. Han expressed the difficulty he felt, because for him the term automatically referred to faith, the supernatural, and God. For Margot, it linked to the notions of religion, reflection, and stillness. They both felt it was a very traditional word. For Elly, it was not only linked to a particular religious tradition, but it still occupied a place in contemporary society. For her, it was ‘a condition in which one finds oneself.’¹¹⁰ All visitor respondents recognized the program committee’s attempts to move within and beyond the institutional religious frameworks. They acknowledged the non-ordinary character of the festival program and some of them used a broadened approach to the term of sacrality. Like Mildred, in discussing the linguistic ambiguity of the term. ‘If you translate musica sacra as holy, that makes holy music. And holy music can be explained in many ways. If you say, that day is holy to me, then that has nothing to do with religion.’¹¹¹ Mildred had quite a relativistic approach to the religious connotations of both the term sacred as well as the music in the festival program. When discussing Gregorian chant, she observed, ‘it sounds religious. But basically, it is just music with some words added to it. [Because it stands in a particular tradition] we call it sacred. While for someone from China, when listening to Gregorian chant, he would never connect it to theology or with sacrality.’¹¹² In a conversation during the focus group meeting, Han and Elly demonstrated a similar kind of relativism in connecting the term sacred music to religious music. When talking about a particular performance, Han stated: ‘I do like this, I just do not connect it to sacrality. It is music in which I can immerse myself, (…) but that is completely separated from some-

 Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “Het is gewoon een omstandigheid waar je in voelt.”  Interview with Mildred, 15.10. 2013. “[A]ls je musica sacra vertaalt naar heilig, dan krijg je dus heilige muziek. En heilige muziek kun je op heel veel manieren uitleggen. Als je zegt, die dag is mij heilig, dat heeft niks met godsdienst te maken.”  Idem. “En Gregoriaans klinkt dan godsdienstig. Maar dat is eigenlijk gewoon muziek met wat woordjes erbij. [Omdat het in zo’n traditie staat, noemen we het sacraal. Terwijl misschien voor iemand uit China, als die Gregoriaans hoort zal hij dat nooit met theologie ofzo verbinden, of met sacraal.”

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thing sacred or religious. For me it is music that carries me away.’¹¹³ Elly replied to this by saying: ‘It is dependent on what you call it, right? Those feelings can be the same in different people, only they are described in different ways.’¹¹⁴ It reflects how Han experienced music with a religious topic, by approaching it from an emotional perspective. He then also made the comparison to non-western music, of which one does not always know the historical or traditional performance context and thus does not necessarily know whether it is expected to be experienced in a religious manner or not. ‘It also depends on whether you make the connection with religion. With this Asian music [in the festival] for example, I do not make the connection to faith. I do make [such connections] with western religious music, because I know what the context is.’¹¹⁵ Knowledge of a particular tradition played an important role in the experience and evaluation of music that stands in this tradition. For Ann, the term musica sacra referred to: ‘A particular kind of tradition (…) and a particular kind of music history, and yes, a particular kind of experience that you do not have with other things.’ She continued to describe it as ‘a moment of reflection about that which has been. And contemplating what we in Europe are doing with this heritage. I think it is really important that [the festival] brings all of this together in this way.’¹¹⁶ Ann touched upon the sacred in multiple ways: as an experience, as an impulse to reflect, and as a body of heritage. A connecting element between these three dimensions can be found in the notion of the non-ordinary. Due to its non-ordinary character, the attribution of sacred value invites and enhances special experiences, can evoke moments of reflection, and might function as a foundation in which the treatment of a particular heritage is rooted. Cunera addressed precisely this characteristic of the non-ordinary when asked to write down her associations with the term sacrality:

 Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “Ik vind het wel mooi, alleen ik verbind dat helemaal niet met het sacrale. Het is wel muziek waar ik in op kan gaan, (…) maar voor mij staat dat helemaal los van iets sacraals of gelovigs. Voor mij is dat gewoon muziek waar ik in op kan gaan.”  Idem. “Het is ook maar hoe je het noemt he? De gevoelens zijn bij sommigen wel een beetje gelijk, alleen je noemt het anders.”  Idem. “Het is ook of je die link met geloof legt of niet. Hierbij bij die Aziatische muziek bijvoorbeeld, leg ik die link met het geloof niet. Bij westerse religieuze muziek leg ik die wel omdat ik weet wat er achter zit.”  Interview with Ann, 01.11. 2013. “[Voor mij is het] een soort van muziek in een soort van traditie (…). En een bepaald soort van muziekgeschiedenis, en ja toch ook wel een bepaald soort van beleving die je bij andere dingen niet hebt. Een stilstaan bij wat was. En eens nadenken over wat doen wij in Europa nou eigenlijk met dit erfgoed. Ik vind het heel belangrijk dat dit op die manier steeds bij elkaar gebracht wordt.”

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I wrote down: dedicated, intense and extra ‘ordinary.’ (…) I think it is important to be intense (…) and dedicated about the things I do. Not just with Musica Sacra, but with everything. And the third word is extra ‘ordinary’, because there is your home and your fixed patterns, and then there is a separate location where you can come and that creates the conditions. And so, I create these conditions myself as well. (…) The result [is] often [that it takes place outside of the ordinary, and that its experience is extra-ordinary].¹¹⁷

Others felt the link between the sacred and institutional religious frameworks could not be undone and they did not see the possibility for using a broad interpretation of the term the sacred. Relating this to the activities of the festival made some of them conclude that the name did not really reflect the activities of the festival and how they perceived these. Vivienne phrased this as follows: That name calls to mind something else than what I associate with the festival. With sacred music the first that comes to mind is religious music, the standard story of church, organ, yes, more institutionally religious. Rather, I associate the festival with either very old music or real new music, with discovering special music that is not average enough to be common property, but which houses special gems. The radio will not introduce you to this kind of music, but this festival does. So I feel the festival is much less silly and much more modern and special than what I associate with religious music.¹¹⁸

While she may have felt the name did not do the festival any justice, this did not mean she was less inclined to attend it. She – with many others – saw the name as a given and its function as a brand. This brand was then linked to the activities during the festival rather than to their perceptions of the festival name. Generally, it can be stated that the name, with its emphasis on the sacred, is a topic of much debate among committee and audience members alike. It created

 Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “Ik heb opgeschreven toegewijd, intens en buiten ‘gewoon’. (…) Ik vind het belangrijk om intens (…) en toegewijd me over te geven en bezig te zijn met iets. Niet alleen Musica Sacra, [maar] met alle dingen. En [het] derde woord: buiten ‘gewoon’, omdat je (…) thuis, heb je je vaste patronen. (…) [E]n dan op een aparte locatie hier naartoe komen of ergens naartoe gaan, dat schept je voorwaarden. Dus schep ik mee die voorwaarden. (…) [H]et resultaat [is] vaak [dat het buiten het gewone plaatsvindt, en dat de ervaring ervan buitengewoon is.]”  Interview with Vivenne, 21.10. 2013. “Die naam roept eigenlijk iets anders op dan wat ik met het festival associeer. Bij sacrale muziek denk je toch vooral aan religieuze muziek, gewoon het standaardverhaal van de kerk, orgel, ja meer godsdienstig achtig. Terwijl ik het festival meer associeer met dan wel heel oude muziek of heel nieuwe muziek, meer met het ontdekken van bijzondere muziek die niet doorsnee genoeg is om gemeengoed te zijn, maar waar toch echt wel pareltjes tussen zitten. Waar je in eerste instantie niet zo via de radio mee in aanraking komt, maar wel via zo’n festival. Dus ik vind het festival eigenlijk veel minder suf, veel moderner, veel bijzonderder, dan wat ik met religieuze muziek associeer.”

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a contested situation, because the term sacred was often automatically related to institutional religion. Many respondents did not feel comfortable to be associated with that relationship, while they did strongly associate themselves with the activities of the festival. These associations were all primarily based on their perceptions of the programmed music. The term musica sacra was identified with, and remembered by means of, these perceptions. Respondents’ descriptions showed a remarkable dominance of religious terminology in characterizing musical experiences and talking about the sacred. Particular kinds of experiences seem only to be able to be explained by means of terminology affiliated with religious discourse. While experiences were not characterized as religious in themselves, its related terminology suited best to describe what went on. Even when people distanced themselves greatly from any religious denomination, they still used the terminology. Not because the experiences should be characterized as religious, for instance as “implicitly religious,”¹¹⁹ but rather because no other discourse sufficed. While institutional religions and their rituals have become part of a larger spectrum of meaningmaking activities dealing with the sacred, the terminology to describe the range of activities does not seem to have made the shift accordingly yet. This posed a challenge in finding a vocabulary that sufficed to discuss the non-ordinary character of activities dealing with intangible and immaterial matters such as musical sounds.

4.4 Between Conservation and Innovation Within the complexities of the negotiations as described before, the dimensions of conservation and innovation are of relevance. On the one hand, there is a strong awareness of tradition, of rituals and ceremonies that have always happened in a particular manner – and should therefore continue as such and be treated respectfully. On the other hand, there is also an eagerness for the unexpected, surprise, and discovery. The desire to be overwhelmed, to be touched by what is not known yet. Traditional musical formats, narratives, or persons are placed in new contexts and represented or resounded anew, for new audiences. The previously discussed religious heritage complex draws heavily on the notion of conservation and its importance in both religious traditions and heritage prac-

 This term was coined by Edward Bailey, see also Implicit Religion. Journal for the Critical Study of Religion.

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tices. Conservation serves the purpose of continuity, yet, continuity can never exist without a certain aspect of change.¹²⁰ This change is understood through the interactions between religious and civil, or secular, partners like heritage institutions. Through their negotiations, religious sites or objects can be maintained, while at the same time the context in which this occurs transforms. As described above, this context changes from, for instance, a liturgical site for a religious congregation to a multiple-used site, or a festival or a musealized setting aimed at a broader audience. In such changes, religious communities remain involved, but will have to start sharing space, place, and objects with audiences who use and appreciate these for different purposes.¹²¹ While the notion of conservation in and of itself has a somewhat static character, sociologist of religion Danièle Hervieu-Léger has demonstrated how the conservation of religion overtime is a rather dynamic process. She has done so by means of two key notions, also pointed out by Grace Davie in the foreword to the English translation of Hervieu-Léger’s originally French work. First, ‘the chain which makes the individual believer a member of a community, a community which gathers past, present, and future members.’ Second, ‘the tradition (or collective memory) which becomes the basis for that community’s existence.’¹²² Hervieu-Léger contextualized this chain and shared memory within changing, secularizing contexts. Such contexts, she argued, do not become less religious because they become more rationalized, as is usually the premise in secularization theories. But rather, this occurs because modern societies have lost the capability of maintaining the chains of memory that are at the heart of their religious identities. If memory is not actively maintained, societies become “amnesic.”¹²³ It may be clear by now that a festival like Musica Sacra Maastricht aims to actively engage with keeping the memory chain alive and relevant for contemporary Dutch society. Ironically, in doing so, the chain is interpreted from a broader perspective, its scope is broadened. This seems to simultaneously benefit but also undermine maintenance efforts – an observation that will be returned to later on. Even though Hervieu-Léger argued how modern societies have

 As Walter Benjamin observed, “Tradition itself is of course something very much alive, something extraordinarily changeable.” Benjamin, The Work in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 10.  For case studies from among others Sweden, France, Italy, and Romania, see Isnart and Cerezales, Religious Heritage Complex.  Grace Davie, “Foreword,” in Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans. Simon Lee (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000 [1993]), ix.  See chapter 7, “Religion Deprived of Memory” in Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans. Simon Lee (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000 [1993]), 121– 140.

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begun to reject the necessity of continuity of tradition, of the value of connections between past and present for contemporary individuals and collectives, she also observed how this modernity ‘gives rise – though in new forms – to a social and individual need to have recourse to the security of such continuity.’¹²⁴ Such new forms, as I argue consistently throughout this book, are found, among others, in artistic and heritage practices. The security that continuity potentially offers is, nevertheless, dependent on contemporary characteristics of societies. Continuity requires, to a certain extent, adaptation to changing circumstances. Rapidly changing circumstances, in less strictly structured contexts,¹²⁵ is a characteristic of modern societies. ‘Accelerated change, which is at the root of the characteristic instantaneousness of both individual and collective experience, paradoxically gives rise to appeals to memory. They underpin the need to recover the past in the imagination without which collective identity, just as individual identity, is unable to operate.’¹²⁶ Imagination is a key notion here, relevant in at least two directions. First, imagination is needed to reformulate and represent the past into new forms of material or immaterial presentation. Second, imagination is also indelible in finding appealing and relevant forms of addressing contemporary audiences. From this perspective, artistic and heritage practices – like those taking place during Musica Sacra Maastricht – are part of the maintenance and transformation of a predominantly Christian chain of memory in the context of The Netherlands. This process is characterized by a constant double concern: respecting and addressing institutionalized religious traditions and their habitus, while finding and creating a potential appeal and relevance for broader audiences, including but also moving beyond members of religious communities. This simultaneous including and moving beyond is a characteristic feature of the postsecular. It was aptly described by Leenders when he addressed the intricate character of the double concern of conservation and transformation, in relation to how Musica Sacra Maastricht positioned itself in a different mode from annual rituals like the carnival or the Heiligdomsvaart procession. During such festivities, people tend to dress up, go out, and celebrate in public. According to Leenders these festivities have a distinct character, which he qualified as catholic, as opposed to a more moderate, protestant approach to life. I regard that as the charm of the city, but at the same time I am glad that [Musica Sacra Maastricht] does not repeat that. You know, this Heiligdomsvaart procession is also a

 Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, 4.  Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).  Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, 141.

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kind of festival: days during which icons, celebrations, everything is put on display in public. (…) And all of this concerns reviving old things. Well, [Musica Sacra Maastricht] is also about putting the religiosity of the city in the picture, but in a different way.¹²⁷

Leenders appreciated how Musica Sacra Maastricht was not concerned with reenactments, re-staging particular traditions, or re-interpreting a by-gone past in a folkloric manner. Rather, by means of staging artistic performances in relation to the city’s – and nation’s – religious historical character, for Leenders the festival constituted a new reality in the present day. It turns the festival into an effort concerned with religious continuity through transformation, by means of artistic, imaginative practices. This continuity through transformation is analyzed in the next section through the conceptual lens of translation.

4.4.1 Translation: Back to LUTHER One particular relevant mode of negotiation between the continuity of tradition and its transformation, is the mode of translation. Sociologist of religion Jürgen Habermas has argued for the importance of translation for the postsecular, in relation to the continuity and relevance of religion in secularizing societies. This has in part to do with developments of religious literacy, the knowledge and understanding that exists about religious rituals, symbols, and language. While such literacy is declining in secularizing contexts, Habermas argued for the survival of the semantic potential of religious language. Of importance are both the translation and saving of religion in the public sphere, in relation to the language of religious experiences, practices, and communities.¹²⁸ Although, according to Habermas, religion has no place in public institutions like courts of law, parliaments, and governmental ministries, he also stated how religious language represents a body of ethics, morals, and values that is of relevance for secular and

 Interview with Leenders, 19.01. 2015. “Dat vind ik ook wel de charme van de stad, maar dan vind ik het ook wel fijn dat dit festival dat niet nog een keer gaat herhalen. Weet je, zo’n heiligdomsvaart dat is eigenlijk ook een soort festival, dat is ook iets van dagen waarin ze met borstbeelden, vieringen, alles wordt uit de kast gehaald. (..) En dat is helemaal doen herleven van oude dingen. Nou dit is dus ook even de religiositeit van de stad centraal stellen, maar dan net niet.”  Jü rgen Habermas, “Notes on Post-Secular Society,” New Perspectives Quarterly. Fall (2008): 17– 29; Henk de Roest, “Lessen van Religies: Jü rgen Habermas en de onmisbaarheid van Religieuze Gemeenschappen,” in Nuchtere Betogen over Religie: Waarheid en Verdichting over de Publieke Rol van Godsdiensten, eds. Govert Buijs and Marcel ten Hooven (Budel: Damon, 2015): 217– 227.

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non-religious public actors. As a source of existential meaning-making, of existential significance, religion cannot be ignored. Therefore, he pleaded for a translation process from the religious to the secular domain, to the extent that non-religious actors recognize their frames of reference in originally religious concepts and a conversation becomes possible. For Habermas, this approach to translation is an act of saving, of preserving, a crucial act in the continuity of tradition in rapidly changing societal contexts. It does not necessarily mean that the tradition is preserved in full, with every detail and its sense of authority translated. Rather, it implies how religion, through translation, remains part of the process of reflexive appropriation by means of which contemporary collective identities function.¹²⁹ While Habermas predominantly focused on language, I would argue artistic expression functions similarly as a source for continuous reflection from which conversation partners can take inspiration and as a source of conservation. Translation can function ‘as a means of preserving through music.’¹³⁰ The notion of translation indicates an intertwinement of religious and secular dimensions in language and artistic practices, yet the term itself deserves further attention.¹³¹ Translation seems to imply that these two domains are isolated within the context of the public domain. Yet, the reason why the postsecular has emerged in the first place, is the widespread observation that numerous new formations of religion and the secular exist and continue to emerge. The term translation needs to include awareness of the emergence of such entangled formations as demonstrated by the field of the arts per excellence. New forms emerge and are sustained, in which both religious and secular roots merge into new constellations. Additionally, translation indicates a rather one-dimensional trajectory. It implies that religious terms or concepts are translated into secular language and transmitted as such from one party to the other. Meanwhile, also reflected in the perception of the musical performances described before, the translation process is as fluid as it is transmitted to a variety of audiences. The co-existence and occasional merging of religion and the secular, in my understanding of the postsecular, is a dynamic and ongoing process. Due to these complexities of translation, I would posit it is effective to approach trans-

 Idem, 226.  Jeffers Engelhardt and Philip V. Bohlman, eds., Resounding Transcendence. Transitions in Music, Religion, and Ritual (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 14.  The following paragraph and the observations it contains, were first published in Lieke Wijnia, “Beyond the Return of Religion,” Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and the Arts 2:3 (2018), 35.

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lation in the form of translation strategies, to reflect its enduring, active, and site-specific nature, and to indicate the variety of forms it can take.¹³² As such translation reinforces a dynamic of negotiations back and forth, performed by individual and collective actors in the field. I would to like to conclude this chapter by returning to the example from the field described in the introduction. LUTHER embodies the spirit of the postsecular and particularly the dynamic spirit of translation. Not only because the composer used a strategy of translation in his approach to his composition, but also because one of the roles in the piece is that of a translator. For LUTHER, Tarenskeen took the format of the oratorio as departure point. His intention was to undo a historical format from its monumental status, and to explore its musical possibilities and boundaries. For him the possibilities lay in approaching the oratorio as a performance rather than a concert. It is an oratorio. (…) But it is also a performance, and that is where the confusion is located. A week ago, I did Winterreise with [Dutch singer] Wende Snijders and there were two camps. One camp regarded it as shocking, negative, but they approached it as a concert. The other part thought it to be very exciting; they saw it as a performance. (…) LUTHER also has this dynamic to it. When people think, well, we are going to a concert – a concert version of an oratorio – they might get into trouble. But if people look at it as a broader… space: a space in the figurative meaning, a space in which different things can occur, then they might be having an exciting evening.¹³³

In both the performances of Winterreise and LUTHER, Tarenskeen fused musical elements with theatrical approaches. For him a performance allowed for more experiment than a concert, which in turn elicited particular expectations. Staging the original Die Winterreise of Franz Schubert in a concert hall, implied expectations about the length, the structure, and the performance of the music. Staging Tarenskeen’s version meant first and foremost playing with the expect-

 In the previously mentioned (note 130) publication, I described three translation strategies and the types of understanding they foster: reformulation, ludification, and re-presentation. Lieke Wijnia, “Beyond the Return of Religion,” 35 – 43.  Interview with Tarenskeen, 27.05. 2014. “Het is een oratorium. … Maar het is een voorstelling, maar hier zit ook meteen weer de verwarring. Ik heb een week geleden [Die] Winterreise gedaan met Wende Snijders, en er waren twee kampen. Eén kamp vond het heel schokkend, in de zin van: negatief, maar die zagen het als een concert. En er was een ander deel wat het heel spannend vond, en die zagen het als een voorstelling. (…) Maar dat heeft LUTHER ook een beetje. Als mensen denken, nou, we gaan naar een concert – een concertante versie van een oratorium – dan zouden ze wel problemen kunnen krijgen. Maar als mensen het zien als een bredere… een ruimte; een ruimte in de figuurlijke betekenis, een ruimte waarin verschillende dingen gebeuren, dan zouden ze een spannende avond kunnen hebben.”

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ations on exactly these points. This occurred similarly with the oratorio. The staging of a traditional oratorio was related to a concert and its consequential expectations. In turn, Tarenskeen’s own interpretation played with and challenged the expectations on length, structure, and singing styles. In his view, a concert was a strict format, instead a performance was a space that allowed for experiment with this strictness. Titus Muizelaar, who played the role of the translator in LUTHER, identified a general dynamic in the approach of Tarenskeen to his composition process. ‘Implicitly he enters a discussion with himself and with a history. And he always enters a discussion with a history that everybody kind of knows. At least, when you know a little bit about the world, then you know about what Luther meant or what the St. Matthew Passion means.’¹³⁴ Muizelaar took the word composition quite literally with regard to the content and the form of Tarenskeen’s pieces. For Muizelaar, Tarenskeen’s work: Does not make a moral choice with regards to the subject matter. But it is a kind of palette, for me it is more of a painting, and literally a composition that displays how and how much and the plurality of ways he thinks about it. However, I am not able to convey the result of his thoughts, because he chose to be a composer. So his work is the composition and not the explicit message that results from his thinking. (…) I think of what he composes comes closer to Rothko than to Bach.¹³⁵

In his reinterpretation of the historical figure and writings of Luther, Tarenskeen dealt with subject matter that some regard as holy, or at least as set-apart. He chose Luther as the main figure of his contemporary oratorio, ‘because it is such a monument that you are surely not allowed to touch. (…) But I do not intend to destroy anything; it is not blasphemous, this Luther?’ This remark was followed by an, ‘Or is it?’¹³⁶ In working on a historical figure that carries traditional implications, Tarenskeen had these implications in the back of his

 Interview with Muizelaar, 27.05. 2014. “Hij gaat impliciet in zijn werk in discussie met zichzelf en met een geschiedenis. En hij gaat altijd in discussie met een geschiedenis die eigenlijk iedereen wel kent. Tenminste als je een beetje iets weet van de wereld, weet je ook wel ongeveer wat Luther te betekenen heeft of wat de Mattheuspassion te betekenen heeft.”  Idem. “[Zijn] werk maakt geen morele keuze ten aanzien van de uitwerking van de thematiek. Maar, is een soort palet, ik vind het eerder een schilderwerk, en letterlijk: een compositie, die weergeeft hoe hij en hoeveel en meerkantig hij daarover denkt. Zonder dat ik nu kan zeggen wat de uitkomst van zijn denken is, want hij heeft gekozen om componist te zijn. Dus is zijn werk de compositie en niet de expliciete boodschap van zijn denken. (…) Ik vind het eerder liggen bij Rothko dan bij Bach, wat hij maakt.”  Interview with Tarenskeen, 27.05. 2014. “Omdat het ook zo’n monument is waar je eigenlijk niet aan kan komen. (…) Ik maak het ook niet stuk. Het is toch niet blasfemisch, deze Luther? Of wel?”

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mind, but primarily departed from his own fascinations for Luther’s intellectual and literary qualities. He described this as a secular approach to Luther. His composition did not serve confessional purposes. Rather it was a contribution to the overall treatment of the historical figure. By means of his musical reinterpretation, Tarenskeen contributed to the heritage of the figure of Luther. His particular approach to Luther evoked a variety of responses and experiences among the festival visitors. Cees was very impressed by the perspective offered by the performance, the internal doubts that were expressed through the musical elements. He felt the most memorable part was a phrase spoken by the translator. Cees described it as follows: The climax came for me at the end, when the translator said – and I even wrote it down – society and the church took over and they have incorporated [Luther’s legacy] and that is it. It has become a footnote. That was so profound, an explosion of insights, of wisdom. I thought, yes, that’s true, we regard it as normal now, we continue as ever. Hence the footnote. Martin Luther King has become a footnote, Gandhi became a footnote, Jesus became a footnote. Who reads footnotes? Very special. I am not sure how other people see it. But that was my experience.¹³⁷

This experience gave Cees an insight into how history is written and heritage is made, how historical figures are treated, and the current position of religion and religious figures in society. Raised in the Protestant tradition but no longer practicing, Cees took the figure of Luther out of its religious tradition and began to see him as a historical figure. Elly went to this performance with a feeling of appreciation that Musica Sacra Maastricht would pay attention to the figure of Luther in the midst of the predominantly catholic heritage of the city. The performance took place in the protestant Sint Janskerk of which congregation she is a member. However, the approach to the performance made her appreciation quickly disappear. They made him look like he was a fool. Maybe I did not see the humor in it, but I thought it was horrible. While other people, who I’ve asked about it, liked it. I said, yes, but Luther was not a stutterer of sorts. [They replied] yes, but maybe he was. I said, no he was not.

 Interview with Cees, 08.10. 2013. “De climax kwam op het allerlaatste stukje, dat die tolk zei – ik heb het opgeschreven – de maatschappij, de kerk heeft het overgenomen, en die heeft het ingebed en daarmee is het klaar, het is een voetnoot geworden. Wie leest er nou voetnoten? Wie leest vandaag de dag nog voetnoten? Dat was zo indringend, een explosie van inzicht, van wijsheid, dat je dacht ja inderdaad, we vinden het nu gewoon, we gaan weer gewoon door. Vandaar een voetnoot, Marten Luther King is een voetnoot, Ghandi staat in een voetnoot, Jezus staat in een voetnoot. Wie leest er voetnoten? Heel bijzonder. Maar ik weet niet hoe een ander dat ziet. Maar dat is mijn beleving.”

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Luther defended himself at the confession of Augsburg. A stutterer would not have been able to do that. (…) Frankly, I was ashamed the performance took place in the Protestant church.¹³⁸

While Cees responded strongly to the parts that appealed to him, Elly had similarly strong responses to the parts that did not appeal to her. Cees thought in line with the secular approach that Tarenskeen had in mind, while Elly felt the historical figure of Luther and its significance for the religious tradition were harmed by this approach. Mildred was not particularly negative or positive about the performance itself, but it did make her think about her own affinity with the protestant tradition. At one point during the performance I was wondering, did we learn so little about Luther that we do not have a framework in which to position this story? There has to be a link with Musica Sacra, but the text makes you feel like, stop. I think that is what it is. You are raised strictly catholic here. You know the names of Luther and Calvin, but other than that I know nothing about them.¹³⁹

Tarenskeen focused in his composition on a monumental religious, historical, and cultural figure, by way of a monumental religious musical format. In the resulting composition, he challenged the monumentality of both the person and the musical format. He wanted to humanize Luther, making him a figure one could feel empathy with or recognition. In doing so, Tarenskeen reinforced how faith is not something that exists only of knowing and believing, but also of doubting, feeling resistance, and hesitating. These are all universally human characteristics, which makes it a telling example of Habermas’ ideas about translation. And, the composition certainly got the conversation going. The three described responses vary in nature and which aspects are highlighted and emotions triggered. While one of the visitors related his experiences to the

 Interview with Elly, 04.10. 2013. “Ik vond dat ie belachelijk werd gemaakt. Misschien heb ik de humor er niet van in gezien, maar ik vond het vreselijk. Terwijl andere mensen, ik heb afgelopen zondag nog aan wat andere mensen gevraagd, die vonden het wel mooi. Ik zei, ja maar Luther is toch helemaal geen stotteraar en dat soort dingen. [Zij antwoordden] ja maar ja, misschien was ie dat wel. Ik zei, nee dat was ie niet. Luther heeft zichzelf verdedigt toen op die confessie van Augsburg. Daar zet je geen stotteraar neer. (…) Ik schaamde me eerlijk gezegd, dat ze dit stuk over Luther in de protestantse kerk opvoerden.”  Interview with Mildred, 15.10. 2013. “Ik heb me op een gegeven moment wel af zitten vragen, hebben we nou zo weinig geleerd over Luther, dat we dit verhaal niet eens kunnen plaatsen. De link met Musica Sacra die moest er dan toch wel zijn, maar die tekst dat je dan denkt, ho. Ik denk dat dat ook wel zo is. Je bent hier zo strak katholiek opgevoed, Luther en Calvijn, de namen kende je, maar verder weet ik daar helemaal niks van.”

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writing of history and exactly the monumentality of Luther which Tarenskeen meant to challenge, this same aspect made another visitor disappointed and embarrassed. This was not the important figure from her tradition that she had come to the concert for. A third visitor related Tarenskeen’s approach, and the representation of Luther that resulted from it, to her own frame of reference. She did not necessarily feel informed enough to know what to make of the composer’s interpretation, how to value or appreciate it. As Tarenskeen did not set out to convey one particular interpretation of Luther, this resulted in the visitors relating to his subject matter in various ways. This relating to is part and parcel of the reflexive attitude, required in the continuity of in this case both the Protestant tradition and traditions of musical composing in The Netherlands. There, a particular musical and theatrical approach spoke very directly to experiences of continuity and tradition. In doing so, by means of its actively pursued relation to tradition, the composer set his piece apart. This setting apart can be regarded as a strategy of differentiation, which is at the heart of the next chapter.

5 Last of the Mohicans: Discourses of Differentiation Sint Servaasbasiliek, Friday September 19, 2014. Between 18.00 – 19.00, Marcel Verheggen, assisted by Hans Heykers, performed Peter Sykes’ organ adaptation of Gustav Holst’s The Planets (1913 – 1916). Originally a composition for a piano duo, the later orchestral version by Holst gained great popularity during the composer’s lifetime. This popularity at times greatly frustrated the composer, as it overshadowed his other work.¹ While Sykes’ adaptation for organ had been composed for an elaborate American organ, Verheggen had to adapt that translation for the color and capacity of the Sint Servaasbasiliek organ. The composition of seven parts, each addressing one of the then known planets (without earth), seemed to offer a perfect and logical embodiment of the 2014 festival theme The Awe-Inspiring. The majesty of the universe resonated the approach to the sacred, something too grand to grasp, which endlessly fascinates, and simultaneously makes one tremble. Although a logical fit, the popularity of The Planets was also deemed problematic in the context of Musica Sacra Maastricht. How this performance eventually became part of the program is a telling example of the festival’s positioning of its identity and its approach to the sacred. While the composition’s subject matter offered an undeniable match with the annual theme, at first the program committee deemed it too popular and too well known. At the same time its potential to attract a broader range of visitors and the potential to create an open-air event of the performance of the piece at the Vrijthof square were recognized as interesting opportunities. Both sides of the argument – too popular, but appealing to a large audience – were weighed, until one of the committee members mentioned Sykes’ seldom-performed organ adaptation. While retaining the fit with the annual theme, this arrangement added a curiosity factor to the piece. The composition still dealt with the ungraspable greatness of the cosmos, but due to its general popularity a twist was needed in order to create a fit with this particular festival. This twist was offered by the organ adaptation. In one of the meetings after the decision to program the organ adaptation of The Planets, the piece was suggested as candidate to be aired live on national classical music channel Radio 4. Immediately the following question was posed: ‘Artistically speaking, are we sure we want to be affiliated as Musica

 Concert brochure The Planets (2014), 2. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-006

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Sacra Maastricht with Holst’s The Planets for a nationwide audience on the Thursday evening?’ The question was followed by a straightforward, ‘I don’t think so.’² The counter argument of the original and unusual adaptation was discussed as well, but was overruled by popular connotations of the piece. The pros and cons were weighed. Eventually for the occasion of the live-aired radio performance the option of another performance was decided upon, and The Planets was moved in the festival program to the early Friday evening. Instead, the radio broadcast featured the performance of John Tavener’s The Beautiful Names (2004). This was a costlier and more complicated project, but it was preferred in terms of artistic affinity. In addition to the artistic quality of the piece, it thematically fitted as well. In this piece the ninety-nine names used to denote Allah in the Quran are recited, accompanied by an orchestral composition. Furthermore, the piece also had a sense of urgency, because the composer had passed away the year before, in 2013. This ensured a particular level of attention for one of his compositions in the program. Tavener was a popular composer, a well-known name for both festival visitors and the broader audience. Yet, his work was considered to be less popularized than Holst’s The Planets. The Beautiful Names was also a less well-known piece in Tavener’s oeuvre. The preference for the more unconventional choice, over and against the popular one was an important point for direction in the overall selection procedure. Organ player Verheggen addressed the character of the much-debated performance of Holst’s The Planets during the 2014 festival. He rather positioned this piece, and its performance during the festival, within the festival’s own framework of the sacred. In fact, it is a completely irreligious piece. Also, I did not intend it as a religious performance in the church. But I did intend it as a sacred performance, as something that transcends that church by means of its good composition. Because of the power of the composition, and the power of each of the separate parts, it has something that evokes awe. And that being in awe is also part of the sacrality. As in, God, I do not know everything, I am still able to be amazed, to be in awe about something. And I think that people have experienced that (…).³

 Meeting program committee, 14.04. 2014. “Artistiek gezien, zijn we er zeker van dat als Musica Sacra willen worden geassocieerd met Holst’s The Planets voor een nationaal publiek op de donderdagavond?” “Ik dacht het niet.”  Interview with Verheggen, 06.02. 2015. “Het is een feite een volstrekt areligieus stuk. Ik heb het ook niet bedoeld als een religieuze uitvoering in de kerk. Maar ik heb het wel bedoeld als een sacrale uitvoering, als iets dat die kerk overstijgt, door de goeie compositie. Door de kracht van de compositie, en de kracht van die afzonderlijke delen, heeft het toch iets dat je doet verwonderen. En die verwondering is ook een deel van de sacraliteit. Zo van, God ik weet niet alles,

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In response to the question what differentiated the original orchestral piece from the organ adaptation, Verheggen emphasized: ‘It is really great when an orchestra can do that, but it is a bit more normal. Because it is written for an orchestra. And when you are in a concert hall, then you expect an orchestra to do this properly.’⁴ This was in line with the committee’s reasoning for programming this piece in a different version. Despite all the familiarity of the original piece, the selection of another instrumental adaptation was considered as being non-ordinary enough for the context of the festival. It could be argued that these types of performances offered a combination of the sense of homecoming and adventure in one. The discussions on the selection of a popular musical composition, its various adaptations, and whether or not it was suitable for a broadcast on national radio, are exemplary of the discourse taking place in the festival. Such discourse is not only performed by the program committee or by performers, but just as much by visitors. This chapter explores how a sense of identity exists around Musica Sacra Maastricht. The notion of identity is performed and constructed through experiences of community and, notably, a sense of ideals held by this community. The performative nature of the festival reinforces its relational character. I argue that the festival does not simply exist out of a one-way dynamic between program committee/ performers and visitors. Instead, it is shaped, experienced, and challenged by all those involved in a continuous dynamic. This relational approach to the festival reinforces how a sense of presence is generated among all those involved. This relational presence is based on discourses in relation to the notion of community itself, and how community is constructed by means of ideas about difference, quality and how this quality is negotiated, and aesthetics. I analyze these discourses in terms of differentiation, as they tend to be related to the other, to that which is not similar. In doing so, such discourse sets apart, it actively others. As the festival sees itself as other, it simultaneously raises the question how the notion of the other has a place within the festival itself. This is analyzed through the lens of the contact zone. It explores what happens when the festival is looked at as a space of contact and exchange with the unfamiliar, the other, the potentially painful, and how this affects perceptions of the sacred.

ik kan me nog verbazen, verwonderen over iets. En dat hebben de mensen wel gevoeld denk ik (…).”  Idem. “Het is heel knap als een orkest dat kan, maar het is iets normaler. Want het is voor een orkest geschreven, en je zit in de orkestzaal, en je verwacht dat een orkest dat goed kan.”

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5.1 Community I approached the festival by means of three involved groups: the program committee, visitors (including critics), and performers. Even though the festival had a core group of returning visitors, not all members of these groups knew each other personally. But they had a shared affinity with the festival and with the music programmed within the festival. This type of shared affinity with a group of people largely unfamiliar, has been theorized with the notion of the imagined community. In the context of nation building, anthropologist Benedict Anderson coined this concept to reflect the shared bonds and their impact on identity formation between citizens who are not individually familiar with one another.⁵ In addition to nationalism, other social constructions also have the power to unite, bond – and simultaneously exclude – groups of people: constructions like religion, heritage, and music. It was already referenced in Chapter 1 how, in relation to music, John Blacking coined the notion of sound groups. ⁶ Due to the variety of the musical performances during the festival, the three groups in this research are not be characterized as sound groups. Not based on a particular type of music they appreciated, these groups were rather identified on the basis of their involvement with the festival. Through their involvement, the program committee, visitors, and performers were all part of the same imagined community, the community appreciative of the festival. A community whose members gave the festival a special, set-apart status in their lives. How varied the reasons for their appreciation of the festival might have been, their shared appreciation was what connected the members of the various groups with one another. In this approach, I follow Blacking’s analytical procedure, by departing from “a musical system and its symbols,” in this case the festival, “and then see how and where society fits into music.”⁷ Society, in this case, is interpreted as attitudes towards religion and the secular, the relevance of artistic practice and religious heritage in society, and, ultimately, perceptions of the sacred. Music is approached as a cultural phenomenon and studied here in the context of performance, as a “material, present event.”⁸ During this event, musicological aspects concerning concept and composition play an important role, but do not constitute the only focus. Equally important is how people (from several  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2016).  John Blacking, Music, Culture, and Experience (Chicago and London, 1995).  Idem, 234.  Carolyn Abbate, “Music: Drastic or Gnostic?,” Critical Inquiry 30:3 (2004), 506.

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different participatory positions) engage with particular performances during the festival. Gordon Lynch argued that music is a cultural tool with which people actively manage their identities, environments, and emotional states. In his approach, meaning is attributed through the interplay of 1) the musical sounds, 2) the quality of the listener its attention, 3) the spatial and relational environment in which it is heard, and 4) memories and other associations through individual biographies.⁹ He identified these analytical levels in the cultural discourses through which people make sense of their perceptions, and the role of music as a source of identity-formation or meaning attribution. This approach to music reflects Blacking’s approach to depart from music, and see where societal matters fit in, rather than the other way around. In addition to music in the concert hall and in the festival context, musicologist Tia DeNora argued that the meaning of music rests in the function it has for people in their everyday practices.¹⁰ In her research, she dealt with many aspects of listening practices. One is the social setting – the physical location and the context of social relations (actual, imagined, or remembered) – that shapes the nature of the listening experience. Moreover, she discussed the significance of the experiential qualities in terms of aesthetics and affect in the practice of listening to music. DeNora claimed that these qualities make music an effective tool in managing one’s own and others identities. Or as Lynch formulated it, ‘The aural qualities of popular music, and the physical and relational contexts in which it is heard, shape the aesthetic and affective experience of the listener.’¹¹ To me, this statement not only concerns popular music, but music in general – including the predominantly classical and liturgical music performed at the festival. The example of the Holst performance demonstrated how the program committee actively managed its identity – and the representation of its identity through the media – by means of the selection of compositions and adaptations. It demonstrates how the committee members intuitively navigated how they want to present the festival, and how they want the festival to be perceived by others (remember: do we want to be affiliated with Holt’s The Planets on national radio? I don’t think so). Such navigations of identity also occurred on behalf of the visitors. Han described how the character of attending the festival differs from that of concert attendance during the regular cultural season. He observed how ‘the atmosphere is completely different than during a normal concert. Dur Gordon Lynch, “The Role of Popular Music in the Construction of Alternative Spiritual Identities and Ideologies,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45:4 (2006), 486.  Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).  Lynch, “The Role of Popular Music,” 487.

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ing a symphonic concert, a lot of people attend to make themselves seen, because it is part of their status. None of that here. These are people who really come for the music.’ He also stipulated the ease of chatting to others during the festival about the performances, there was a strong feeling that festival visitors had a shared sense of music appreciation.¹² Several of the respondents characterized the presentation of the festival in the brochures as humble and modest. Han said, ‘because it is for connoisseurs, [the festival] does not need to lure in visitors. (…) There is a relatively small audience and something beautiful is offered to them.’¹³ Marian (a member of the focus group, who was not part of the further research) emphasized this notion of intimacy as well. She shared the observation how ‘the city has a very special atmosphere and particularly during those [festival] days. You keep running into the same people. I just go around by myself and I… It is just beautiful.’¹⁴ Finally, Cunera mostly praised the opportunity for complete immersion during the festival weekend, as well as the emergence of a sense of community. The way she attended the festival demanded a kind of surrender; she barely had time for proper meals, but simultaneously felt it to be a weekend of luxury. For her the experience of the festival space consisted of the feeling that the festival was relatively small in size and consisted of many performances in small locations. As a consequence, it was easier to come into contact with fellow festival visitors and share their experiences. Despite the fact that also ‘in a small place, all you do is sit and listen together. Still you share it more.’¹⁵ The sense of a modest atmosphere and a shared love for music as primary purpose within the festival, was also emphasized by in critical reception. Music critic of the local newspaper Maurice Wiche opened his 2013 review with the observation:

 Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “Wat je wel merkt is, de sfeer is heel anders dan bij een gewoon concert. [Bij] een symfonieconcert dan heb je veel mensen die komen gewoon om zich te laten zien, omdat het bij je status hoort en dat mis je hier, dit zijn mensen die voor de muziek komen. (…) Je raakt hier ook veel gemakkelijker met anderen in gesprek over muziek.”  Idem. “Het is gewoon voor de liefhebbers, je hoeft geen mensen met alle geweld ernaartoe te halen. (…) Je hebt een beperkt publiek en die bied je iets moois maar je hoeft niet te veel reclame te maken (…).”  Focus group meeting, May 19, 2012. “[D]e stad die heeft toch een heel speciale sfeer en zeker met die dagen. Je komt steeds meer dezelfde mensen tegen. Want ik sjouw daar gewoon in mijn eentje rond en ik… Ja het is gewoon prachtig.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “In een kleine ruimte, dan zit je alleen maar samen te luisteren. Maar toch deel je het dan meer.”

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Tie and cleavage are hardly seen, instead there are a lot of jeans and even more backpacks. To see and be seen: the audience of Musica Sacra – it seems to grow every year – does not want to have anything to do with that. The festival is a site for the real culture seeker, the digger who wants to enrich oneself with a forgotten masterpiece or intriguing (world)premiere – to point out the two extremes in which [the] Maastricht [festival] has specialized itself.¹⁶

Author Elle Eggels, who visited the festival as cultural reporter for the website Dichtbij.nl, also noted the informal atmosphere. It was something she had not expected when she heard she was going to listen to opera music during a festival for sacred music. She headlined her article ‘Opera in Jeans at Musica Sacra.’¹⁷ It is notable how the visitors shared a sense of community due to its small size, while at the same time the local music critic noticed a growth in visitor numbers. Nevertheless, the primary focus on the music, and not on societal status or the dynamic of seeing and being seen, provided a sense of shared attitude and a platform for contact – even when no words were exchanged and all that happened was listening to the music in the same concert location. These descriptions of the festival atmosphere and shared attitudes reinforce the relational character of individual musical performances and the festival in its entirety.

5.2 Relationality In the same year that art historian and curator Nicolas Bourriaud analyzed the art of the 1990s in terms of relational aesthetics,¹⁸ musicologist Christopher Small formulated a relational approach to music. In order to stress the interconnectedness of music and performance, and its discursive implications, Small proposed a verb-variant of music: musicking. By turning music into musicking, Small intended to shift the focus from music as an object to music as an activity. Moreover, he stressed how music cannot possibly exist without performance. His

 Maurice Wiche, “Experimenten te over bij Musica Sacra,” De Limburger, 23.09. 2013. “Stropdas en décolleté zie je er zelden, wel veel spijkerbroeken, nog meer rugzakken. Want zien en gezien worden: het publiek van Musica Sacra – het lijkt ieder jaar weer te groeien – heeft er niets mee. Het festival is een vindplaats voor de echte cultuurzoeker, de diepgraver die zich wil verrijken met een vergeten meesterwerk, of intrigerende (wereld)premiere – om maar meteen de twee uithoeken te noemen waar ze in Maastricht zo’n patent op hebben.”  Elle Eggels, “Opera in Spijkerbroek op Musica Sacra”, DichtbijNL, 24.09. 2013.  Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance et al. (Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, 2002 [1998]).

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definition of musicking is: ‘To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing.’¹⁹ In addition, Small saw musicking as an activity that entails human relationships, both as they are and as they are wished for. If, as I have suggested, musicking is an activity by means of which we bring into existence a set of relationships that model the relationships of our world, not as they are but as we wish them to be, and if through musicking we learn about and explore those relationships, we affirm them to ourselves and anyone else who may be paying attention, and we celebrate them, then musicking is in fact a way of knowing our world (…) and in knowing it, we learn how to live well in it.²⁰

Musicologist Nicholas Cook shared this approach to music. He argued, ‘Music does not just happen, it is what we make it, and what we make of it. People think through music, decide who they are through it, express themselves through it.’²¹ Music critic Alex Ross stated, ‘In all, I approach music not as a self-sufficient sphere but as a way of knowing the world.’²² Music as a way of knowing the world implies it enables one to position oneself not only in the direct environment, as well as in an all-encompassing whole. This underlines the fundamentally relational character of musical performance. Small took this a step further by claiming how musical performance not only establishes real relationships between participants, but also allows anticipation of idealized relationships. To him, the activity of musicking has the power to realize a sense of ideal collectivity. Small’s extension of his theory into the realm of ideal relationships and collectivity has been subject to criticism. In response to the theory of musicking, sociologist David Hesmondhalgh formulated a critique. ‘Underlying Small’s approach is a leftist version of a tradition of thought associated with the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim, whereby people have a powerful pre-existing inclination towards communality and collectivity, but modern industrial societies instead encourage alienation, individualization, and anomie.’²³ According to this criticism, Small’s theorization of the establishment of idealized relation-

 Christopher Small, Musicking. The Meanings of Performing and Listening. (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 9.  Idem, 50.  Nicholas Cook, Music. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), foreword.  Alex Ross, Listen to This (London: Fourth Estate, 2011 [2010]), xiv.  David Hesmondhalgh, Why Music Matters (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 90.

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ships was too idealistic, and not taking into account more exclusionary social processes. Additionally, it also raises some methodological issues. The extent to which an ideal collectivity is reached during a musical performance is a complex matter, not in the least because it might not be the aim of every individual involved. Therefore, fieldwork is essential, by means of which involvement in performances can be analyzed and participant expectations and experiences (such as the responses above) can be discussed. This sheds light on how a relationship between the individual and the collective is experienced during a concert and whether this was experienced as an ideal type. According to Hesmondhalgh, ‘Small blurs performance and participation. To what extent does the (modern) divide between performers and audiences (producers and consumers) affect their supposedly shared quest for an ideal society?’²⁴ Small equated all those involved in a musical performance: musicians, audience members, organizers, critics, ticket sellers, and wardrobe assistants. All of them participate in the activity of musicking. However, it remains to be seen whether different types of involvement, behind the scenes and in front, result in different degrees of musicking – and meaning making. In light of Taves’ building blocks approach (discussed in Chapter 2), the notion of the ideal can be related to that of the non-ordinary. It then gains an experiential character. I would argue that such an understanding of the ideal is of relevance during the festival, especially in the temporary, virtual world that is formed through the performances. Also, during musical performances, a situation is created that allows both the performers and the audience members to have an experience of the ideal through the performed music. The question remains, however, to what extent these temporary situations relate to the ordinary, everyday world. This relationship might embody the variety of reason for people why they frequently engage in musical performances and attend concerts. Furthermore, it is a question how this notion of the ideal, whether it is individual or collective, relates to the notion of the sacred. Music performances can result in fulfilling individual experiences, but can also elicit a shared excitement or adoration (in Durkheimian terms collective effervescence) for the performed music and/ or the performers. Both types of experiences have a different character and are rooted in respectively individual and collective perceptions. Musica Sacra Maastricht is organized first and foremost to create an ideal, however temporary, collective space that facilitates potential ultimate experiences. The extent to which individuals relate to this temporary space is subject of study, each and every performance anew.

 Idem, 90 – 91.

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Yet, the relational approach is of relevance in how a performance or festival generates a sense of presence among all those participating. In Bourriaud’s approach of relational aesthetics, like in Small’s musicking, the resulting artwork or concert is not an instrument of one-way communication. Rather, the artwork or performance has the aim to be a generator of interaction between participants, a facilitator of communication about a particular topic that is central to the performance. Whereas for the festival, the central topic is that of the sacred, for each performance during the festival this is additionally its take on the annual theme. For Bourriaud, the artwork (he often discussed performance art) has a performative character, it actively contributes to altering or impacting the context of the participants. The art does not merely want to represent the world, it wants to actively contribute to this world. This echoes Belting’s analysis of likeness and presence of religion in artworks, but I would argue it now occurs in a reversed manner. In Bourriaud’s perception of relational aesthetics, social dynamics are no longer merely represented, artworks no longer merely show the likeness of such dynamics. Instead, the art aims to realize, to establish a presence in the world, a presence in the frames of reference of the participants. While it is debatable whether this should be theorized in terms of aesthetics as Bourriaud has, the ultimate aim that is described here in terms of relationality is of relevance for not only the art from the 1990s, but increasingly so for art projects of the twenty-first century. While it might be a relevant way of describing the aim with which artists and musicians create their work, I would argue it is also of relevance in describing what festival visitors/ art viewers hope to get from their engagement with the arts. In its sacralized status, art (including music) has the potential to generate and to constitute a sense of presence for those engaging with it. This experience of presence does not imply religious presence, as it did with Belting. Instead it indicates a sense of presence in which religious presence is a possibility, but in its fragmented state is also joined by presence related to other notions considered as sacred. It is a sense of presence that has the potential to generate the sacred as it is approached in this study: as an embodiment of the marker of ultimate value that relates perceptions of ordinary and non-ordinary character.

5.3 Dynamics of In- and Exclusion Ideals tend to be formulated and experienced from an inclusive perspective. Such constructions do not exist without its counterpart of exclusion. The specific orientation of the festival on the sacred and on the types of music in its program, is attractive to some and unappealing to others. The contrast between the de-

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scribed responses to the festival name is telling, between those by the art students, who already think they know exactly what kind of music will be performed – and therefore do not like it, and regular visitors, who self-identify as connoisseurs. It is exactly because of such preconceptions that the festival committee tried to use open and accessible language, without compromising their approach to the sacred and their conception of qualitative compositions and performances. This section analyzes how the program committee, performers, and audience members employed discourses to construct their perceptions of the festival. These discourses are rooted in the notions of difference, quality, and to some extent aesthetics. As such, the variously involved respondents not only shed light on how they see themselves in relation to the festival and to the notion of the sacred, but also how they see the festival in relation to other festivals, artistic practices, and the world around it.

5.3.1 Difference The program committee is actively pursuing the idea that the festival has a unique identity within the Dutch and European music festival scenes. In this pursuit the committee’s approach to the sacred has a crucial position. Musica Sacra Maastricht is distinctive in its broad approach to the sacred, which is regarded as a unique selling point by the committee. One of the festival’s competitors in the Dutch festival scene was Festival Oude Muziek. The program committee maintained, ‘We are very different, but the audience does not understand that. Still, there is no comparison possible.’²⁵ The 2013 festival project plan included the following mission statement and approach to the program: Looking at contemporary society is an acknowledgment of how holy places, fascination, and the ominous have a presence in the minds of people today. The urgency of sacred questioning and explaining is manifested in many ways: the success of youth days, the many pilgrimages to Santiago, the high numbers of magazines like De Groene Amsterdammer and Filosofie Magazine, and of mindstyle magazines like Happinez and Flow, the success of retreat centers and communities, the media attention for developments in the church, interview series such as Het laatste Woord in NRC Handelsblad, the success of documentaries as Young Nuns (BBC), academic research on the transforming position of religion and religiosity, the work of theatre makers and artists (Fabre, Castellucci) (…). Sacrality is om-

 Meeting program committee, 16.11. 2011. JL: “We zijn echt anders, maar het publiek begrijpt dat niet. Het heeft niets met elkaar te maken.”

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nipresent. And it is exactly this sacrality that is the departure point for Musica Sacra Maastricht. ²⁶

This mission statement addressed multiple ways of how people approach existential features in their lives and how quests for a fulfilled life can take shape. By means of the terms questioning and explaining, this mission statement demonstrates how the program committee regarded the sacred as a notion that is subject to perception. This perception occurs in various social and cultural domains that deal with existential subject matter, such as religious institutions, musical events, popular media outlets, publications concerning the last phase of life and nearing death, and artistic productions – the examples mentioned in the statement. Both the substantive and situational approaches to the sacred (discussed in Chapter 2) can be recognized in the mission statement. The substantive approach is reflected in the words fascination and ominous, while the situational approach is reflected in the mentioned activities like pilgrimage or to a retreat center. In all, this mission statement shows the broad, fragmented approach that the program committee maintained to the sacred. It also reflects the more or less associative way of how the committee worked. As discussed in Chapter 1, the committee’s approach to the sacred indeed sets the festival apart in both the Dutch and European festival scenes. The committee did not only select music related to the genre of sacred music (religiously inspired or liturgical music). Rather it selected music from throughout predominantly western music history. This combination of the range of early to contemporary music and the mixture of tradition and experiment is a defining feature of the festival. As two committee members described it: JL: If we would limit the sacred to one ontological source, we would not properly understand the sacred. We need to look at it as multiplicity of contemporary sacred forms (…), and the complex game between the different forms that the sacred can take. That is

 Projectplan Musica Sacra Maastricht 2013 (Maastricht: 2013), 3. The original in Dutch: “Wie de huidige maatschappij bekijkt, zal herkennen hoe heilige plaatsen, fascinatie en huiver de hedendaagse mens bezighouden. De actualiteit van sacrale bevraging en duiding manifesteert zich op velerlei manieren: het succes van de jongerendagen, de vele voettochten naar Santiago, de hoge oplages van magazines als De Groene Amsterdammer en Filosofie, en van mindstyle tijdschriften als Happinez en Flow, het succes van bezinningscentra en gemeenschappen (…), de aandacht in de pers voor de verwikkelingen binnen de Kerk, levensbeschouwende interviews zoals Het laatste woord in het NRC Handelsblad, het succes van documentaires als Young Nuns (BBC), het wetenschappelijke onderzoek naar de transformerende positie van religie en religiositeit, het werk van theatermakers en kunstenaars (Fabre, Castellucci), … Sacraliteit is alom tegenwoordig. En precies deze sacraliteit vormt het uitgangspunt voor Musica Sacra Maastricht.”

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what it is about. (…) Current sacred forms are the nation state, the self, nature, human rights, and childcare. JG: The worker has been made sacred, the child has become sacred, as a result from our progress and enlightenment. Currently, elderly people are made sacred as well, I think.²⁷

The different forms in which the sacred allows itself to be interpreted in the framework of the festival, are reflected in the incorporation of different artistic disciplines, a large scope of music history, and the performances’ subject matter. In this broad approach, religion maintains a place of persistence. Not only because of the local historical, pre-dominantly Catholic context of the Maastricht area, but also because the program committee felt that art and culture offer an alternative way of constructing a meaningful worldview for those who are not part of any institutional religion. The committee members, for instance, spoke of offering ‘an aesthetic experience. Exactly such a semi-religious experience.’²⁸ The committee recognized the replacement of religion for art as a larger socio-cultural trend beyond the festival context. For instance, in ‘the phenomenon of the St. Matthew Passion, which everyone attends. In that context, art is taking the place of religion. I think we have well incorporated this in the festival.’²⁹ For the committee members, the idea of religious and (secular) aesthetic experiences as possible gateways to the experience of the sacred had a strong presence in their discourse. However, to them, this experience could never be purely aesthetic; performances solely aiming at effect were seldom part of the program. The committee attempted to seek a deeper level, in either the concept behind or artistic execution of the performance. When speaking of the sacred and related notions, the committee members frequently used terms in both positive and negative ways. Terms that had posi-

 Meeting program committee, 09.01. 2012. JL: “Als we het sacrale beperken tot 1 ontologische bron, dan zouden we het sacrale niet goed begrijpen, we moeten het beschouwen als veelvoud van eigentijdse sacrale vormen, of verheiligde vormen, en het complexe spel tussen de verschillende vormen die het kan aannemen. Daar gaat het om. (…) Sacrale vormen, zijn tegenwoordig, de nationale staat, het zelf, de natuur, mensenrechten, sacraliteit van de zorg voor kinderen.” JG: “Zoals de arbeider ook sacraal is gemaakt, is het kind ook sacraal gemaakt, vanuit de ontwikkeling en verlichting. Nu worden oude mensen ook sacraal gemaakt volgens mij.”  Meeting program committee, 08.02. 2012. JG: “Het belevingsaspect, van het festival in deze situatie betekent veel, het publiek dat er is, die hebben natuurlijk ook een soort beleving.” JL: “Daar mikken wij ook op in programmering (…). Het totale geheel van de esthetiek, of kunst. Precies die semi-religieuze ervaring.”  Meeting program committee, 09.03. 2012. SB: “Dat is het fenomeen van de Mattheus passie he, waar iedereen dan naar toe gaat.” JG: “De kunst die in de plaats komt van de religie. Ik denk dat we dat heel goed in het festival hebben zitten.”

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tive connotations for them were transcendent, epiphany, reflection, and overwhelming. Negative connotations were evoked by words like spirituality, vague, purely aesthetic or pure beauty, and mystical. To them the latter terms represented associations with the notion of the sacred they wanted to refrain from: too vague, not enough depth, too closely related to new-age spirituality. All these terms were used in reference to both religious and secular contexts. This distinction was omnipresent during the meetings of the committee, but remarkably the broad approach to sacrality disappeared when the notion of place was the topic. In discussions on concert locations, places that were called sacred were strictly buildings or sites with religious connotations like churches or chapels. Non-religious buildings or sites were usually referred to as non-sacred, with the exception of cemeteries.³⁰ The use of the terminology is illustrated by a reference made to the work of architect Tadeo Ando. The committee advisor stated that Ando’s buildings embody all that musica sacra is about. Ando’s use of sober materials results in spaces that evoke reflection by means of the light fall, space, and proportions. This task for the architect was deemed to be a sacred task; a task that represents engagement with that which is bigger than the individual, almost too big.³¹ The notions of reflection and introspection, leading to the experience of a relationship to that which is beyond the individual person, were recurrent features in the committee members’ perceptions of the sacred. Almost all the interviewed performers had specific thoughts about their music being performed within the context of Musica Sacra Maastricht. The only performer who did not greatly care for the context was Jonathan Powell. He was invited to perform the eight-hour piano cycle Sequentia cyclica super Dies irae (1948 – 1949) by composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892– 1988). Both the extraordinary format and the subject matter suited the annual festival theme of The Awe-Inspiring. For Powell it was the third opportunity he received for performing the complete composition in one day. This was leading for him in deciding to agree with the performance. ‘It does not really say anything to me

 Meeting program committee, 08.02. 2012. FD: “They would like to perform in a non-sacred space, such as a morgue or a green house, or something like that.”  Meeting program committee, 24.05. 2013. JL: “The other day I saw a program about architect Tadeo Ando, who makes beautiful constructions.” FD: “That was so beautiful!” JL:” and, that is musica sacra. Materials were very sober, light fall. [He] builds spaces that make people think, by means of their light fall, use of space, and proportions. (…) In fact, that is a sacred task for him, whether it is a museum or an office. Mentally he is very akin to Dom van der Laan. And then I thought, that man reached a point of the sacred that is bigger than we are, terribilis, it is too big for us. And in that sense, also to heavy for us to carry.”

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that this festival is called Musica Sacra. When I think about context it is about rehearsal time, whether they pay enough, whether it fits in the rest of my activities, whether it is a good location and piano. That is as far as context goes.’³² Of the interviewed performers, Hans Leenders and Marcel Verheggen were most familiar with the festival and the type of performances it presented, in which they both identified the notion of the sacred as a leading component. Leenders described: That is also kind of their reason of existence. If they would let go of that, it would become a bit of an average festival. (…) Whichever festival edition you attend, it isalways different and at the same time not at all. (…) If I have to characterize the festival, [I would say] it is not an average festival, [it is] very diverse, and generally speaking the performances are of good to very good quality.³³

While the program consisted of different performances every year, the departure point of the sacred established a consistent identity for the festival. For Michael Finnissy it was his third visit to the festival in 2014. He observed that, ‘It is such a wonderful festival. The people are so real, it is so authentic. And to have a festival that is concerned about how people live their lives and the meaning of people’s lives is so much better than having just another contemporary music festival (…).’³⁴ He furthermore stated that at Musica Sacra Maastricht, ‘there is a reasoning behind it, and people believe it. They are doing it for the right reasons and that communicates.’³⁵ Leenders and Finnissy were not only excited about the festival offering them a platform to perform, but both were equally positive about what the festival meant for their own musical expertise. Finnissy spoke with affection of his previous festival visits. ‘Every festival I have been here, I have taken so much away. Not just for my own concerts, but also from other concerts, and discussions that people have.’³⁶ Leenders stated that he would also attend the festival as visitor if he was not performing. ‘For me as a musician it is in any case a very enjoyable

 Interview with Powell, 17.09. 2014.  Interview with Leenders, 09.01. 2015. “Dat is natuurlijk wel een beetje hun bestaansrecht. Als ze dat loslaten dan wordt het natuurlijk maar een beetje een doorsnee festival. (…) Bij welk festival je ook zit, het is altijd heel anders en eigenlijk ook helemaal niet. (…) Als ik het zou moeten karakteriseren, dan is het geen doorsnee festival, zeer veelzijdig, in het algemeen zijn de uitvoeringen van goed niveau tot zeer goed niveau.”  Interview with Finnissy, 19.09. 2014.  Idem.  Idem.

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festival to have here in Maastricht.’³⁷ With regard to the selection of performances, he observed, ‘it is very challenging. They find things that are not too self-evident. So, there is much to enjoy. I would not mind to perform nothing at all and just visit the festival. It gives a lot of input, because they always position themselves on the edges. It also opens doors.’³⁸ Verheggen described the character of his performances at Musica Sacra Maastricht as very distinctive. I perform at quite a number of concerts, but a concert in a church like in a summer series or something, is more concert-like than Musica Sacra. Of course, those [regular] concerts also have many moments that are elevating, which make you contemplate a little more, but it has more that summer evening vibe to it. (…) In a church, during a mass, or during a Musica Sacra Maastricht performance, the accent is more on sacrality.³⁹

Verheggen made a distinction between concerts primarily programmed for entertainment purposes and concerts programmed with the intention of offering reflection or contemplation. This distinction reflects the difference between entertainment and efficacy, between play and ritual (discussed in Chapter 6). While this strict distinction offers theoretical tools, in the practice of musical performance it never seems to be so rigid. It could be argued that by means of taking the notion of the sacred as a departure point, Musica Sacra Maastricht emphasized the ritual dimensions of music, which may less be the case during what Verheggen called summer evening concerts. In comparing other festivals to Musica Sacra Maastricht as possible sites for performance, Boudewijn Tarenskeen described the Maastricht festival as much more suitable for LUTHER. Mostly, because it dealt with an ‘aesthetic that departs from the source of the festival, while simultaneously remaining connected with it.’⁴⁰ This is a dynamic that he found characteristic for this particular festival. He appreciated how the committee related to and explored the boundaries of the relationship between music and re-

 Interview with Leenders, 19.01. 2015. “In ieder geval voor mij als musicus is het natuurlijk wel een heel plezierig festival om hier in Maastricht te hebben.”  Idem. “Qua programmering is het heel uitdagend. Ze zoeken dingen die niet voor de hand liggend zijn. Dus wat dat betreft is er veel te genieten. (…) Ik zou het liefst helemaal geen concerten doen en gewoon naar dat festival toegaan. Omdat het wel veel input geeft. Vooral door net die randjes op te zoeken. Het zet ook wel wat deuren open.”  Interview with Verheggen, 06.02. 2015. “Ik geef best veel concerten, maar een concert in een kerk, gewoon in een zomerserie ofzo, is toch wat meer concert-achtig dan Musica Sacra. Natuurlijk zitten daar ook een heleboel momenten bij die ook wat verheffend zijn, waardoor je iets meer gaat nadenken, maar het heeft een iets meer zomeravond karakter. (…) [I]n een kerk, zeker in een mis, of in een MSM uitvoering, dan ligt toch iets meer het accent op die sacraliteit.”  Interview with Tarenskeen, 27.05. 2014. “esthetiek die zich losweekt van de bron van het festival, maar ook weer niet.”

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ligion. ‘They do that very well. They invite a lot of different [things]. (…) I think it is good they are breaking down that wall. Which is also why I think it is quite a successful festival: because it is not only Gregorian chant or yet another requiem, but [an exploration of] the many peripheries.’⁴¹ Both the program committee and the performers described the festival and its significance to them in terms of difference. Difference from the mainstream and difference from the expected. Both Leenders and Tarenskeen used the terminology of edge and periphery. In addition to its particular approach to the sacred, the festival committee’s approach to the quality of the music and of performers as potential generators of the sacred was elemental here.

5.3.2 Quality When asked whom the festival was for, committee member Sylvester Beelaert responded he was his own ideal festival visitor. ‘I select what I would like to hear myself and what I assume that others would also like to hear (…) [The selected music] might be demanding, but then we should offer something in return. It has to be captivating in one way or another.’⁴² Jacques Giesen, the committee president gave a more general description of the target audience; ‘people who are interested in music that is not too easy (…) and in all its diversity.’⁴³ When the committee members were asked how they thought the audience perceived the festival, Giesen thought that visitors might think something along the lines of: ‘Every year we expect just that high quality and we will not be scammed, it is always good. It is always too much, I can never take it all in, but that is also part of the experience.’⁴⁴ The other committee members supported this state-

 Idem. “Ik vind dat ze dat heel goed doen. Ze nodigen veel uit, heel verschillende [dingen]. Vind ik wel heel goed, dat ze die muur steeds meer gaan afbreken. En daarom is het volgens mij ook een tamelijk succesvol festival: omdat het niet alleen maar Gregoriaans is, of weer een requiem, maar al die randgebieden.”  Interview with SLB, 14.05. 2012. “Dus ik beschouw mijzelf als mijn ideale festivalbezoeker. Ik programmeer alles wat ik zelf wil horen, zou willen horen, waarvan ik dus uitga dat de mensen dit ook willen horen. (…) Het mag veeleisend zijn, maar dan moet je daar wel iets tegenover zetten. Het moet wel boeien op een of andere manier.”  Meeting program committee, 09.03. 2012. JG: “Mensen die geïnteresseerd zijn in muziek die niet zo makkelijk is, en (…) de breedheid ervan.”  Idem. JG: “We verwachten ook dit jaar weer gewoon die hoge kwaliteit, en we worden niet belazerd, dat is altijd goed. Het is wel veel te veel, ik krijg het niet allemaal behapt, dat is ook een belevingsaspect.”

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ment. The element of quality was highly valued by the members of the committee and an anticipated reason of why visitors attend the festival and why the festival has a high number of returning visitors. Quality, in the committee’s view, was reflected in the selected composers, compositions, and the concert programs, the selected performers, and the resulting aesthetic experiences. A major criterion discerned in the selection procedure was the balance between the iconic works and composers and the production of new and unexpected works. For the 2012 theme Rites and Rituals, the committee members felt they were obliged to select Igor Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps (1913). This was never really explained during the meetings, but regarded as self-evident. It was discussed in a variation with dance, but that would have needed to be an unusual choreography, not the traditional one.⁴⁵ Moreover, the committee was always very wary of other festival programs and tried to make sure not to program similar performances. When there was a rumor a festival in The Hague would also program the Sacre du Printemps in 2011, there was no discussion about whether Musica Sacra Maastricht would still have it too.⁴⁶ Yet, even within the context of the selection of icons, the committee would look for ways to make it experimental or adventurous, to construct the icon differently. Within the context of the 2013 festival theme Introspection, Transformation, Conversion, icons related primarily to the biographies of well-known converts that were sources of inspiration for musical compositions. Examples were Augustine (about whom in the end nothing was programmed), Mary Magdalene (Bononcini oratorio) and Paul (Mendelssohn oratorio). These figures were recurring features in the meetings and were classified as important as covering the different historical periods in the program. For the 2014 festival two main lines were discerned in approaching the theme of The Awe-Inspiring: the inexplicable grandeur of the cosmos (The Planets, Sternenrest (2006 – 2008)) and the remembrance year of World War I (Remembrance Day (2014) and the films Maudite soit la Guerre (1914) and La Belgique Martyre (1919)). These thematic lines in the program were seen as unavoidable. Especially the latter also coincided with many other cultural programs throughout the country (and Europe) in remembrance of the beginning of World War I, providing this theme with a sense of urgency.

 Meeting program committee, 16.11. 2011. SLB: “For recordings it is better to do the Sacre without dance. (…) JG: “If we do it with dance, it needs to be something totally different from what it normally is.”  Meeting program committee, 16.12. 2011. SB: “Do we need to talk about it with regards to The Hague?” SLB: “No, you cannot escape it.” JG: “No, it is an icon. But we need to construct the icon differently.”

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In addition to the twist of uniqueness the committee attempted to provide for the iconic works, this could furthermore be found in the rarely performed or unexpected compositions and in the commissioned productions. An example of a rarely performed piece was Sorabji’s marathon composition. Powell was the only pianist in the world with this piece on his repertoire and it was deemed both thematically and contextually perfect for the 2014 theme The Awe-Inspiring. To not have this piece compete with other performances too much, it was programmed as a festival prelude on the Thursday before the festival weekend. Like the fair distribution between unique and iconic productions, the committee aimed to find a balance between favorable and challenging concerts. On the one hand, the argument “the audience would really like this” sufficed for some productions, usually ones that could be booked fairly easily. On the other hand, arguments like “this is different than usual” and “the audience should not be scared off” prevailed most of the time. The program committee found an important part of its identity in their largely unconventional program choices. While some critics hackled the festival’s reputation of programming experimental and rather unknown music,⁴⁷ it was actually an aspect the program committee wanted the festival to be known for. The complexity of the majority of the performances was seen as an asset. The sacred could not be explored by means of easy entertainment; it required challenge and dedication – of both the performers and the audience. Concerts with a demanding character, and deemed deserving of attention beyond that of connoisseurs, would be scheduled without any parallel programs, while the majority of the program consisted of parallel timeslots. Like in 2012, when Bruno Mantovani’s Le Sette Chiese (2002) was programmed, it was discussed whether to program something else in parallel. ‘No, you can’t put anything next to it. (…) We need to set-apart the contemporary music, because otherwise [no one will attend].’⁴⁸ Within the festival program, several concerts were set-apart in order to allow for more attention. These were usually the contemporary, rarely performed or hardly known pieces, and the world premieres. While ideally the committee members always searched for new, unconventional, or rather unknown composers and compositions, they also had some favorites returning on a more frequent basis. To name a few, multiple festival editions have seen concerts with work of Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450 – 1521), Orlando di Lasso (1532– 1594), André Jolivet (1905 – 1974), Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992),  Maurice Wiche. “Uitersten bij jubileum Musica Sacra.” De Limburger, 10.09. 2012.  Meeting program committee, 05.04. 2012. FD: “Naast Le Sette Chiese?” SLB: “Niet naast, nee.” SB: “Nee daar mag je niks naast doen.” FD: “Niet?” SB: “Nee. Die hedendaagse muziek moeten we apart zetten, want anders [komt er niemand].”

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John Tavener (1944 – 2013), Sofia Gubaidulina (1931), and Arvo Pärt (1935). Of these composers, the majority of their work was simply regarded as sacred music, without question. Some of their work falls within the genre sacred music. That music was written especially for religious or liturgical contexts, such as masses or oratorios. Other composers demonstrated alternative approaches to the idea of the sacred, relating to new age, new forms of spirituality, or meaning making in a broader sense. The program committee characterized the majority of these kinds of musical compositions as “cerebral.”⁴⁹ This demonstrated a particular take; the music was considered to incite reflection with the listeners. In addition to these favorites, the rejected compositions were also indicators of the selection criteria. One composer received an enduring veto from one of the committee members: the work of Philip Glass was never an option. Even when a production with work of Glass, performed by a Maastricht ensemble in the September period, sought cooperation with the festival, the committee refused this collaboration. The project leader recalled this project during several committee meetings, but nevertheless the majority of the committee members was not willing to have Glass’ work staged during the festival. When asked explicitly, the committee members opposed to cooperation stated that in their opinion the music lacked the necessary depth that they sought in music that can potentially function as a platform for sacrality. Also, Glass was considered to be too popular a name, whose work was featured in too many other Dutch festival programs. The general tendency of preferring the unconventional choice was cause for the worry that the general public might perceive the festival as elitist. This issue would come up during committee meetings every now and then, during which the elite character was acknowledged. FD: People tell you its in-crowd, they tell me [it is] elitist, it is for the elite. We should agree on this, is this an elite festival and is that a bad thing? JL: The whole sector is flooded with people who only want light music. JG: It’s a trend. But we are the last of the Mohicans, we want to keep this alive.⁵⁰

The elitist character was mainly related to the unfamiliarity and complexity of the selected music, which was in turn seen as a prerequisite for dealing with  Meeting program committee, 28.09. 2012.  Meeting program committee, 09.01. 2012. FD: “Tegen jou zeggen ze inteelt, tegen mij zeggen ze elite, het is voor de elite. We moeten eigenlijk afspreken, is dit een elitefestival en is dat erg?” JL. “De hele sector wordt overstroomd door mensen die alleen nog lichte muziek willen.” JG. “Het is een trend. Maar wij zijn als laatste der Mohikanen, we willen het in stand houden.”

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the notion of the sacred. At the same time, participation projects and educational programs were increasingly incorporated in the festival program. Every year projects were realized with students from the Maastricht Theatre Academy and the Maastricht Academy of Media Design and Technology. Other projects regarded for instance the involvement of amateur singers and youth theatre groups. These participation projects occasionally attracted new visitors, but it is hard to say whether these would turn into new frequent visitors. FD: We need to make sure that we hold on to the grey audience, and that we catch the new generation. The youth, it is mostly related to participation and implicit education. [Cyrille] Offermans⁵¹ said that this is a festival of ambitious music. It also indicates something about the education of the audience, [the education that] they require. Youngsters do not have the baggage yet to get here. SB: Which is why it needs to happen through participation.⁵²

In addition to the demands and wishes for the concert programs and the effort on behalf of the visitors, the notion of quality also concerned the level of the performers. As with composers, the committee had a particular list of favorite performers of which they felt the quality was guaranteed. These were likely to receive an invitation to perform during the festival on a more frequent basis than others, like The Tallis Scholars, Cappella Amsterdam, Ruysdael Kwartet, and Severin von Eckardstein. They were recognized for their specialized skills and the program committee felt these performers understood the quality and depth of the music programmed for the festival. At the same time, the festival committee did not want to feature similar performer line-ups every year. As a result, sometimes performers of which the quality was disputed or unknown were invited. This was especially the case when it concerned performances of nonwestern music, in which none of the committee members was specialized. In the preparations for the 2013 festival edition, a South-Korean P’ansori singer had to be found. Communications did not run very smoothly, but eventually the curiosity and the desire to program this type of music overruled the guarantee that the performer would offer a particular level of quality. Simultaneously

 Author and speaker for the 2011 festival.  Meeting program committee, 09.01. 2012. FD. “We moeten zorgen dat we het grijze publiek vasthouden, en dat we de aanwas hiervan aanpakken. Jong, zit vooral in participatie – impliciete educatie. Offermans zei, het is een festival van ambitieuze muziek. Het zegt iets over de vorming van het publiek, die ze nodig heeft. Jongeren hebben nog geen bagage om hier te komen.” SB. “En daarom moet het via participatie.”

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this was exemplary for the kind of experiment and risk the committee was willing to take in staging new and unconventional performances.

5.3.3 Negotiating Quality In addition to national and international performers, the festival program would feature several local ensembles. Having roots in the Maastricht area was considered to be one of the main characteristics of the festival, among others reflected in the collaboration with local ensembles and institutions. The collaboration with local institutions and ensembles was a key feature in the festival. While the committee was appreciative of their annual contributions, the negotiation processes about the concert programs had a different character than those with national or international partners. On the one hand, this concerned the level of quality and its possibilities and limits. On the other hand, it regarded the fact that the local ensembles were more acquainted with the festival and what it stood for. Local performers were more likely to have a stronger relationship with the festival than some of the national and international ensembles, for which it may have been just one out of many places to perform. This larger acquaintance often resulted in stronger – either positive or negative – opinions about the festival, in turn influencing the negotiation process and the resulting concert programs. The negotiations usually took place with artistic leaders, often also the conductors, of local ensembles. In turn, conductors assigned the compositions to their ensembles. One local conductor had a reputation of never agreeing with the committee’s proposals.⁵³ The committee would propose what it regarded as “valuable proposals” and in response they would receive “middle of the road” counter proposals. The committee described this difference in musical perspective on suitable pieces as operating in “different aesthetic frameworks.”⁵⁴ While recognizing the necessity of including this local ensemble, the negotiation process would be lengthy. On one occasion, after agreeing on the composition, the piece was not performed according to the instructions in the score. The committee regarded this as a fundamental mistake and a confirmation of the difference in ideas on the aesthetics and musical quality associated with the sacred.

 I decided not to mention the names of the ensembles and the specific individuals referred to here. This section is not concerned with exposing details of professional relationships, but rather with differences in ideas about sacrality and its perception through the performed music.  Meeting program committee, 09.03. 2012.

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Despite its strong convictions on quality, the program committee did not intend to over-demand the performers. However, because the negotiations occurred with the conductors or artistic leaders, committee members were not always aware of the festival’s reputation with ensemble members. Where the ambitions of the conductors might have been a match with the ambitions of the committee, these ambitions simultaneously might be too ambitious for the performers in the ensemble. This dynamic occurred with one of the local ensembles. Among the ensemble members the festival gained a reputation of always demanding the impossible. However, for long the committee was unaware of this situation and the dissatisfaction it resulted in among the ensemble members. It was a situation the committee felt uncomfortable with when they found out. They sent a letter to the ensemble members to provide some insights on their position in all this and to plead for mutual understanding and future collaboration.⁵⁵ As a local conductor and performer, Leenders was involved with the festival in multiple roles. He was organ player and conductor of the choir of the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek. During the Sunday service in the festival weekend this choir performed a mass, which was regarded as a contribution to the festival program. In the selection of this mass, both the program committee and Leenders tried to consider the annual festival theme as much as possible. However, both parties acknowledged that the choir consisted of amateur singers with a limited amount of rehearsal time. Therefore, in the constitution of the program, they both acted with a particular leniency towards theme and musical complexity. The choir experienced its participation in the festival as an acknowledgement of their activities, while for Leenders these annual festival contributions were an extension of his own organ repertoire.⁵⁶ The negotiations about the programs that Leenders performed with his professional choir Studium Chorale were of a different character. Several constructions were possible, either the program committee approached Leenders with a specific program request or Leenders would propose something to the committee. In both instances, the annual theme was leading. The conductor stated that since 2005, when he began at Studium Chorale, this process had never been easy. Often, he regarded the proposals of the committee consisting of music that was too complex for the available rehearsal times or of music that he had no affinity

 Meeting program committee, 28.06. 2013.  Interview with Leenders, 19.01. 2015. “And usually it means that the masses I rehearse are simultaneously new repertoire for me. I can easily trace that over the past years that I am part of the festival, that I also extend my mass repertoire. It is very strongly linked to Musica Sacra.”

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with. Then he would make a counter proposition, which was in turn often rejected by the program committee. Leenders described what would happen next. ‘And then you have to start moving towards each other. Then you have to start talking. (…) And that can be a little painful sometimes, for both sides.’⁵⁷ However, in the end Leenders did experience the collaboration between the choir and the festival as positive. ‘It has never been very easy. But that is also part of the process I guess. (…) For me it is also an opportunity to go beyond my own familiar paths.’⁵⁸ Leenders acknowledged how the quality of the resulting festival programs benefitted from such negotiation dynamics. He recognized this in the entire festival program, by observing how he compared it to other festivals. With other festivals, I honestly have to say, I am always inclined to look at the level of performing. If I attend a music festival and the performance level is bad, I could not care less. But at Musica Sacra is that never a problem. Interesting to me are the relationships [between the program parts], the reflecting on the program. (…) [T]hat is also typical for the program. A standard work is absolutely forbidden, that is not going to happen. Everything is new (…), which is the power of the festival. And I am just very happy with it.⁵⁹

Leenders described the tendency of entering unknown territory in becoming acquainted with and rehearsing unknown compositions, particularly more recent music. Somebody writes a piece, of which you need to know what the musical language is. Once you understand that language, you explore how it can be performed. It is easier to grasp the language of old music, because it is our cultural heritage that is part of us all. (…) But if you are going to do a modern music program, of which no one has ever heard the language before (…), you as conductor need to know where to take the musicians. (…) In the end it has to be self-evident for the musician.⁶⁰

 Idem. “En dan moet je dus naar elkaar toe. En dan moeten we wel in overleg. (…) Dat is ook wel eens onplezierig, en dat het een beetje pijn doet, aan beide kanten.”  Idem. “Het is nog nooit eenvoudig geweest. Maar dat hoort er ook een beetje bij denk ik. (..) Het is voor mij ook weer een mogelijkheid om buiten mijn eigen paden te treden.”  Idem. “Bij andere festivals, moet ik eerlijk zeggen – ik ben altijd geneigd om als eerste naar het niveau van de uitvoering te kijken. Als ik naar een muziekfestival ga, en het is slecht gemusiceerd, dan ben ik snel ermee klaar. (…) Dat vind ik bij Musica Sacra geen enkel probleem. Wat ik daar zo interessant vind, zijn de dwarsverbanden, het nadenken over de programmering. (…) en dat heeft ook met die programmering te maken. Er mag bijvoorbeeld nooit eens een keer een standaard werk, dat zit er niet in. Alles is nieuw (…), en dat vind ik ook wel de kracht van het festival. En ik ben er gewoon heel blij mee.”  Idem. “Iemand schrijft een stuk en dan moet je gewoon weten hoe die muzikale taal is. En als je die taal begrijpt, dan vervolgens kun je wel gaan kijken, hoe ga ik dat uitvoeren. Van oude muziek, die taal begrijp je sneller, want dat is natuurlijk ons cultuurgoed wat we allemaal mee-

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Verheggen concurred with Leenders on the character of the type of compositions usually proposed by the program committee at the beginning of negotiations and the effort it required from the performers to become acquainted with the proposed music. There is some form of negotiation, but usually they have a very titillating proposal. At first glance it seems undoable, but then I sit down for it and think about it. And then I think, if I manage to do it, it would be quite something. Not necessarily for myself, but a form of energy, a form of giving life, yes, doing a deed, so then I just do it. But they usually are very complex programs. (…) It is not easy music, neither for me or for the audience.⁶¹

In their program proposals, the festival committee primarily departed from the perspective of the annual theme and the quality of the music. Yet, the above described examples demonstrate how, in addition to matters of content, practical matters were of importance as well – especially in relation to local ensembles. Rehearsal time and budget keeping were always part of considerations, just as much as musical affinity and the conductor and performers’ willingness to enter unknown or complex musical territory. However, this entering of unknown ground was one of the defining features of what musical performance meant to performers like Leenders and Verheggen. It was a process of entering unknown territory, making it one’s own as much as possible, at least to the extent that one is capable of conveying it to others. And, it was exactly this challenging nature that both interviewees acknowledged as the defining character of Musica Sacra Maastricht. The program committee carefully worked to establish a reputation of quality and complexity. As the examples illustrate, in particular occasions this could also work against them. It shows that the levels of complexity and quality, which in the minds of the committee members strongly related to the notion of the sacred, might be contested for others. The reputation of being demanding was not only felt by some of the performing parties, but also by the production team of the theatre. During every festival evaluation, the production leader would address the fact that the multiplicity of

dragen. (..) Maar als je nou een modern muziekprogramma gaat doen, waarvan niemand ooit die taal gehoord heeft (…) dan moet jij als dirigent, weten waar je je musici naar toe moet brengen. (..) Voor de musicus moet het uiteindelijk vanzelfsprekend zijn.”  Interview with Verheggen, 06.02. 2015. “Er is wel overleg, maar meestal komen ze met een heel prikkelend voorstel. In eerste instantie onuitvoerbaar, dan ga ik er eens voor zitten, erover nadenken. En dan denk ik, als ik het wel uitvoer, dan is dat ook een daad. Niet perse voor mezelf, maar een vorm van energie, een vorm van leven geven, ja, een daad doen, dus ik doe dat gewoon. Maar het zijn meestal heel pittige programma’s. (…) Het is geen eenvoudige muziek, zowel voor mij als voor het publiek niet.”

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locations and large-scale productions caused increasing challenges for the team. There was much in situ rehearsal time in the days preceding the festival to be accounted for. Despite the logistic challenges this caused, to the committee members this was exactly what made the festival “more of a festival.”⁶² It related the artistic productions to the performances and the cultural atmosphere of the city. The production leader usually addressed the fact that the program was finalized too late. The project leader was in charge of guarding the deadlines of the festival program booklets and the festival budget. Yet, projects could be changed or finalized at a relatively late stage. This frustrated the production team with regard to their planning, but it was the general belief among the committee members that this looser and more associative way of working – resulting in later finalized decisions – benefitted the eventual quality of the festival program.⁶³

5.3.4 Aesthetics Another notion in negotiations of the program committee, relating to quality and the sacred, was that of aesthetics. As mentioned above, a performance purely aimed at beauty would be judged as superficial. Yet the use of aesthetics to convey a particular concept or rational thought was welcomed. The committee was appreciative of the use of aesthetics in the creation of an atmosphere inviting or evoking reflection and introspection. When committee members spoke of sacred acoustics – an important aspect of musical aesthetics – they often had the acoustics a church building can produce in mind. For example, when the factory hall of the Timmerfabriek was discussed as possible concert location, it was said to be an ‘evidently industrial space, (…) so it does not have a sacred acoustic.’ Another member argued that in addition to the largest of the factory halls, there was a smaller space with a glass cupola. ‘There you feel like you’re in a church.’ The given counter argument was, ‘But in the Lambertuskerk you are still in a sacred space. Even though it is not completely renovated yet. You still have that church above you. That is something else than steel buttresses.’⁶⁴ So, while acoustically the produced sound

 Meeting program committee, 28.06. 2013.  Meeting program committee, 23.09. 2013.  Meeting program committee, 14.03. 2013. JL: “Dat is evident een industriële ruimte (…). Maar dat is nog niet een sacrale akoestiek (…).”JG: “Er is naast die grote hal, nog een andere ruimte, met die glaskoepel. Dan heb je het gevoel of sta je in de kerk.” JL: “Maar bij de Lambertus is het altijd nog een sacrale ruimte, ook al is ie niet helemaal afgebouwd. Je hebt wel die kerk boven je hoofd. Dat is anders dan die stalen draagbalken.”

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may have resonated similarly in a large factory hall and in a church building, the sacrality in this case was attributed in terms of the history and historical function of a particular site. In the reasoning of the committee advisor, the history in combination with the aesthetics of a church building informed the notion of the sacred, while those of the factory hall did not. The resulting acoustics within both spaces was connected to a sense of the sacred accordingly. On another level, aesthetics became part of the negotiations as well. In relation to the experimental character of selecting virtually unknown performers or unfamiliar performances, aesthetics could not always be vouched for on behalf of the committee. An example of this was found in the performances of the Buddhist Shingon ensemble Kashôken (discussed in Chapter 6). The committee advisor had seen a performance of theirs once before and ever since he had argued for their appearance at Musica Sacra Maastricht. When the theme of the 2012 festival finally allowed for their performances, he said, ‘This is hardly to be appreciated in an aesthetic sense. I cannot take in the Shingon with my western aesthetic norms. You experience this in another way than purely aesthetic. That is the power of the performance.’⁶⁵ It reflects the sense of discovery or adventure, the program committee regarded as a possible gateway to a perception of the sacred. This festival was not just about encountering the familiar and confirming pre-existing ideas, but the committee wanted it to be just as much – if not more – about encountering the new and unexpected.

5.3.5 Audience While the previous sections on difference, quality, and aesthetics predominantly featured considerations of the program committee and performers, these notions also resonated with visitor experiences. The first and foremost reason that people decided to attend Musica Sacra Maastricht was for the music selection. Generally, festival visitors regarded themselves as music lovers. As so-called cultural omnivores,⁶⁶ they had a wide knowledge of cultural and artistic disciplines as music, art, and literature. For many of the respondents, music took up an important and invaluable place in their lives. Cunera described how she was raised

 Meeting program committee, 16.12. 2011. JL: “Dit is bijna niet esthetisch te appreciëren. Ik kan de Shingon met mijn westerse esthetische normen bijna niet meer behappen. Je ondergaat het op een andere manier dan puur esthetisch. Dat is de kracht van de voorstelling.”  Elsbeth Willems, Publieksonderzoek Musica Sacra Maastricht. Evaluatie Festivaleditie 2011 ‘De Vreugde der Wet’ & Verkenning Potentiele Doelgroepen, MA thesis (Maastricht University, 2012) 58.

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with the idea that everything involved with arts and music was the most important thing in life. ‘And I still experience it that way.’⁶⁷ Mildred also emphasized this prominence of cultural practices in her daily life. ‘I believe that I would most like it to attend a concert twice week. And then preferably once a week a dance performance or something. But that is not possible of course. Because at the moment I take part in three orchestras and every now and then a quartet.’⁶⁸ This is representative of the respondents’ level of dedication to music, the value they attributed to qualitatively high artistic practices, and the important role they saw for it in contemporary culture. All respondents marked the festival weekend in their annual calendars and during the festival they tried to visit as many concerts as possible. The festival was seen as an opportunity to be completely immersed with music, arts, and heritage. In their selection of concerts, the first aspect that most respondents looked at was whether they knew composers, musical pieces, or performers. Han said the high quality of the performances during the festival was self-evident. ‘It is nice to witness music that you are familiar with in an excellent performance or to experience it live. But I also like it when there are a couple of new things.’ In dealing with the familiar and unfamiliar, Han had a clear approach to the program. ‘I rather choose an ensemble that I really appreciate than an ensemble that I do not know at all (…). But rather for unknown music than for familiar music.’⁶⁹ Many of the respondents based their selections on a mix of expectations of what they already knew and curiosity for what they did not know yet. While ensembles with excellent reputations performing quite familiar music could be cause for excitement and high expectations, performances of known music could also become too familiar. Cees experienced this with the performance of St. Paul (1835) by Felix Mendelssohn. His wife Atie described this familiarity being the cause of a lack of real emotional effect. Cees agreed by stating that it was a nice closing concert of the festival and it made him feel at

 Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “Van huis uit ben ik opgevoed met alles dat met kunst te maken had, dat was het belangrijkste in je leven. En dat ervaar ik nog steeds zo.”  Interview with Mildred, 15.10. 2013. “Ik geloof dat ik het liefste twee keer in de week naar een concert zou gaan. En dan het liefst ook nog 1 keer in de week naar dans ofzo. Maar ja dat kan natuurlijk nooit. Ja want op het moment zit ik in drie orkesten, en af en toe een kwartet.”  Interview with Han, 01.10. 2013. “Het is leuk om muziek die je kent inderdaad, in een erg mooie uitvoering of een keer live mee te maken, maar ik vind het toch ook wel leuk als er een paar nieuwe dingen bij zijn.” (…) “Ik kies eerder voor een ensemble dat ik erg goed vind dan een ensemble dat ik helemaal niet ken (…). Maar eerder voor onbekende muziek dan voor bekende muziek.”

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ease.⁷⁰ Han had a similar experience with a performance by the world-renown Gesualdo Consort. Beforehand he had high expectations, afterwards he wrote the ensemble did not disappoint. ‘And the music is so beautiful. Wonderful! It is music that I can “eternally” listen to. But it is so familiar, that it did not make me feel ecstatic.’⁷¹ After the opening concert of the 2013 festival edition, Jacob wrote in his diary how this was truly ‘something you never hear. These words will probably be repeated many times during this festival.’⁷² For him, this was one of the main features of the festival’s reputation, it programs music that is seldom or never performed elsewhere. Between the known and unknown, there was this extra dimension of the unexpected. Cunera said she always looked for ways to be surprised.⁷³ Obviously, surprise can be hidden in things that were completely new. For her the biggest surprise lay in music she thought she knew but was proven otherwise. Due to an empty timeslot in between two concerts, she decided to attend a performance of klezmer music by Yom and Farid D. during the 2013 festival. While she had expected a traditional style of playing, the performance was contemporary and improvisational. The combination of this surprise, the concert location of the Maastricht city hall, and the beauty of the music, made her even feel emotional. The combination of surprise and beauty touched her deeply.⁷⁴ Vivienne had a similar experience. As a musician and music scholar, she described how she was usually impressed by music that made her forget all her gathered knowledge. ‘Very silly actually, after studying music all those years to be mostly touched when you can turn off all that knowledge. I think it does not really matter whether it something familiar or unfamiliar, but simply that it touches you.’⁷⁵  Interview with Cees, 08.10. 2013. “Because you already know the music, it does not touch you as much. You think, it is nice music, a nice closure of the festival.” “It is a very nice closing concert, to become very much at ease.”  Email correspondence with Han, October 15, 2012. “En de muziek is zo prachtig. Heerlijk! Het is muziek waar ik ‘eeuwig’ naar kan luisteren. Maar het is zó vertrouwd, dat ik toch niet ‘uit mijn dak ging’.”  Festival diary Jacob, 20.09. 2013.  Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “I primarily look for things I don’t know yet.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “But it was no traditional klezmer at all. It was really freejazz, very virtuous. Everything was part of [the experience], also the location. It was a lost hour, I could not make it back and forth to my house, so yes, it was really surprising. (…) I thought it was really beautiful (…) and the entire setting. I had not expected it and (…) a nerve was touched.”  Interview with Vivienne, 21.10. 2013. “Eigenlijk heel suf, dat je dan al die jaren gestudeerd hebt in de muziek en dat je dan toch het meest geraakt wordt als je dat weer uit kunt schakelen. Ik denk dat het niet zoveel uitmaakt of het iets bekends is of iets onbekends, maar dat je er gewoon door geraakt wordt.”

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As a music scholar, one generally knows what to expect. Yet when the unexpected hit her, Vivienne’s experience became much stronger. Another key level on which music was judged was that of aesthetics. Many of the respondents began their descriptions in terms of either beauty or interest. These two aspects were present in almost every recollection. Han described this when asked about his general expectations for the festival edition of 2012. ‘I find it difficult to formulate concrete expectations of the concerts I will be attending. Of concerts of unknown modern music (like Birtwistle and Mantovani) I expect something exciting, something new; not per se something beautiful. With early music I primarily expect something beautiful, when it comes to sound and melody.’⁷⁶ As described above, balancing familiarity and unfamiliarity with music was a general tendency among the respondents. That which they knew to be good and beautiful, they would attend with particular expectations. Yet with regard to the unfamiliar, they would let themselves be surprised by using a different set of expectations, which did not necessarily relate to beauty. Han’s distinction is relevant, because it can be seen across the full range of artistic disciplines. How earlier arts were evaluated differed from the ways contemporary practices were approached. This difference was located in the perception of aesthetics, which was much more diversified when it came to contemporary practices than to earlier, established, and more traditional music. When a performance of contemporary music was not necessarily aesthetically pleasing, those attending might appreciate it as interesting or challenging. This rarely happened during performances of older music, where beauty was often used as criterion of appreciation. In relation to such concerts, the term beauty was attributed to vocal sounds, to instrumental sounds, and to performance context (for example, how performers were positioned within a location or the atmosphere there). This difference in appreciation would also feed various perceptions of the sacred, different aspects of the performance emerged to which the value of the sacred might be attributed.

5.4 Festival as Contact Zone Through performance and its relational character, a setting of exchange and interchange is established. The attribution of value and appreciation takes place in  E-mail correspondence with Han, 26.08. 2012. “[Ik] vind het moeilijk concrete verwachtingen van de concerten die ik bij ga wonen te formuleren. Bij concerten met onbekende moderne muziek (zoals Birtwistle en Mantovani) verwacht ik iets spannends, iets nieuws; niet per sé iets moois. Bij oude muziek verwacht ik vooral iets moois, qua klank en qua melodie.”

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relation to various aspects of the performances, performers, and music styles. Exchanges taking place during a live performance are of wholly other nature than listening to recorded music. In Han’s view, a live performance could never be properly captured on recordings. During the focus group meeting, he and Cunera both remembered a concert of several years earlier, in which knocks on a door were part of the composition. Han stated, ‘When hearing that on a CD, you would ask yourself what kind of nonsense is this.’ Cunera added, ‘Then it does not work at all.’ Han replied, ‘but if you are part of it, it makes you wonder about the ideas behind it, which makes it very exciting. I really like that, something extra is added to the concert.’⁷⁷ Next to sounds that seemingly only work when performed live, concerts also enhanced the listening experiences. While being familiar with Mendelssohn’s St. Paul, Han described how on recordings he had never really noticed how beautiful the music was. This is something he discovered during the live performance. For Cunera, attending a performance meant she would hear more the next time she would listen to a recording on CD. If she had a good sight on the performers during the concert, she made a visual imprint of the locations of the different instruments. Upon hearing a recorded version later, she would recall this visual image, which provided for a richer listening experience.⁷⁸ As described above: local or world-famous, amateur or professional, beautiful or interesting, these are all categories by means of which festival participants attributed value. Such categories become measures of value. Such measures were applied, notably, by means of the dynamic of the other, the unexpected, or the set-apart. The program committee, performers, and visitors all constructed the identity of the festival, and how they related their individual identities to the festival, by means a dynamic of differentiation. This dynamic was also applied to the difference between western and non-western music, a difference that was generally described in terms of western, classical or art music and non-western or world-music. An interesting case in point, in which various value categories became apparent, was the performance of Ketujan (2013), a project initiated by artist Juul Sadee (1958). She embarked on this project with members of the Moluccan com-

 Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. H: “Dan denk je van, wat is dat nou als je dat op cd hoort, wat een onzin.” C: “Dan doet het niks.” H: “Maar je moet daar bij zijn en je wordt dan ook geprikkeld om erover na te denken. Wat zou daar achter zitten? Dat is dan gewoon heel spannend. En ik vind dat heel erg leuk, dat geeft echt iets extra’s aan zo’n concert.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “Because you have seen it. I really want see which instruments are seated where. And I hear this in the music later on; you hear it better when it is recorded. (…) And you cannot escape the visuals. I remain seeing it that way.”

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munity in Maastricht. She created a soundscape based on the histories of members of this community, who were also performers of the piece. The performance received varied responses. Cees read a lot of symbolism into the different parts of the performance. He saw aspects of silence and hiding, of noise and rumor, and of chanting and unity representing the different stages of the integration process of this community in The Netherlands. The knowledge that the performers were actual representatives of the community made it an emotional experience for Cees. It directly addressed the complex history between the Moluccan community and how members of this community have been treated by the Dutch government since the 1950s. In contrast to Cees, Cunera did not feel the used symbolism was rewarding. For her it was too sentimental. Many of the performers had an emotional response after the performance was finished, but she could not share in this response. She saw the drama and emotions on the faces of the performers, but did not experience it herself through what the performance had presented her with. Instead, Jacob noted in his diary how he was able to experience the emotional discharge at the end of the performance. He thought it to be the authentic result of the group process the performers had been through in the preparation and performance of this piece. He characterized it as a pure, emotional experience.⁷⁹ The responses to Ketujan reflect on various levels the relationality of performance, the relations it established among the artists and the participating community members, between the festival and the community (and its history that is given a public platform through the performance), and between the performance and the audience. For all these parties, the performance functioned as a site of exchange, of potentially opening doors and minds, of fostering a sense of recognition. The fact that this topic and members of the Moluccan community were given a public platform to perform and share a part of their history – and present – for a wider audience was significant. It was a contribution to a renegotiation of power structures, of previously established hierarchies by means of attention for this topic in the festival program, and by means of having community members involved in the creation and performance of the piece. As a consequence, other members of the community came to visit the performance during the festival. This type of exchange has been theorized by literature and linguistics scholar Mary Louise Pratt as contact zone, a notion that anthropologist James Clifford applied to museums.⁸⁰ The notion of contact zone particularly emphasizes a dy-

 Festival diary Jacob, 21.09. 2013.  James Clifford, Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 188 – 219.

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namic and contextual notion of the museum, but which also applies to other types of cultural institutions. The concept relates especially to cultural institutions in which postcolonial encounters take place. Encounters during which those in power (cultural producers) sit at the table with representatives from formerly colonial contexts – who get a voice in how objects, rituals, and narratives from their communities should be displayed and represented in cultural contexts like museums. Particularly, this involves regarding such objects, rituals, and narratives not primarily as art (a western point of view dominant in cultural institutions), but primarily as, for instance, forms of history, documentary record, or law (an indigenous point of view on original function and use).⁸¹ The notion of contact zone is applicable to sites of cultural production and representation in general, including a festival like Musica Sacra Maastricht. At this festival, the notions of the other and the unknown are a crucial part of the production process and how visitors experience the festival. Contact does not only take place between producers and those who are subject of a performance, but also between performers and visitors. The fostering of alternative takes on objects, rituals, narratives, or indeed sound and music, encourage visitors to experience and value performances in other terms than those related to artistic practices that are familiar to them. While Cunera did not share Cees’ appreciation for Ketujan, she did appreciate the performance of P’ansori music during the 2013 festival (described in Chapter 6). Within this traditional Korean folk music, some compositions are dedicated to Christian and biblical stories. The performance during the festival focused on this part of the tradition. About this, Cunera said: ‘I really liked that, it was real folk art. (…) I thought it was very charming. And I did not realize that Christianity was so [present] there. I thought that was quite great. You realize how small and European your frame of reference is.’⁸² While the use of the terms folk art and charming indicate the known, artistic frame of reference that was familiar to her, at the same time the realization of a lack of knowledge about this part of the world fostered an open mind and curiosity – leading to an appreciation of the performance. The different responses the above quoted visitors demonstrated to performances of non-western expressions, reinforce how there are different levels on which such performances can be experienced. As Clifford formulated it, ‘When a community displays itself through spectacular collections and ceremonies, it consti-

 Idem, 191.  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “[D]at vond ik heel erg leuk, dat vond ik echte volkskunst. (…) [I]k vond het wel charmant. En ik realiseerde me niet dat het christendom daar zo [aanwezig is]. Dat vond ik toch wel fantastisch. Dan merk je hoe eng Europees je denkt.”

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tutes an “inside” and an “outside.” The message of identity is directed differently to members and to outsiders – the former invited to share in the symbolic wealth, the latter maintained as onlookers, or partially integrated where connoisseurs or tourists.’⁸³ The notion of contact zone, fostering alternative points of view beyond dominant cultural or artistic ones, also resonated in how performances of religious ritual were approached. Former pastor of the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek Alfons Kurris would lead the Sunday services to which the festival contributed musical performances. Kurris was always welcoming towards housing cultural productions in his church, but was simultaneously weary of the effect of staging artistic performances in a sacred site. For him there were clear distinctions between different levels of ritual performance, with liturgy as the highest level. In discussing the annual theme of 2011, Rites and Rituals, with the program committee, he stated, ‘I always object against too much ritual, which leads us into the aesthetic viewer mode. (…) [In turn leading people to] applaud in the church.’⁸⁴ During liturgy there was no place for applause. When this happened after the performance of ritual as an event like a festival performance, applause can be regarded a sign of degradation of the original ritual content. To Kurris the ritual form was deprived of its liturgical content and significance, when used for purposes of entertainment (which he felt artistic performance to be). This topic recurred in the proposal for a program consisting of liturgical rituals as an hour-long festival performance. During that performance, ritual practices would be staged for an audience that not necessarily consisted of congregation members. In the discussions about this proposal, Kurris cautioned for the othering or exoticizing of religious ritual as performance. He was very strict on this matter. ‘Obviously you should not take something that is ultimately holy to people and degrade it to a show. I have major problems with that.’⁸⁵ In addition to using a space that was sacred to its congregations, performing religious rituals outside of the scope of their liturgical function also raised questions. Kurris eventually agreed to it, but only when the procedure would be taken with utmost earnestness and the rituals would not be performed as theater. Rather than being recreated for the purpose of entertainment, the rituals were to maintain their character of constituting the liturgical reality.

 Clifford, Routes, 218.  Meeting program committee, 16.12. 2012. FK: “Ik heb altijd iets tegen te veel ritueel, dat we dan weer in die esthetische kijksfeer terecht komen. (…) [waardoor mensen], die beginnen dan te applaudisseren.”  Meeting program committee, 16.12. 2012. “Je moet natuurlijk niet iets wat voor mensen het meest heilig is, tot een show degraderen. Daar heb ik het grote probleem mee.”

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During conversations about the balance between liturgy, ritual, and performance, the committee president objected to the assumed role of the festival in the presumed degradation of the rituals. Giesen stated that what Kurris described was never the intended effect of programming performances of ritual in the church buildings. With intentions of reflection and introspection, the committee wanted to refrain from effects of mere aesthetic pleasure and entertainment. He stated, ‘These thoughts (…) have nothing to do with us,’ to which Kurris replied, ‘Well, you cause them.’ The response of the committee president was very decisive. ‘No, we establish knowledge transfer.’⁸⁶ Of course, this intention does not prevent the fine line on which the festival balances when being present in the church buildings. During the festival, the differences between ritual and entertainment were small. Performances that balanced on this fine line may appear differently to visitors who were and were not acquainted with liturgical codes of conduct and their meanings. In the context of the festival it was not always possible to anticipate how the audience would relate to these performances.⁸⁷ The worries expressed by Kurris reflect a similar tendency that is often expressed when it comes to representations of minority or indigenous cultures in postcolonial contexts. It reflects an, often justified, fear of exoticizing and of disrespect for original significance and meaning, when the lens of western perceptions of art and spectacle is applied. In secularizing societies, to a certain extent religion has become the other. In contemporary Dutch society Christianity has become imbued with a sense of curiosity. Representatives of religious institutions experience this as such and feel the need to safeguard their boundaries. At the same time, engagement with cultural production and artistic practices allows for a platform to be heard and seen, to voice and be voiced, and crucially, as has been argued in the previous chapter, for the continuity of tradition in changing contexts – albeit in conversation with transforming or new sacralized forms, such as art.

 Idem. JG: “Maar die gedachten, daar staan wij buiten.” FK: “Nou je veroorzaakt ze.” JG: “Nee, wij doen aan kennisoverdracht.”  See also the comparative analysis of the festival performances by Buddhist ensemble Kashôken and the Schola Maastricht performance of the Sacrum Triduum Paschale in Chapter 5.

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5.5 Discourses that Set Apart This chapter on various forms of differentiation and othering, is concluded by means of several observations on discursive practices performed by committee members, performers, and audience members in relation to the ordinary and the non-ordinary. Their discourse was primarily structured by means of negative differentiation.⁸⁸ By expressing what one is not, one tries to grasp more clearly what one is. The committee members clearly stated that they felt to be ‘the last of the Mohicans.’ They framed the festival as the only thoroughly thematic festival in The Netherlands, with its focus on the sacred and the annual theme at the heart of their programming. By means of these types of statements, the committee distanced the festival from other Dutch arts festivals. The audience members used a similar strategy, particularly in describing their musical experiences. In order to make these experiences tangible, they used binary opposites and tended to rather point at what the experience was definitely not in order to make clear what it then might have been like. It also occurred in their descriptions of how they experienced their festival visit as a whole. One audience member described it as, ‘feeling very privileged to be able to be part of this small group.’By means of the word privilege, she acknowledged the existence of a larger group that was not part of the festival and had no idea of what was going on there. The performers also subscribed to this strategy. They all cared for their musical integrity by taking responsibility for their compositions and the pieces they performed. By relating to others within their musical tradition, or to other musical traditions (for instance, a statement like “contemporary music is usually so complex and difficult to listen to,” or “the oratorio is such a hermetic format”), the performers tried to clarify their own positions and approaches. By using a strategy of negative differentiation, the groups created a distinction between the festival and the world beyond the festival. They maintained a sense of importance and privilege regarding what happened during the festival, which the world at large should acknowledge, yet failed to do so. The fact that the majority of people was not partaking in the festival, intensified the experience of those who were present and their identification with this in-group. It could be stated the three groups operated within their own perceived frames of counter-culture (cf. Demerath, see Chapter 3). This reflects the two theoretical approaches to the sacred in music as presented in the Introduction. In his study

 As referred to by Daniel Chandler in explaining Saussure’s emphasis on the negative character of distinction between signs. Daniel Chandler, Semiotics. The Basics (London: Routledge, 2007 [2002]), 21.

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on the sacred and the profane in popular music, Partridge argued for the fundamentally transgressive nature of pop music. To him it embodied the impure (taboo) sacred, having the power to influence and challenge music, and the ideas connected to it, embodying the pure (celebrated) sacred. Partridge attributed the subversive nature, ascribed by Adorno to the contemporary classical music of his time, to alternative popular music styles. In Arnold’s study of the value of sacred music for secularized societies, he focused on music belonging to the genre of sacred music. In referring to statements of composer James MacMillan (1959), Arnold addressed the question whether or not sacred music constituted a counter-cultural phenomenon.⁸⁹ In MacMillan’s opinion, composers and performers of sacred music have to compete and fight for its legitimacy in a secularizing world dominated by popular entertainment. However, to him, being involved in this struggle leads to a more vital and innovative religious music scene. If its acceptance and social role is not self-evident, its proponents have to work harder to make its relevance clear and battle preconceptions. In both the discursive practices at the festival as well as those of these scholars, the notion of counter-culture is manifest. It is rooted in the idea that mainstream society produces ordinary culture, while the non-mainstream forces (respectively the festival, alternative popular music, and sacred music) produce counter-culture. Partridge described this dynamic accurately by referring to how folk movements embody a romantic yearning for days gone. Notions of the authentic/ sacred are established through a set of binaries that enable the identification of an inauthentic other: Paganism and monotheism; modernity and premodernity; rural and urban; nature and technology. It is this discourse of difference that identifies modernity in terms of cultural regression rather than progression and insists that the key to vibrant, authentic contemporary well-being is the resurgence of the premodern. If we dig deep enough we will discover the bedrock of reality – authenticity, the sacred.⁹⁰

Committee members, performers, and audience members considered themselves and their activities as countering the mainstream. Yet if many people experience their practices and underlying motivations in this manner, what evidence exists that there is actually such a thing as a mainstream? Or perhaps the answer to that question does not really matter, as it is more important to think it exists, to experience its presence. The idea of a mainstream that can be countered allows for the perception of being capable to distinguish oneself from it, and this might be more than sufficient.

 Jonathan Arnold, Sacred Music in Secular Society (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 115 – 118.  Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus, 133.

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Take the festival committee. The committee members argued they produced the only festival that programmed particular activities, thereby differentiating themselves from other Dutch festivals like Holland Festival or Utrecht Early Music Festival. However, people involved in these two festivals might argue exactly the same: with their activities, they take a unique (and thus important) position in the Dutch festival scene. Who then constitutes the mainstream? Perhaps it makes more sense to argue that this dynamic of distinction and differentiation, of feeling set-apart, is a perception, actively constructed through discourse. It is an interpretative construction employed by those placing importance on the significance of their cultural activities. The perception of a dynamic of distinction was crucial, in the words of artist Marcel Duchamp: ‘great art can only come out of conditions of resistance.’⁹¹ In resistance the relation to a counterpart is required. A perception of counter-culture operated predominantly at the music production level: in the case of Musica Sacra Maastricht at the level of the program committee and that of the performers. On the level of the audience members, it worked slightly different. For them a visit to a concert was distinctly different from the activities they designated as being part of daily life. The experienced difference between that which is mainstream and that which is not, was crucial in the experience of the music. The distinction between visiting a musical performance and living everyday life led to an acknowledgement of the difference between the ordinary and non-ordinary. The non-ordinary had to occur in a confined space, place, and time, because it cannot have a continuous character.⁹² This does not mean that experiences of set-apart nature had no impact on daily routines. On the contrary, I would argue, such experiences provided value and significance to how people go on the experience their daily lives afterward. There is no fixed catalogue as to what is non-ordinary and what is ordinary. Rather, the construction of the sacred is concerned with how people operate with this distinction in mind: how the festival was capable of endowing people with opportunities to encounter what they felt to be non-ordinary, which they then in turn related to their own perceptions of the ordinary. The festival allowed and enabled its visitors to perform this relationship between the non-ordinary and the ordinary, in turn possibly resulting in valuations of the sacred. This echoes Small’s conviction that through the activity of musicking, participants in musical

 Quoted in Henry J. Seldis, “Gamesmanship of Art and Life – Marchel Duchamp Style,” Los Angeles Times, 13.10.1963, 15.  Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus, 102.

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performances not only experience the world as it is, but even more so as they wish it to be. This language is of a more prosaic character than calling it the realization between the ordinary and the non-ordinary, but it boils down to a similar point. Music is not only, as the much-quoted one-liner goes, a way of knowing the world. It extends beyond that. It is also a way of imagining and sometimes even transforming the world. The dynamic between knowing, imagining, and transforming is based on a similar reflexive relationship as that between the non-ordinary and the ordinary realized through musical performance: ‘It does not matter whether this realization was factual or just a perception, what matters is the transformation it created in the minds of many.’⁹³ Partridge referenced this quote in regard to the influence of a film on the folk music scene, but it seems equally applicable to characterize the described dynamic here. It denotes a fundamental notion in the performance of music, and arts in general. In the end it might not matter whether music has the factual power to change the real into the imagined ideal. By offering opportunities for reflection, discovery, and exchange, the performance of music allows for the realization of a relationship between the imagined and the real, the non-ordinary and the ordinary. In the next chapter this realization is further explored through the theoretical lens of ritual.

 Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus, 149.

6 Curse of the Fire Dance: Ritual and Performance Theater aan het Vrijthof, Sunday September 9, 2012. Between 18:00 – 19:00, pianist Severin von Eckardstein performs a concert of Andre Jolivet’s Danses Rituelles (1938 – 39). Each of the five dances are alternated with other pieces: Alexander Skrjabin’s Sonate nr.7 opus 64 ‘Messe blanche’ (1911), Frederico Mompou’s Charmes (1920), Richard Wagner’s Karfreitagszauber from Parsifal (1865/ 1877– 1882), and Claude Debussy’s Et La Lune descend sur le Temple qui fut (Images II nr.2, 1906). Jolivet composed the dances to give expression to the ritual nature of life through music. Each dance is linked to a major life cycle event: birth, puberty, war and masculinity, love, and marriage. As described in the festival brochure, Jolivet thought the ritual dances could be related to every human society. However, he particularly had ‘so-called “primitive societies” in mind, in which the human mind is not yet corrupted.’¹ This sentiment reflected the anthropological state of affairs in religious and ritual studies in the first half of the twentieth century (cf. Durkheim). It also resonated in the introduction of the brochure in which the inherent ritual quality of music was reinforced with reference to ritual musical practices of Australian Aboriginals, one of the world’s eldest known cultures. Jolivet and the other composers in the program are described as ‘still aware of the ritual power of music,’² the reason why their work was combined in one concert program. The structure of the program reflected a ritual take on musical programming as well: in the alternation of pieces, Jolivet’s dances provided the structural backbone. As such, the program echoed the nature of the life cycle to which the dances refer – a ritual structure conceived by the festival program committee. While the concert was supposed to take place in the Sint Janskerk, due to practical reasons it was replaced to the Theater aan het Vrijthof. In the Protestant Janskerk, the historical church building would have allowed for an intimate setting. Rather in the large theater hall, Von Eckardstein played solo on the main stage, with a large share of empty seats (as the ticket sales anticipated a smaller number of seats at the Janskerk). In addition to the impact of this change of location, there was also a musical impact on the conception of the program. As encore, Von Eckardstein played Manuel De Falla’s Danse Rituelle du Feu (c. 1921). This encore formed a stark contrast, it had a different atmosphere from

 Paul Janssen. Concert brochure (2012), 2.  Ibid. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-007

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the previous pieces. The discussion about this performance, and particularly the encore, during the festival evaluation by the program committee showed the various considerations in creating – and evaluating – the concert program. SB: The encore should have been eliminated. I thought the encore was horrific. That should not have been allowed after Jolivet. It should just not have been allowed. This is the only criticism I can give. FJ: That was arranged by [SLB], you know. JG: Yes, it was. SLB: I have sent all of you his program proposal. FJ: That is no excuse. SLB: Well, [the performer] felt that Jolivet was too diminuendo. JL: That is exactly what I liked. SLB: And it is. But [the performer] wanted to finish with more bravura. The encore is a gift for the audience (…). SB: But still, it did not fit. SLB: It was a ritual fire dance. SB: But still, you made a considerate outline for the program, which you then kind of undermine yourself. But other people thought it was fantastic of course. I thought it was a shame that the entire outline and the balance of the five parts was destroyed. (…) JL: It is the afterthought during which we leave the church while dancing. (…) He needs to end with a firework of virtuosity, superficial virtuosity, while before he took us all in with so much more intense virtuosity. (…) JG: I have another and bigger objection. All five pieces should have been played consecutively. I think this was wrongly programmed. I would have wanted to hear all five consecutively and not diffused like this, alternated with others. SLB: It was structurally divided. JG: That doesn’t matter. SLB: Well, it is very simple. [The performer] did not want to play all five consecutively.³

 Meeting program committee, 10.09. 2012. SB: “De bis moest er gewoon uit. Ik vond hem verschrikkelijk de bis. Dat had niet gemogen na Jolivet. Dat had gewoon niet gemogen. Dat is de enige kritiek die ik kan geven.” FD: “Die was wel ingefluisterd door Sylvester hoor.” JG: “Jawel.” SLB: “Ik heb zijn voorstel ook aan jullie gestuurd.” FD: “Dat is geen excuus.” SLB: “Ja met Jolivet vond hij dat het zo diminuendo was.” JL: “Dat vond ik juist zo mooi.” SLB: “Dat is ook zo. Maar hij wilde juist met meer bravoure eindigen. De toegift is een cadeau voor het publiek (..).” SB: “Maar toch, het paste niet.” SLB: “Het was een rituele vuurdans.” SB: “Maar toch, je hebt een hele opbouw gemaakt, van je programma, dat je eigenlijk zelf

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The audience was highly appreciative of the festive encore, demonstrated by the applause and apparent in later conversations. In contrast, the committee members largely disagreed with the choice for the encore, which had been arranged between the programmer and the performer beforehand. As the discussion above demonstrates, the programmer felt caught in between the intentions of the committee for the annual festival theme (Rites and Rituals) and the wishes of the performer. These wishes constituted to not play all five ritual dances in a row and to include a virtuous encore to the concert. The carefully composed program was meant to evoke a sense of reflection, to express a sense of ritual. Several committee members felt this was disrupted by the encore, which was regarded as too frivolous and virtuous. Although the fire dance can be considered as a ritual as well, it did not match the ritual character already established by the rest of the program. Musically, the programmer agreed that a more suitable encore could have been selected in relation to the program. It shows from the discussion, in which he reasoned from the perspective of the audience and the performer – not from the musical content. He argued the encore should be regarded as a gift from the performer to the audience. From this perspective, it is not a part of the program, but an extra, something outside the ritual structure of the concert. Interestingly, this disagreement about the encore also resonated in the recording of the performance. All concert recordings during the festival were temporarily made available online at the Concerthuis website of Radio 4. While the entire piano recital was recorded and broadcasted, the eventual playlist at the website did not include the encore and the final applause.⁴

6.1 The Lens of Ritual In 2012 the annual festival theme was Rites and Rituals. The theme was not only incorporated in the choice of musical compositions for their ritual qualities, but een klein beetje onderuit haalt. Maar andere mensen vonden dat weer fantastisch natuurlijk. Ik vond het jammer dat het heel die opbouw, en die verspreiding van die vijf delen teniet werd gedaan.” JL: “Het is het naspel waarbij we de kerk uit hopsen (..) Hij moet eindigen met een vuurwerk van virtuositeit, oppervlakkige virtuositeit, terwijl hij ons voor die tijd in zoveel intensere virtuositeit heeft meegenomen. (…)” JG: “Maar ik heb een ander en veel groter bezwaar. Dat ze alle vijf achter mekaar hadden gemoeten. Ik vind dit absoluut fout geprogrammeerd. Ik wil die vijf achter mekaar horen, en niet zo gespreid met iedere keer een ander ertussen.” SLB: “Het was gestructureerd verspreid he.” JG: “Ja dat maakt niets uit.” SLB: “Ja het is heel simpel, hij wilde ze niet alle vijf achter elkaar spelen.”  The Concerthuis website is no longer in the air. Unfortunately, the recording of this performance is no longer available online.

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it also reinforced how the festival as a whole and the individual performances have ritual characteristics. The committee’s approach to ritual was formulated with a focus on its experiential dimensions: ‘Ritual not only marks important moments in our life, but also transcends it. The idea that ritual moves me beyond myself, relates me to something more than myself, is most important. The transcendental aspect is what we are looking for.’⁵ However, while the effect of ritual was regarded as evocative and described in rather romantic terms, when it came to a ritual musical structure (or a composer who employed a “ritualistic mindset”), it referred to music undone from all evocation and romanticism. The music programmer described this as a heritage of the Sacre du Printemps. To him this was music ‘without personal feelings, anti-romantic, strict, often in a very clear archaic structure. (…) It is a particular character, rather than that it has a function.’⁶ This character particularly came to the fore when a piece of music was performed well. During the performance of Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic (2008), which was intended as a contemporary ritual, the instrumentalists tuned their instruments after every section in the composition. The music programmer regarded this as a breach with the ritual character of the piece, because the various parts should have been performed as one whole, without too much interference. The human presence – the tuning instrumentalists – was seen to disrupt the rituality of the piece. The festival committee also related the notion of ritual directly to the notion of liturgy. Music composed for a mass was per definition seen as music for a ritual context.⁷ Sometimes, the music was regarded as demanding a ritual context to become more substantial. In this argument, the committee discerned between performing music as a concert and performing it as a ritual.⁸ The intersection of concert and ritual performance produced a fine line between the notions of entertainment and ritual.

 Meeting program committee, 05.04. 2012. JL: “Het ritueel dat belangrijke momenten in ons leven niet alleen markeert, maar ook transcendeert. Maar het idee dat ritueel (…) mij uit mezelf brengt, in verbinding brengt met meer dan mezelf, is het belangrijkste. Het transcenderende aspect proberen we te zoeken.”  Interview with SLB, 14.05. 2012.”Het zit in de nasleep van de Sacre du Printemps, zonder persoonlijk gevoel, anti romantisch, strak, vaak ook in zeer duidelijke archaïsche structuur. (…) Het is een soort karakter, eerder dan dat het een functie heeft.”  Meeting program committee, 08.02. 2012. SLB: “It is a mass he composed for himself, which has been performed annually after his death. So in that sense it is a ritual.” JL: “A mass is per definition a ritual.”  Meeting program committee, 23.04. 2012. JG: “But that music is so simple, it only functions in the liturgy. It can’t be done as a concert.” SLB: “Then it would lose its ritual character completely.”

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This chapter regards the festival practices through the theoretical lens of rit⁹ ual. Ritual sheds light on the motivations of why people attribute value to a particular idea, person, or object, and how they shape this attribution. Motivation and form, as demonstrated by the example of the ritual and fire dance, go hand in hand. Objects, persons, ideas attributed with a sense of ultimate value receive a special status, are set-apart from the ordinary domain, and are protected from negative influences or contamination from the outside. In contemporary culture, art has such a special status, taking place in set-apart contexts, protected from violation and disturbance. This set-apartness from routine, the everyday, common hierarchies, and to some extent financial value, is generally described by means of the notion of liminality. Defined as “in betwixt and between,”¹⁰ liminality is a zone that is separate from the usual social order one belongs to, where norms and values are suspended, reversed, or fundamentally different, and which potentially impacts one’s personality and position once returned to the regular order. Art’s set-apart status, embodying a liminal zone, does not automatically imply that every individual regards every work of art as sacred. Such a valuation eventually depends on the discursive framework in which the art is presented and the framework from which people relate to artworks, as well as the perceived experience of the work and the consequential attributed meanings. Individuals construct and perform their own perceptions of the sacred. These perceptions can be regarded as improvisations. At the same time, these perceptions occur within social and institutional discourses. Improvisations take place within larger contexts, characterized by philosopher Judith Butler as scenes of constraints.¹¹ These scenes consist of expectations, conventions, and implications. To be able to improvise, one needs to relate to this context. A broad approach to the notion of the sacred as departure point, allows for the study of such improvisations at Musica Sacra Maastricht – including how these relate to their scenes of constraint. From a theoretical perspective, nothing is inherently or intrinsically sacred, although attributions of inherent sacrality can take place. Many scholars, especially in the wake of the Durkheimian tradition, concur a strong relation between the sacred and ritual. Durkheim indicated throughout his Elementary Forms that anything may become sacred through ritual practices,  Logan Sparks and Paul Post, eds., The Study of Culture through the Lens of Ritual. Netherlands Studies in Ritual and Liturgy 15 (Groningen and Amsterdam: IRILIS, 2015).  Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 232.  Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York & London: Routledge, 2004), 1.

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while that which is sacred needs protection from contamination, also through ritual practices.¹² Rappaport, who saw the sacred as a property of discourse, maintained that Ultimate Sacred Postulates not in the least receive their status of sanctity through participation in ritual. He regarded the sacred as a product of ritual, during which the discursive property of the sacred is evoked or affirmed.¹³ Seeing the sacred as a form of communication, Gordon Lynch stated that, ‘Sacred rituals are not necessarily formal or traditional rituals, but actions that draw us into contact with sacred realities.’¹⁴ Such actions emerge during the festival and musical performances, which this chapter explores for the ritual formats and qualities. Ritual is of relevance in understanding meaning-making practices, in connecting perceptions of the non-ordinary and the ordinary. Yet, whether these practices function in terms of the sacred is dependent on those performing them. It is not my aim to classify musical performance as ritual, to apply theoretical frameworks concerning ritual as a one-on-one template on musical performance. Rather, ritual is regarded as a tool to analyze the manners in which people perceive the festival and/ or performances and attribute value, like the example of the encore above demonstrates. This chapter explores, first, how to approach and define ritual. Second, several theorizations of the relationship between art and ritual are discussed, followed by a particular focus on the complexities of the presentation and perception of ritual performances as artistic performances. In the final part of this chapter, a definition of festival allows for an exploration of various ritual dimensions of Musica Sacra Maastricht. In all, this chapter has the aim to shed light on the relevance of the concept of ritual for understanding music – and art in general – as potential generators of the sacred.

6.2 Conceptualizing Ritual ‘Defining the term “rituals” is a notoriously problematic task.’¹⁵ These words of scholar in the study of religion Jan Snoek point to the intrinsically complex char-

 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields. (New York: The Free Press, 1995 [1912]), 36 – 38.  Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 311, 286.  Gordon Lynch, On the Sacred (Durham: Acumen, 2012), 32.  Jan A.M. Snoek, “Defining ‘Rituals’”, in Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, ed. Jens Kreinath et.al (Leiden: Brill, 2006): 3 – 14.

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acter of definitions: they are required in order to structure discussions and clarify the topic of discussion. However, they are never all encompassing and can be subject to continuous debate themselves. Catherine Bell, scholar in the study of religion, emphasized the political implications of the use of ritual as a concept. In the vein of philosopher Michel Foucault and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, she maintained that ritual is a category invented by those who research it and its use is always one of strategic character. Originating in the field of anthropology, she saw the study of “the other” as fundamental feature in ritual studies. To conceive of ritual as a panhuman phenomenon rather than simply to point and gawk at the strange activities of another culture must constitute some form of progress. Yet it is also the result of a drawn-out, complex, and intrinsically political process of negotiating cultural differences and similarities. (…) No longer the difference between “our worship” and “their customs,” it became the difference between those who sufficiently transcend culture and history to perceive the universal (and scientific) in contrast to those who remain trapped in cultural and historical particularity and are therein so naturally amenable to being the object of study.¹⁶

Additionally, she observed, ‘The way that European and American scholars generate questions about ritual reflects and promotes basic elements of their cultural worldview. The notion of ritual has become one of the ways in which these cultures experience and understand the world.’¹⁷ Bell’s observations on the other, on generalization, and on worldview are pressing across the humanities and social sciences, in as much as they pertain to larger questions of the position of the researcher, in- and exclusion, and inter-subjectivity. Similar debates are prevalent in the study of practices identified in terms of religion, music, and art. The use of particular terms implies particular worldviews. The danger of normativity in these implications lurks around the corner. Still, conceptual categories are key in gaining a theoretical understanding of a particular field. It is essential to refrain from using substantive definitions that indicate direct one on one relationships between the formulated definition and the object of study. Next, the definitions of ritual presented shed light on some of the different directions the academic study of ritual studies has seen.¹⁸

 Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 259.  Idem, 266.  Overviews of the development of the field can be found in: Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993); Bell, Ritual, 1– 90; Jeppe Sinding Jensen, What is Religion? (Durham: Acumen, 2014), 96 – 100. An attempt at an overview of definitions of ritual can be found in Appendix 1 of

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One of the first definitions of ritual was provided by a leading figure in the field, anthropologist Victor Turner. He designated ritual as ‘formal behavior prescribed for occasions not given over to technological routine that have reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers.’¹⁹ Turner made use of the distinction between beliefs and practices, in which he accorded primary importance to beliefs. Historian of religions Jonathan Z. Smith formulated a definition of ritual independent of religious beliefs. He saw ritual as ‘a means of performing the way things ought to be in such a way that this ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled course of things.’²⁰ In this definition, the term ritual designates a set of practices that refers to an ideal version of the world, acts this version out, and to a certain extent exerts influence on the real world the ritual relates to. Rappaport focused on ritual behaviors and their origins. To him, ritual is ‘the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts or utterances not entirely encoded by the performers.’²¹ The important aspects of ritual lie in the relative invariance in the performance of rituals and their encoded meanings that are primarily a given, not attributed by the performers but ascribed through longstanding traditions.²² Although there are important differences between these three theoretical perspectives, they nevertheless all belong to a Durkheimian trajectory of thinking about ritual and its position in culture. Scholars have increasingly become wary of using definitions for their topics of study. Often, they choose a working or preliminary definition, for the sake of demarcating their topic, while at the same time acknowledging the shortcomings of this definition. In his cognitive approach to religion, anthropologist Pascal Boyer did not propose a theory of religious ritual, but worked with what he called an “intuitive discrimination.”²³ He ‘posit[ed] that human rituals are generally recognized as such by virtue of features that apply to many types of animal displays as well. Stereotype, repetition, and the rigid sequencing of elementary actions are all aspects that make animal

Ronald L. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). This appendix (pp.1– 7) is accessible via http://oxrit.twohornedbull.ca/volumes/craft-of-ritual-studies/.  Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 19.  Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion. From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988 [1982]), 63.  Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 24.  This is in line with Rappaport’s argument about the character of Ultimate Sacred Postulates. See also Chapter 3, section 3.2.3.  Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas (Berkeley: Berkeley University Press, 1994), 185.

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and human ritual structurally similar.’²⁴ As this does not constitute a definition of ritual, such a description identifies several key points to guide the study of ritual behavior. While in his earlier work ritual studies scholar Ronald L. Grimes offered an aptly formulated definition of ritual (‘sequences of ordinary action rendered special by virtue of their condensation, elevation, or stylization’),²⁵ later he stated, ‘We shouldn’t make too much out of definitions, since, standing alone, they don’t constitute theories.’²⁶ Throughout his research on ritual, Grimes worked with key elements of ritual; actions, actors, places, times, objects, languages, and groups. In studying these different aspects of ritual, a more comprehensive understanding of ritual performance can be obtained, which can in turn be analyzed by means of “ritual modes:” ritualization, decorum, ceremony, magic, liturgy, and celebration.²⁷ These modes form a heuristic device to identify and explore different layers of which a ritual might consist. ‘[I]t aims to suggest that a ritual has density or depth, requiring an interpreter to read or dig through it. In doing so, you might find layers of varying thickness (…).’²⁸ It is an approach that is deemed suitable for the study of ritual dimensions in musical performance, as so many participants experience the same performance in so many ways – underlined by the example at the beginning of this chapter. Another approach to sidestep the difficulty of defining ritual was offered by scholar in the study of religion Barry Stephenson, who drew upon Wittgenstein for the use of family resemblance in studying ritual practices. Creating a ‘network of shared characteristics [allows for] (…) delineating what ritual is, (…) because ritual is as much a quality or style of action, rather than a distinct thing.’²⁹ This approach reflects the interdisciplinary nature of ritual studies. Where the use of definitions carries the pitfall of reductionism, the use of the family resemblance approach can be too general and all-inclusive. Yet, its relevance is in the potential to compare and contrast practices within a particular theoretical framework. Stephenson distinguished between the terms ritualization, rite, and ritual. This distinction sheds light on the different levels on which the terminology pertaining to the study of ritual functions on the first, second, and third order levels.

 Ibid.  Ronald L. Grimes, Deeply into the Bone. Re-inventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 70 – 71.  Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 189.  Idem, 203 – 207.  Idem, 205.  Barry Stephenson, Ritual: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 73.

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Formally identifiable rites grow out of the ritualization of everyday life. (…) A formal rite entails a sequence or sequences of actions rendered special within a community or tradition by virtue of their elevation and stylization, generally set off from ordinary behavior by virtue of their being localized in specials places and performed at special times. (…) The notion of ritual is a more general and abstract attempt to identify what particular rites or groups of rites have in common.³⁰

The discussed approaches to ritual (definitions, modes, family resemblance) have their own function within academic research. As the Fire Dance example above demonstrated, ritual functions at various levels within the field – and thus within this research. The notions of ritual modes and of family resemblance allow for an analysis of artistic practices for their ritual dimensions, rather than looking at them strictly as rituals.

6.3 Relating Art and Ritual The relationship between art and ritual, rather than religion, has been the topic of academic scrutiny. Observations from several scholars are shared here, followed by an example from the field – in which art, ritual, and the other elicited varied audience responses. Christopher Small was adamant in his view on the relationship between art and ritual. To him, ritual was “the mother of all the arts,”³¹ all artistic forms owe to ritual and all artistic practices have a rituallike character. For Small, ritual was deeply relational, between individuals and their environment. ‘Ritual is a form of organized behavior (…), to affirm, to explore and to celebrate their ideas of how the relationships of the cosmos (or of a part of it), operate, and thus of how they themselves should relate to it and to one another.’³² As such, artistic practices as performed by humans relate their known world to the temporary world constituted by the artwork. Bell, similarly, emphasized the ritual-like character of all artistic and social performance. ‘[T]he ritual-like nature of performative activities appears to lie in the multifaceted sensory experience, in the framing that creates a sense of condensed totality, and in the ability to shape people’s experience and cognitive ordering of the world.’³³ In sum, ‘performances seem ritual-like because they ex-

 Idem, 75.  Christopher Small, Musicking. The Meanings of Performing and Listening. (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 105.  Idem, 95.  Bell, Ritual, 161.

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plicitly model the world.’³⁴ Both ritual and art shape and translate ideas into actions. These are ideas about the world, and how it should or could be, and occurs mainly through the relationships that are established during the performance. Participants do not only learn about these relationships in theory or as an idealistic summum. Through artistic performance, participants can actually become acquainted with such relationship through embodied experience – through which they can keep, at least the memory, of these experiences with them after the performance is over. According to Small, ritual potential of art was located in exactly this participatory engagement with art. He even went so far as to state: The meaning lies not in the objects themselves but in the viewing of them, and the liningup and viewing are themselves ritual acts with a wealth of social and political meanings. (…) Properly understood, then, all art is performance art, which is to say that it is first and foremost activity. It is the act of art, the act of creating, of exhibiting, of performing, of viewing, of dancing, of wearing, of carrying in procession, of eating, of smelling, or of screening that is important, not the created object.³⁵

While participation, the act, is of undeniable importance, this approach overstates the active engagement with artworks at the cost of work itself. After all, without a particular artwork (an object, composition, or play) there is nothing to engage to in the first place. The engagement is always dependent on, and in relation to, what is offered through the artwork. Small’s formulation is welcome for the focus it places on the fact that the meaning and function of music do not solely rest in the composed sounds but even more so, or predominantly, in its performance. Yet, there are also scholars who are more critical of the impact of artistic performance on its participants. Rappaport maintained a strict distinction between what happens in an artistic or dramatic performance and a ritual performance. Whereas ritual constitutes an order of life, cultural or artistic practices only reflect upon that order (remember Belting’s differentiation between presence and likeness). When an artistic performance or work of any kind is successful, it also makes those attending the performance or visiting the work reflect on the order as presented in the artwork. However, for Rappaport, art and ritual remain in different realms. ‘[E]nactments in themselves are not understood to affect directly the world’s events. They may affect the world but the manner in which they do is essentially different from the ways in which ritual achieves its affects

 Ibid.  Small, Musicking, 107– 108.

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(…).’³⁶ Rappaport maintained a rigid distinction between ritual and art. Ritual is seen as generator of consequences that impact the everyday world post-ritual. Art is regarded as decorative, as temporary, as a world set-apart from the everyday world, which at best makes one think – for a while. I would rather argue for a more equal treatment of art and ritual, by appreciating art for its ritual dimensions. Both have the power to establish reciprocal connections between ordinary and non-ordinary dimensions of human life. Additionally, reflection can be seen as a result from the generative potential of artistic practices. As much as ritual, art can function in strategies people use to make sense of their lives. A similar kind of engagement is required for both types of practices, which is why their interrelationship is more interesting than their separation. During a festival like Musica Sacra Maastricht in which both art and religion have a strong presence, art can not only be appreciated for its ritual dimensions, (religious) ritual is also presented and perceived as art. In the perceptions of ritual as art, familiarity and unfamiliarity play an important role. This is explored next, by means of two examples of ritual performances as festival events.

6.4 Ritual as Artistic Performance During the 2012 festival edition, there were two festival performances of ritual that offer a relevant comparative perspective.³⁷ The first was a program of Roman Catholic rituals traditionally performed as part of the liturgies on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. The local ensemble Schola Maastricht performed a selection of ritual acts and chants.³⁸ While singing, the ensemble entered the church, walking through the nave to the church choir. The singers were dressed in traditional white habits. The ritual acts included the washing of the feet, the veneration of the cross, the lighting of the light, the baptism of the catechumens, and a closing procession during which the Schola walked back down the nave towards the church doors. The ritual acts, taking place on and around the altar, were accompanied by chants. These were best visible for audience sitting in the first rows of pews.

 Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 42– 43.  The comparison between the Kashôken and Schola Maastricht performances was previously published in Lieke Wijnia, “The Ritual Dimensions of Festival Musica Sacra Maastricht,” in The Study of Culture through the Lens of Ritual, eds. Logan Sparks and Paul Post, Netherlands Studies in Ritual and Liturgy 15 (Groningen and Amsterdam: IRILIS, 2015), 136 – 138.  Performance Schola Maastricht, Ritual Elements from the Sacrum Triduum Paschale, 07.09. 2012, Martinuskerk, 22:00 – 23:00.

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After the performance, the applause was hesitant, it began a little while after the singers had stopped singing. Audience members grouped together afterwards. One of the most heard comments was how this performance had brought them back to their childhoods. Another visitor responded to how at one moment all the lights in the church went off, followed by a reentering of the Schola Maastricht with candles in their hands. The visitor was impressed by the theatrical effect and said how such effect could be of use in contemporary theatre. The second performance of interest here, was that of the Japanese ensemble of Buddhist monks called Kashôken. The ensemble performed a ceremony called The Large Sutra of the Transcendental Wisdom, one of the most frequently performed ceremonies within Shingon Buddhism.³⁹ This performance was the first of three performances during three consecutive festival nights. As soon as the thirteen monks entered, each sound they made was part of the performance. The different parts of the ceremony were indicated on flat screens placed on pillars on both sides of the nave. The many small, delicate acts taking place on the central altar close to the ground, were only visible for those sitting in front. In the first part of the ceremony many of these acts constituted the cleansing of the space. The main and longest part of the ceremony consisted of the symbolic reading of six hundred holy books, the sutras. The monks lifted one up in the air, letting the harmonica unfold. During the reading they recited the book title, the name of the translator, the title of the specific part, the first seven lines, the middle five, and the last three of each book. This central part was enlisted by traditional shômyô hymns praising Buddha and other gods. During one of the hymns before the symbolic reading, pieces of colored paper representing Lotus flowers were scattered all over the floor. In addition to the chanting, several sound objects were used, amongst others a conch shell horn.⁴⁰ After the final hymn, the performers walked down the nave towards the church entrance, the doors were closed behind the monks. Members of the audience looked around somewhat puzzled, exchanged looks with neighbors and slowly got up from their seats. People clustered together in small groups and exchanged thoughts about the performance. The most uttered response was in the line of “how very different” the performance had been, that it was hard to find words to describe what they had just seen, and that the ceremony had a meditative character. It was frequently mentioned how this Buddhist ceremony took place in a Protestant church. The paper petals representing  Performance Karyôbinga Shômyô Kenkyûkai (Kashôken), Buddhist Ritual Ceremony I: Dayhannya-tendoku’e, 06.09. 2012, Sint Janskerk, 21:00 – 22:00.  The description of the performance is based on Heinz-Dieter Reese’s contribution to the Concert brochure (2012).

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the lotus flower, used during the ceremony and left behind on the church floor, were all quickly picked up by visitors. In the program booklets for both festival performances, it was communicated clearly that the chants and ritual acts were rooted in religious traditions. Especially the responses afterwards demonstrated that this fact confused visitor response. In a traditional Christian setting, it is not deemed appropriate that ritual is followed by applause; while after concert performances the audience usually demonstrates appreciation for the performers by means of applause. After the performance of Schola Maastricht, the applause was delayed and a little hesitant. Yet, the audience felt comfortable enough to show their appreciation in the end. This contrasted the response after the performance of Kashôken. It was apparent how the audience members did not feel comfortable enough to show their appreciation for the performers, as after some initial moments of confusion, visitors got up from their seats to leave the church. It could be argued that because of the applause, or lack thereof, the performance of Schola Maastricht was interpreted as both ritual and artistic performance, while the performance of Kashôken was primarily regarded as ritual. Through their lack of applause, visitors did not acknowledge the layer of artistic practice in this performance – in contrast to the Schola Maastricht performance. This is also echoed in the festival booklets, in which the performers of Kashôken were described as ‘Buddhist monks,’ while those of Schola Maastricht were described as ‘professional musicians.’ While the Schola Maastricht members are indeed professional performers, the same can be said of the Kashôken members, regardless of their religious affiliation – an affiliation which is left out of consideration when it comes to the Schola performers. This not seeing the Buddhist performance as art, theatre, or show, was by many likely intended as a sign of respect for the spiritual significance of the rituals for their performers. However, the performers experienced this differently. Before the start of the third performance, the festival project leader was told that the ensemble would certainly appreciate applause at the end, as token of gratitude. Not for the artistic or theatrical merit of the performance, but for their presence and the sharing of the ritual with the audience. Before the start of the third performance, the project leader announced to the audience that applause at the end was in order.⁴¹

 Meeting program committee, 10.09. 2012. JL:” We should have applauded. (…)” SB: “Applause is a token of appreciation. It is not about the artistic applause, but about gratitude. (…)” JL: “But it was out of respect. To let the ritual be performed, without regarding it as theatre. That is why we did not applaud.”

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The challenge of seeing the Kashôken performance as artistic performance, is also related to the general unfamiliarity with this type of ritual performance in the context of The Netherlands – in contrast to the performance of the Sacrum Triduum Paschale, which visitors could potentially related to their own life world. This unfamiliarity did not only exist on the visitor level, but also on that of the program committee. The committee advisor who suggested the Shingon performances for Musica Sacra Maastricht addressed the inability of Western ears and eyes to appreciate this type of performance in any artistic sense. ‘I cannot take in the Shingon with my western aesthetic norms.’⁴² For all his musical expertise, the committee advisor had to find another analytical register in order to relate to these performances: a ritual register. The addition of the television screens that announced the consecutive parts of the ritual were seen as very useful for the audience, but also as a way in which the performance was less ritualized and more turned into a show.⁴³ This danger of turning the unfamiliar into a show, was acknowledged by one of the visitors. While Cunera appreciated being confronted with something completely new and unfamiliar during the performances of Kashôken, the vocals quickly became monotonous to her and she experienced the atmosphere during the performance as very unsacred. She experienced it as exotic entertainment, instead of as a sacred ritual. She assumed ‘the performers must have felt this as well.’⁴⁴ This lack of musical depth was also acknowledged by the music critic of the local newspaper. He evaluated the performance as exotic in appearance, but musically not at all appealing.⁴⁵ Notably, the potentially exotic character of the Schola Maastricht performance was not a topic of discussion at all. For instance, the addition of television screens was not a subject of debate in the preparations of the Schola Maastricht performance – this was not an aspect that the program committee felt necessary to discuss, most likely due to their own familiarity with the rituals and the anticipated familiarity of the audience. This familiarity was also found

 Meeting program committee, 1612.2011. JL: “Ik kan de Shingon met mijn westerse esthetische normen bijna niet meer behappen.” Also referenced in Chapter 5, note 65.  Meeting program committee, 14.05. 2012.  Email correspondence with Cunera, 16.10. 2012. “De ‘rituele zang’ is aanvankelijk boeiend, maar het soort geluid van de stemmen gaat mij gauw vervelen (…) Temeer omdat de sfeer van het geheel ongewijd, kermisachtig was. (…) Het [wordt] hier hoofdzakelijk als exotisch vertier, als amusement ervaren en zeker niet als gewijd ritueel. Dit zullen de uitvoerders ook gevoeld hebben.”  “But how exotic the look of it might be, there is not a lot to experience musically.” Maurice Wiche, “Uitersten bij jubileum Musica Sacra,” De Limburger, 10.09. 2012.

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in the visitor response. Elly wrote in response to her visit of the Sacrum Triduum Paschale performance: ‘Magnificent, very recognizable, a true celebration. We felt it was so beautiful that after it was finished, people did not applaud. Everybody left the church in silence. An applause would have tremendously harmed the consecrated atmosphere that had been established.’⁴⁶ While in my fieldnotes, I recorded a hesitant applause after the performance had ended, in Elly’s memory there was no applause at all. She explicitly referenced applause again after her visit of the performance by Schola Maastricht, one year later, in the 2013 festival edition.⁴⁷ I thought that was very beautiful, there on the priest choir. The entourage, it suited well. The clothes as well. I thought that was very beautiful. They were wearing white habits. (…) Only, (…) the applause really harmed the atmosphere I felt. Yes, a particular atmosphere has been created and all of a sudden a burst of applause, which makes sense, but you are really taken like wow. (…) Right away, bam.⁴⁸

For her, the entourage of the architectural surrounding, the mis-en-scene of the singers and the clothes they were wearing, in combination with the singing created an atmosphere of beauty and sacrality. However, the applause immediately pulled back this atmosphere to a earthly, banal level after the singing ended. When asked about the implications of this experience, the distinction between a concert and a religious service came up. [The concert] perhaps takes more the direction of a religious service. Although, a service, a service. It is more religious than a concert, yes. And that is also because of the atmosphere that surrounds it. And then there is the whole entourage of course. And it is a beautiful building of course. (…) The Schola just sings really well.⁴⁹

 E-mail correspondence with Elly, 25.09. 2012. “Schitterend, heel herkenbaar, echt een viering. Wat wij zo mooi vonden was dat er na afloop niet werd geapplaudisseerd, maar dat iedereen in stilte de kerk verliet. Een applaus had enorm afbreuk gedaan aan de gewijde sfeer die er was.”  The performance by Schola Maastricht was titled Vita Sancti Amandi and took place on 20.09. 2013 in the Sint-Pieter Boven, between 22:00 – 23:00.  Interview with Elly, 04.10. 2013. “Dat vond ik dus heel mooi, daar op dat priesterkoor. Qua entourage, dat paste gewoon. Qua kleding ook. Ja dat vond ik gewoon heel mooi. Ze hadden een wit habijt aan. Alleen (…) het applaus deed voor mij echt afbreuk aan de sfeer. Ja je hebt dan toch een bepaalde sfeer en dan barst ineens zo’n applaus los, wat heel begrijpelijk is, maar dan word je echt met zo’n woow. (…) Het was nu meteen bam.”  Idem. “Jaaa, dat gaat misschien wel meer naar een dienst toe. Ja dienst, dienst. (…) Het is religieuzer als een concert ja. Ja die sfeer hangt er dan ook omheen he. En dat is natuurlijk dan ook door de hele entourage al zo. En het is natuurlijk een mooie kerk (…) en de schola zingt gewoon heel goed.”

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The sense of the sacred, which for Elly in equated a sense of religious atmosphere, consisted of the elements of beauty, context, and the produced sounds. With these means a temporary non-ordinary world was created in which she preferred to reside as long as possible. After the music had finished, she would have preferred to carry this sense of being overwhelmed with her for a while. However, the applause caused an abrupt breach and this intention became redundant. Other research participants, in response to other performances they visited, also expressed this desire of holding on to the music after it finished. Visitor Vivienne referred to the 2013 festival’s opening concert of Tavener’s The Repentant Thief (1990), in which she greatly enjoyed the performance of the clarinet soloist Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer. Afterwards she mentioned in her festival diary how sorry she was this concert was followed by a speech of a festival official. She had wanted to maintain the feeling that the music aroused in her. ‘I also have that with books, at the end there are often a few blank pages. I always really appreciate that.’⁵⁰ Visitor Han demonstrated this feeling after his visit to, what he would later call “the highlight of the festival.” He wrote: ‘All in all a GREAT concert. (…) After the concert I felt I should skip the last concert to be able to hang on to this experience as long as possible.’⁵¹ Such visitor response underlines how, albeit temporarily, performances offer embodied experiences that visitors cherish and would like to hold on to as long as possible after leaving the performance context – but also how of fleeting nature and easily disturbed these embodied experiences can be, despite their intensity during the experience of the performance itself.

6.5 Festival: A Ritual Form While the two types of ritual performances discussed above are regarded in their capacity as individual performances, the festival as a whole is also a ritual form in itself. In all its intangibility, a festival has not a physical, but rather a virtual presence. It is not a thing that can be pinpointed, but a phenomenon to be experienced and shared amongst its participants. The word festival is derived from the Medieval Latin festivalis, the meaning of which is of a church holiday. In Old French it was used to describe something suitable for a feast, solemn, magnifi Interview with Vivienne, 21.10. 2013. “Ik heb dat ook met een leesboek, daar zijn op het eind altijd een paar witte pagina’s. Dat vind ik altijd heel fijn.”  Festival diary Han, 24.09. 2013. “Voor mij het hoogtepunt van het festival. (…) Al met al een GEWELDIG concert. (…) Na het concert had ik het gevoel dat ik het laatste concert moest laten schieten om de ervaring zo lang mogelijk vast te kunnen houden.”

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cent, joyful, happy. ⁵² In early times, the notions of feast and festive were directly linked to liturgical calendars. With the rise of nation states in the nineteenth century, the festive was increasingly incorporated in the newly invented traditions and accorded civil rituals to give meaning and legitimacy to new forms of government.⁵³ The notion and practice of the festive remained related to institutional religion, but also spread to other social and cultural domains. While it is practically impossible to pinpoint the festival, Musica Sacra Maastricht offered a platform to which many can related. The most tangible manifestation of the festival, and of its identity, was the annual program booklet. This presented the parameters in which the festival takes place. Furthermore, the concept of festival took shape through the notion of space. The space constituting the festival consisted of two aspects; physical concert locations (places) with their cultural and historic meanings, and temporary affective spheres (spaces) created by means of artistic performances in specific architectural surroundings. The concert locations were carefully selected, primarily in relation to the acoustics, and their location in the city. Although the types of buildings varied, all had cultural-historic significance. The concert locations were divided in two types, those linked to institutional religion (churches, convents, chapels) and those with a different cultural-historic significance, such as a factory hall turned into cultural space, the theatre, and the city hall. The character of a festival space contributed to the experience of the performed music. Music has the ability to generate affective spaces not only through the performed sounds but also by means of how these sounds are related to the place in which they are performed. Affective spaces consist on the one hand of the formal qualities of the performed music and on the other hand of the impact this music has on those participating in it, impact in terms of evocation of memories, emotions, and association. Affective space relates to both the internal and social worlds of the listener.⁵⁴ Music and the space in which it is performed simultaneously influence each other and imbue each other with meaning. Although continuously transforming in context, over time the festival practice retained its social significance. Ritual studies scholar Paul Post captured different elements of festive practices in this definition of feast.

 Online etymology dictionary, entry “festival.” https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=fes tival.  Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).  Christopher Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus. Popular Music, The Sacred, & The Profane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 37– 38.

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A feast is a moment or occasion on which people within the temporal order and at various stages in their lives, either individually or as a group or as a society, go beyond everyday life and in the form of a ritual give expression to events that mark the personal and social existence by means of a believing, religious or worldview orientation on meaning.⁵⁵

This definition offers a lens through which ritual modes of Musical Sacra Maastricht can be explored. The modes constituting this lens are 1) a situation of contrast, 2) performance of particular behavior, 3) a dynamic between individual and collective identities, and 4) a reason why the festival takes place, a reason that brings participants together.⁵⁶ These four modes are discussed below and related to the Maastricht festival.

6.5.1 A Situation of Contrast During a feast or festival, the known routine and timeframe of everyday life is left behind and a new temporal order is entered. Also, the festival itself only lasts a certain amount of time. If it would continuously last, its set-apart – and festive – character would be lost. Instead a festival flourishes by means of its contrast to the known and usual.⁵⁷ Despite this fundamental character of contrast, everyday life is not completely left behind. During a festival, a temporary world structured by its own particular rules, an encounter emerges between the known of the everyday and the different and unexpected dimensions of the festival. As Post put it, ‘Feast is not just a reference to other dimensions and times, but this other time is brought into the present in ritual, made present in the ritual performance.’⁵⁸ In turn, its participants often use the festival or particular elements within it to position and manifest their own identities. If music is a way of knowing the world,

 Paul Post, “Liturgische Beweging en Feestcultuur. Een Landelijk Onderzoeksprogramma,” Jaarboek voor Liturgie-Onderzoek 12 (1996), 35. See also: André Droogers, “Feasts: A View from Cultural Anthropology,” in Christian Feast and Festival. The Dynamics of Western Liturgy and Culture, eds. Paul Post and others (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 87.  Paul Post, “Introduction and Application: Feast as a Key Concept in Liturgical Studies Research Design” in Christian Feast and Festival. The Dynamics of Western Liturgy and Culture, eds. Paul Post and others (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 72– 76.  Alessandro Testa, Rituality and Social (Dis)Order. The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe (London: Routledge, 2020).  Paul Post, “Introduction and Application: Feast as a Key Concept in a Liturgical Studies Research Design,” in Christian Feast and Festival. The Dynamics of Western Liturgy and Culture, eds. Paul Post and others (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 68.

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this world cannot possibly be left completely behind during a festival that is dedicated to music. The notion of contrast is grounded in the relationship between the world in which the ritual is performed and the world that is realized through the ritual. To what extent is ritual incorporated in daily life and to what extent does it create a world apart, a breach from the continuity of everyday life? Ideals and dreams, experienced through a connection with the non-ordinary or unknown, may have an effect on how the reality of everyday life is perceived. Performance studies scholar Richard Schechner emphasized the difference between these two realms as embodied by ritual and by everyday life. Ritual leads people ‘into a “second reality,” separate from ordinary life. This reality is one where people can become selves other than their daily selves. (..) [R]itual and play transform people, either permanently or temporarily.’⁵⁹Anthropologist Clifford Geertz furthermore reiterated how, ‘in a ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined, fused under the agency of a single set of symbolic forms, turn out to be the same world (…).’⁶⁰ In a description of ritual, Schechner alluded to a song of singer-songwriter duo Simon and Garfunkel, ‘Human rituals are bridges across life’s troubled waters.’⁶¹ Water is a suitable metaphor. When water is clear, the bottom of a stream, river, or ocean is visible. The ways of the water are transparent for those around it. When water is unclear or troubled, it is impossible to see what is at the bottom and where the current is heading. A way to deal with this opaqueness is needed, but will never have the desired practical result – as opaque water cannot easily be transformed into clear water. This results in symbolic acts, which at the very least create a feeling that the unknown, unexpected or unclear can be dealt with. Opaqueness can take the form of conflict, inequality or loss. It can also take the shape of the unknown, the fascinating or the untouchable. These notions and ideas echo reasons why and how people try to find ways to get a grasp on the everlasting and most often unexpected continuity of life. Jeppe Sinding Jensen emphasized this connection by means of scrutinizing how rituals are construed and which components they exist of. In ritual, almost anything is possible and language can be used in the most creative, constructive and performative ways. Religious ritual and language both follow and do not follow the rules of ordinary action and language: they follow the rules of ordinary action and

 Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction (New York, London: Routledge, 2013), 52.  Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 112.  Schechner, Performance Studies, 65.

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language well enough to remain convincing in the lived-in world, and simultaneously may reorganize the perception and conceptualization of that world on the basis of the order of the thought-of world.⁶²

Similar to ritual, artistic practices to a certain extent follow the rules of the world they eventually establish a relationship to. By doing this, they allow people to relate, but simultaneously to be challenged by what is offered in the artwork. In functioning as a possible platform for the sacred, this relationship between the ordinary and the non-ordinary is of great significance. Ritual and art are not primarily focused on residing in another world for the duration of the performance. Rather their first and foremost concern is to bring something unknown or non-ordinary into the known and ordinary world, or, vice versa, of putting the ordinary world into a non-ordinary limelight.⁶³

6.5.2 Performance of Particular Behavior To achieve a situation of contrast to the everyday world, a particular form needs to be found in order to obtain this contrast. This echoes what Anttonen stated about the sacred: it demands specific rule-governed behavior. ⁶⁴ This rule-governed behavior may be approached in terms of ritualized behavior. However, ritual and feast are not two equal parts in an equation. While not all rituals are feasts, in turn feasts have a certain ritual character. They are marked as special and set-apart from the everyday, hence the emphasis on ritual form in Post’s definition. This rule-governed behavior knows two features. Ritual actions consist of both utterances (words, language, sounds) and physical acts (posture, gesture, facial expressions). Rappaport posed the question, ‘Why is it that humans, who can communicate with ease, efficiency and subtlety through language should also employ such an awkward, limited and expensive mode of commu-

 Jeppe Sinding Jensen, What is Religion? (Durham: Acumen, 2014), 107.  Studies of lived religion, e. g. Nancy Ammerman (2014), have the aim to explore where the non-ordinary is hidden or resides in ordinary practices of everyday life. My approach in the study of set-apart, non-ordinary practices like musical performances is exactly the other way around: to explore how the non-ordinary can be of value for the ordinary every day. Cf. Nancy Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes. Finding Religion in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).  “The sacred has been used as an attribute whereby distinctions have been expressed between those things that possess a special cultural value and those that do not demand particular attention or specific rule-governed behavior.” Veikko Anttonen, “Toward a cognitive theory of the sacred: An ethnographic approach,” Folklore. Electronic Journal of Folklore 14 (2000), 42– 43.

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nication as physical display?’⁶⁵ He also provided a response to this question. ‘An obvious answer, of course, is that physical display indicates more, more clearly or other, than what words are able to communicate.’⁶⁶ From a methodological perspective, this is one of the reasons why sensory ethnography is of importance in performing fieldwork. Lynch also emphasized this aspect of physicality, when he addressed the question which characteristics are required for a communicative form to obtain sacred value. In addition to their focus on specific symbols and evocation of powerful forms of emotional identification, sacred forms ‘are made real through physical and institutional practices.’⁶⁷ Such institutional practices can be linked to the context in which ritual is performed. A ritual says something about the group performing it and about the ideas this group has concerning larger issues and questions in life. Ritual is not seen as representative of, but rather as a realization of a particular idea or world. As Rappaport put it, when people ‘(…) perform a ritual they are not simply “saying something” about themselves but “doing something” about the state of their world.’⁶⁸ Ritual is not a portrayal of life as it is lived, but it is in itself part of how life is lived. This character of ritual is theorized by means of the term performativity. ⁶⁹ In a lecture series delivered in 1955, philosopher of language John L. Austin coined this term to address word use that has actual consequences, sentences that actually change a status quo. ‘The term (…) “performative” is derived, of course, from “perform” (…): it indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action. (…) The uttering of the words is, indeed, usually a, or even the, leading incident in the performance of the act (…).’⁷⁰ Since then, the term has been used and expanded in many disciplines. However, the fundamental idea of words not being representative, but constituting act remains at its core. In the context of this research, doing things with words may be related to doing things with art, sound, music. How artistic performances are experienced and responded to possibly has a performative character. When a concert is experienced as a performative act, it can result in a, however temporary, change of perceived reality. The potential performative character of festival behavior is partially dependent on the expectations of the participants. When it

 Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 140.  Ibid.  Lynch, On the Sacred, 11.  Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 47.  For an overview on the development and use of the concept, see Schechner, Performance Studies, 123 – 169.  John L. Austin, How to do things with words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 6 – 8.

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comes to Musica Sacra Maastricht, different involved groups are expected to behave in particular ways. The audience is expected to be quiet and sit still during performances, the performers are supposed to concentrate on the music they are performing, while simultaneously to a certain extent engage with the audience. When these expectations are transgressed, confusion or unrest occurs. During a 2013 performance of traditional p’ansori chant, the performer instructed the audience to shout encouragements during the performance.⁷¹ While this behavior is part of the p’ansori tradition, quite common in the Korean performance setting, it is diametrically opposed to the European performance context. When the audience remained silent during the singing, this greatly confused the performer. He then began talking to the audience in between his chants as a mode of encouragement, which in turn confused the audience. The course of this performance demonstrated the restraints and cultural character of expectations of a musical performance. It simultaneously underlined the dynamics of a conventionally agreed upon ritual form and the compliant character of ritual form. Notable during the p’ansori performance was how the Western ritualized setting of the concert hall prevented visitors to engage in what they most likely would identify as playful character of the performer’s request to participate. Much has been written about the relationship between play and ritual. In terms of music, the notion of play has a significance of its own. Many theories on play are grounded in the work of historian Johan Huizinga, who designated the notion of play as a fundament in which all cultural behavior is rooted: a ʻwell-defined quality of action which is different from “ordinary” life.’⁷² Often positioned as polar-opposite of ritual, Schechner described the relationship between the two as follows: ‘[P]erformance may be defined as ritualized behavior conditioned/ permeated by play. (…) Ritual has a seriousness to it, the hammerhead of authority. Play is looser, more permissive – forgiving in precisely those areas where ritual is enforcing, flexible where ritual is rigid.’⁷³ Stephenson reinforced this argument: ‘In the West, ritual is often associated with high seriousness, and thus far from play. Many traditions around the world include rites that are playful and improvisational.’⁷⁴ This is reinforced by the example of the P’ansori performance. ‘In either case, however – ritual as serious

 Performance Yong-seok Choe and Byeong-tae Kim, P’ansori, Theater aan het Vrijthof. 21.09. 2012, 19:15 – 20:15.  Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens. A Study on the Play-Element in Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980 [1944]), 4.  Schechner, Performance Studies, 89.  Stephenson, Ritual, 81.

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business or ritual as play – the difference maker between ritual and play is the metamessage associated with each. The metamessage of ritual is that everything within the ritual frame is sanctified, true, real, and believed.’⁷⁵ This implies that in play, for example in artistic performance, truth and faithfulness is not required. Play can put everything into question. According to Huizinga, play ‘lies outside of the reasonableness of practical life; has nothing to do with necessity or utility, with duty or truth. All this is equally true of music.’⁷⁶ To him music consists of components that transcend reasonable logic, which only can be understood because these components are labeled with names. He strongly linked music and ritual. ‘In feeling music, we feel ritual. In the enjoyment of music, whether it is meant to express religious ideals or not, the perception of the beautiful and the sensation of holiness merge, and the distinction between play and seriousness is whelmed in that fusion.’⁷⁷ In his critique of modern culture, Huizinga reinforced how modern man had become too ‘worn with age and sophisticated’ to appreciate the truly playful character of ritual. ‘But nothing helps us to regain that sense so much as musical sensibility.’⁷⁸ He designated a fundamental role for music in allowing humans to reconnect with their true playful and ritual nature. Exactly because of the setapart, non-practical status of music, experiences of beauty and perceptions of holiness can occur. In the experience of music, in Huizinga’s perception, no restrictions of modernity were at play. While Huizinga regarded music, due to its inherently playful nature, as a key to rituality, Rappaport saw a fundamental difference between a dramatic performance, such as theatre or music, and the performance of a ritual. He recognized that a dramatic performance is expressive of meaning, yet argued that these kinds of performances have no moral consequences. On the contrary, a ritual has a performative character and is able to fundamentally change something for its participants. This led to his conclusion: “[r]itual performance is humanity’s basic social act.”⁷⁹ Rappaport elaborated this further by looking at how attendees during theatre performances become an audience, while during ritual performances they become a congregation. Distinctions between theatre and ritual are more salient. The first stands on a difference in the relationships of those present to the proceedings themselves. Those present at a ritual

    

Ibid. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 158. Idem, 158 – 159. Idem, 158. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 107.

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constitute a congregation. The defining relationship of the members of a congregation to the event for which they present is participation. Those present at theatrical events include, on the one hand, performers and, on the other hand, audiences. Audiences and performers are more or less radically separated from each other, always in function, almost always in space, often clearly marked off by raised stages, proscenium arches, curtains, and so on. The performers perform – dance, in ballets, sing or play instruments in concerts or, in the form most important to us, drama, they “act.” The defining characteristic of audience in contrast to performers on the one hand and congregation on the other is that they do not participate in the performance: they watch and listen. ⁸⁰

This distinction is based on two presuppositions that require scrutiny, especially in the light of ritual and art. Rappaport assumed that ritual performance intrinsically plays the ultimate role in the social functioning of a group. From this follows the observation that any performance that is not ritual does not have these social consequences, or at least to a much lesser extent. However, there are several degrees of participation in rituals, just as there are in musical performances. Taking part in a liturgical ritual does not necessarily turn the participant into a performer him or herself. There are also varying degrees of watching and listening involved. Moreover, attending a concert or a play does not imply mere watching or listening on behalf of the audience members. Rather, participation here consists of emotional and physical engagement, an embodied experience manifest in varying degrees. It cannot be simply assumed that such embodied experiences per definition do not have a performative character. At Musica Sacra Maastricht, the staging of originally religious rituals as festival programs challenges the ritual-play binary. When religious rituals become part of the festival program, these are taken out of their liturgical contexts, staged as concerts, and subjected to a certain degree of play. Entertainment has become part of the range of possible perceptions of the performance. This raises questions concerning notions like authenticity, integrity, and in Stephenson’s terms, the associated metamessages.

6.5.3 Individual and Collective Identities Every festival has a simultaneously collective and individual character. In this temporarily created setting, a collectivity emerges between those who attend and are familiar with the ritualized settings of the festival. During the festival period, the world consists of two kinds of people: those who attend the festival and

 Idem, 39. (Emphasis by Rappaport).

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those who do not. However, within the festival context, as stipulated before, individual identities are still of importance. This balance between the individual and the collective reflects what Rappaport described as two types of messages conveyed by ritual. He classified these two categories as self-referential and canonical messages. ‘The self-referential represents the immediate, the particular and the vital aspects of events; the canonical, in contrast, represents the general, enduring, or even eternal aspects of universal orders.’⁸¹ The first type of messages address the participants on an individual level, through engagement with their personal lives and ideas; while the second type of messages relate to a seemingly never-changing tradition in which the ritual is embedded. This type of message is embedded in the type of discourse Rappaport designated with the notion of Ultimate Sacred Postulates. Ideally, a participant in a ritual finds a connection to the canonical by means of the self-referential. ‘Without canon, ritual’s self-referential messages would be meaningless or even non-existent as such. (…) The canonical guides, limits and, indeed, defines, the self-referential. But this does not mean that the self-referential is unambiguously subordinated to the canonical.’⁸² In any kind of performance – ritual, art, or perhaps both – involvement occurs in varying degrees. The totality of this involvement constitutes the performance as a whole. It provides a performance its collective character, regardless of the particularly individual character of experiences of those present. Performance not only relates to the intangible character of much that goes on in one’s own world, and ways how to deal with that; taking part in a performance also confronts one very directly with the others taking part and potentially their perceptions of reality. It invites for relationships between participants and their frames of reference. Small well phrased this in a description of a musical performance: ‘an encounter between human beings that takes place through the medium of sounds organized in specific ways.’⁸³ This encounter possibly has a long-lasting transforming effect on the post-performance realities of its participants. During a music festival, people select which parts of the festival they participate in. A selection necessarily also leaves things out. Although visitors have attended the same temporary world, their selections may result in completely different perceptions of the festival. Individuality and collectivity co-exist and are intricately linked in musical experience. Hesmondhalgh reiterated the dynamic

 Idem, 53.  Idem, 106.  Small, Musicking, 10.

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between the individual and the collective when he described the functionality of music. The fact that music matters so much to so many people may derive from two contrasting yet complementary dimensions of musical experience in modern societies. The first is that music often feels intensely and emotionally linked to the private self. (…) This includes the way in which music provides a basis for intimate relations with others. (…) The second is that music is often the basis of collective, public experiences, whether in live performance, mad dancing at a party, or simply by virtue of the fact that thousands and sometimes millions of people can come to know the same sounds and performers.⁸⁴

The question remains to what extent people feel they are part of a social group or a collective when involved in an artistic performance or music festival. The festival context might heighten the solidarity amongst the participants and the members of this collective. Post termed this co-existence of individuality and collectivity during any given set-apart place and time as the marking of the personal and social existence. People are able to use the activities presented by the festival as tools to create their ways of setting things apart, mark moments, places and experiences, and ritualize their behaviors accordingly. Moreover, the festival itself may also become a set-apart, marked event. By frequenting the festival over time, it attains a specific status in the context of annual routine for the share of returning visitors. Paradoxically, it then offers a breach with everyday routine in a routinized manner.

6.5.4 Orientation on Meaning In bringing people together during a festival, there needs to be a reason to feast. It can be an object, a person, a historical moment in time, or – in the case of Musica Sacra Maastricht – a specific focus or approach to music and heritage. Post termed this reason to feast a believing, religious or worldview orientation on meaning. This dimension of feast pertains to the discursive frame in which the ritualized behavior of attending concerts and the entire festival take place. The reasoning behind the organization of the festival, its tradition, and the possible transformational experiences it has to offer are all rooted in orientations on meaning. At Musica Sacra Maastricht the orientation on meaning relates to the value of art. There are no intrinsic canonical messages or USPs conveyed. The question is whether art can at all be a suitable vehicle for this. Grimes explored

 David Hesmondhalgh, Why Music Matters (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 1– 2.

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how art functions as an orientation on meaning in a ritual setting. Departing from a ritual studies perspective, he connected the dimensions of contrast, form, and meaning in the analysis of artistic performances. This approach reiterates how individuals must behave in a collective way in order for the performance to succeed. ‘Theater, music, dance, and even film share certain family resemblances with ritual. All are constructed from carefully selected, highly condensed, strongly framed activities.’⁸⁵ Grimes furthermore emphasized, ‘Details matter. Every gesture, from large to small, must be enacted in the right way. Everything that counts must appear in the designated frame. Nothing appears in that frame unless it counts, and if it counts, it is likely to be foreshadowed or echoed elsewhere.’⁸⁶ This description captures the ways in which performance works within the festival context. The point of departure is a specific frame, in which every act, movement, gesture, sound, and expression has its own place and function. There is always an awareness of this frame, of the context, and of the fact that the performers and the performed are subjected to the watching eyes of participants and audience members. This creates a very deliberately constructed situation, which is – paradoxically – easily forgotten when performed well and seemingly natural. At Musica Sacra Maastricht every artistic performance is programmed to constitute the frame of the sacred. This context is delicate and dynamic at the same time, due to the fact that the performance requires the involvement of many parties, who all have their own stakes and interests. Before the festival can take place, contributors with often-conflicting interests and visions have to be aligned. The numerous variations of how audience members experience the performances also contribute to the perception of the festival performances. Whatever participants eventually take away from a ritual depends on the meaning they invest. While in different approaches in ritual studies the notion of the meaning of ritual performances was more or less taken as a given, this self-evident nature was famously questioned by historian of religion and philosopher Frits Staal. He argued that ritual consists of arbitrarily selected actions and therefore carry no intrinsic meaning.⁸⁷ The meaning of ritual performance was considered of secondary nature, as the participants in a ritual endow it with meanings. The meaninglessness of ritual became a much-debated standpoint. Rappaport maintained a completely contrasting view. ‘In human rituals the ut Ronald L. Grimes, Rite Out of Place: Ritual, Media, and the Arts (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 39 – 40.  Ibid.  Frits Staal, “The Meaninglessness of Ritual,” Numen 26 (1979): 2– 22; Frits Staal, Rules without Meaning. Ritual, Mantras, and the Human Sciences (New York & Toronto: Peter Lang, 1989).

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terances are usually predominantly verbal, that is, are expressions in words, and as such are symbolically (and often otherwise) signifying, and the acts, in being formalized, are ipso facto, invested with meaning.’⁸⁸ This investment with meaning occurs within three orders that are grounded in different features: low-order meaning is grounded in distinction between things, persons, events; middleorder meaning is grounded in similarities between apparently different things, persons, events; high-order meaning is grounded in a sense of identity or unity with them. These different orders of meaning imply ‘three bases of meaningfulness – distinction, similarity, and unification or identity – all of which are important in ritual.’⁸⁹ High-order meaning is characterized as a primarily experiential type of meaning. ‘It may be experienced through art, or in the acts of love, but is, perhaps, most often felt in ritual and other religious devotions.’⁹⁰ While all three orders may be evoked in the same ritual or musical performance, Rappaport saw high-order meaning as the most important and necessary type of meaning for the social functioning and general well-being of humanity. When it comes to artistic practices, the question of meaning hinges on how performances are invested with meaning by their participants. While the different components of ritual actions most often have a counterpart in everyday actions, musical sounds usually lack this kind of straightforward reference and in themselves sounds do not possess any intrinsic meaning. Individual sounds only get meaning through the attributions by those composing, performing, and listening. However, music would never be called a meaningless form of communication. It is regarded a powerful medium by many, providing music an important presence in their daily lives. The relationship between individual sounds, the composition, and performance processes may preferably be scrutinized on its reflexive character. While this does not endow individual sounds with intrinsic meanings, it draws emphasis to how meaning is established through conventions and agreements about symbols and representation. Schechner theorized the possible effects of a performance by means of a continuum that spans between efficacy and entertainment. ⁹¹ Efficacy is a term used to characterize the effect of a ritual, differentiating it from the effect of a performance with an entertaining character. No performance is pure entertainment or pure efficacy.⁹² The effects of a performance need to be approached in a similar way as Grimes’ ritual modes. What someone may experience as enter    

Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 29. Idem, 72. (Emphasis by Rappaport). Idem, 71. Schechner, Performance Studies, 79 – 81. Cf. Weberian ideal types. See Chapter 1, note 40.

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tainment, another can regard as efficacious, and vice versa. Moreover, aspects of both extremes can be experienced during one and the same performance. Efficacy is achieved through the performance of particular acts and the consequentially attributed meaning. Together these elements constitute a dynamic called symbolic work, which is achieved by means of ritual.⁹³ ‘By performing such symbolic work, humans assume that they can achieve results on matters (e. g. metaphysical) that are otherwise outside the range of their practical or instrumental capabilities.’⁹⁴ It is an important aspect of what rituals do: they offer participants the idea of order and control in situations they may feel powerless about. As Sinding Jensen formulates it: ‘[T]he means and actions of rituals need to be so designed and ordered that humans can handle them: everything has to become scaled so that humans can manipulate the entire state of affairs.’⁹⁵ He furthermore reinforces that, ‘This is an important but overlooked feature and function of ritual: it transforms affairs that depend on and relate to the “other world” in such a manner that they look as if they are within the reach of humans. In this way humans become responsible for such affairs (…).’ ⁹⁶ This does not only relate to perceived uncontrollable matters pertaining to another world, but even more so to matters pertaining to the ordinary world over which an equal powerlessness may be felt. Through ritual action, a temporary yet more comprehensible world can be experienced. Potentially, artistic practices can achieve the same. This observation was theorized by Bell, who saw the performance of public and artistic events such as theatre or film and their use of frames that ‘create a complete and condensed, if somewhat artificial world (…).⁹⁷ This artificial world functions in contrast with the experience of everyday life. ‘Since the real world is rarely experienced as a coherently ordered totality, the microcosm constructed on stage purports to provide the experience of a mock-totality, an interpretative appropriation of some greater if elusive totality.’⁹⁸ The way in which an interpretative appropriation or scaled-down totality is presented is not always straightforward – neither in ritual nor in art. It is not always clear for people how they should engage with a particular performance.

 As Talal Asad put it; “Every ethnographer will probably recognize a ritual when he or she sees one, because ritual is (is it not?) symbolic activity as opposed to the instrumental behavior of everyday life.” Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 25. Note: this use of the word symbol differs from the semiotic context as used by Peirce and Rappaport.  Jensen, What is Religion?, 99.  Idem, 107.  Ibid.  Bell, Ritual, 160.  Ibid.

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Yet, in ritual and art a relationship is always established between what happens during the performance and participants’ own perceptions of reality. This chapter began with a description of a concert program on the topic of ritual. One composition, also about ritual, was added to the originally selected program – considered by some a frivolous anomaly, by others a precious and joyful gift. I titled this chapter Curse of the Fire Dance in reference to this remarkable concert. In the context of this festival program, the positioning of De Falla’s Fire Dance demonstrates the ambiguity, precariousness, and multiplicity of ritual dimensions in artistic performance. It also reinforces the difference between theory and practice. Only in an embodied way, the consequences of artistic selection and curation can be experienced. One well-intended act can throw off balance an otherwise well-balanced concert – for some. For others it can make absolute sense. In the chapter title, I called the addition of the encore a curse. Because of the program’s dependence on the multiple involved parties, their interests, and the eventual performance in practice, each performance anew will tell if both art and ritual are performed to their preconceived effects. But in fact, this curse can also be regarded as something unexpected, magical, or a gift – which makes participation in artistic performance worthwhile for the many involved. Each time and again, it will never be fully known beforehand how the performance will develop, through participation of those involved and through contextual factors. How performances take place between sound and silence, and which conditions are set in the parameters of the festival in order for these performances to be perceived as sacred, is discussed in the following chapter.

7 Between Sound and Silence: A Fragile Sacred Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek, Saturday September 20, 2014. At 15.30, the concert by the Latvian Radio Choir began with the composition Lux Aeterna (1966) by composer Györgi Ligeti (1923 – 2006). It related to the annual festival theme of The Awe-Inspiring in two ways. First, because in the text, derived from the communion in the Latin requiem mass, the plea is made for the shining of eternal light over the deceased. Imagining such an eternal light can only be in terms of the awesome. Second, this composition was used by Stanley Kubrick in the science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Kubrick found in Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna ‘the contrast between estranging silences and enormous “clouds of sound”,’ which represented “the endlessness of the universe.”¹ Although the composer selected a Catholic text, just like his previously composed requiem (1963 – 1965) Ligeti did not intend Lux Aeterna as a liturgical piece. Rather he “borrowed this Catholic text as ‘unbelieving non-atheist’,”² in order to conduct an experiment with harmonious sounds and colors. He described the style of the composition as micropolyfone, in which it is not possible to discern the individual participating voices.³ The acoustics of the Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk enhanced this blending of voices, feeling like a blanket wrapped around oneself, first lightly, then heavier, followed by a slight release of pressure towards the end. It felt like a homecoming and an adventure at the same time. As the singing began, that Saturday afternoon in Maastricht, some unrest emerged at the left side of the church aisle. Visitors began looking around, at one another and around them into the side aisles. Their bodily movements up and down the wooden benches on which they were seated began to interfere with the experience of the music. Yet, as it was supposed to, the music continued. A couple of minutes later, it became clear what the unrest was about. In the left side aisle of the church, the confessional was in use. The unrest from the concert visitors had been in response to the sounds of the voices from within the confessional. The priest receiving and the believer performing confession were, in the context of the concert, an anomaly. While, in the context of the church this practice, as one of the seven sacraments, had every legitimate position to take place. While the singing voices had begun to demarcate the sacred space of the concert, the sacramental practice of confession continued. Critic Floris Don described this event in his festival review. ‘The surreal whisperings

 Concert brochure (2014), 1.  Idem, 2.  Ibid. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-008

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of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna where roughly disturbed by a confession that was being conducted behind a curtain this Saturday. A shame for the excellent concert of the Latvian Radio Choir in the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek in Maastricht.’⁴ While Don regretted the simultaneity of the confession and the start of the concert from a musical perspective, he also used it to illustrate to the character of the festival (as previously mentioned in Chapter 4). ‘But it was also symbolic: the soul of festival Musica Sacra Maastricht is Catholic through and through.’⁵ While this can be regarded as a partial perspective on the festival itself, it does emphasize the attention there is at Musica Sacra Maastricht for religious music and ritual, which is of different nature than at other festivals. The encounter of the musical performance as sacralized practice with the sacrament of confession showed a clash of sacreds, each being a distraction for the other. Each practice was bothered by the sound and presence of the other. Before the end of Ligeti’s composition, the confession had ended and those conducting it left the church. With a loud bang the heavy church door closed shut, symbolically closing the confession and demarcating the unofficial start of the concert – from that moment onward the presence of the festival was the primary function of the church building, at least for the duration of the concert. This chapter explores what occurs in the experience between sound and silence, the conditions for the sacred as perceived by the festival, when various sacred forms encounter and compete for attention, and ultimately what this says about the fragile nature of the sacred sought after by the festival. First, the experience of music (as sound and silence) is discussed, its modes of listening, the role of physique and place, and the dynamics between text and sound. Second, the implications of the particular type of music programmed at the festival are explored: art music, or music perceived as art. This exploration includes an analytical exercise with semiotics to trace the various ways of meaning attribution taking place during the festival. Third, the elemental role of reflection in experiences between sound and silence is discussed, aiming for a reconsideration of the performative potential of reflection. Fourth, the conditions for the music at the festival – and its consequential perceptions of the sacred – are explored, particularly the prerequisite of silence. This chapter is concluded with observations

 Floris Don, “De Ziel van Musica Sacra komt tot Bloei in Extatische Bayan,” NRC Handelsblad, 22.09. 2014. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2014/09/22/de-ziel-van-musica-sacra-komt-tot-bloei-inextati-1421761-a1066387. “De surreële fluisteringen van Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna werden zaterdag verstoord door een biecht die achter een gordijn werd afgenomen. Jammer voor het topconcert van het Lets Radiokoor in de OLV-Basiliek in Maastricht.”  Ibid. “Maar symbolisch was het ook: de ziel van het festival Musica Sacra Maastricht is door en door katholiek”

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on how musical experiences are described to be rooted in alternative perceptions of time, identified as the most crucial feature of the sacred in engagement with the arts.

7.1 A Turn Within There are several approaches to the notion of music, which range from pragmatic definitions to more philosophical ones. Musicologist Craig White presented a pragmatic definition. To him, music is “[t]he rational organization of sounds and silences passing through time.”⁶ According to this definition, the difference between consecutive everyday sounds and sounds constituting music is that the latter is the result of rational, decisive action of a composer or listener, who decides these sounds are to be perceived as music. Even when a composition is based on chance or dependent of environmental factors, the fact that these are presented and experienced within a compositional frame means that they are the result of rational thought and decision making. However, this pragmatic definition lacks the component of meaning; those who engage with music (composers, performers, listeners) tend to perceive music as a meaningful entity – whether it speaks to them or not at all, both types of engagement treat music as a practice that conveys meaning. In addition to the attribution of meaning, the notion of performance is also crucial to the existence of music. As artistic expression, musical performance is regarded throughout this research as embodiment of meaning. This resonates with philosopher Arthur Danto’s definition of art: ‘embodied meaning.’⁷ Based on these various aspects, a broadly approached definition of music is most relevant: music is performed meaning through organized sound and silence. This definition does not necessarily point at rationale as a crucial feature; rather it attempts to capture the perception of meaning and value by composers, performers, and audience members by means of the notion of performance. The idea that meaning is performed leads to the question whether sounds and notes have intrinsic meanings or are per definition attributed by those writing, performing, and listening.⁸ Igor Stravinsky once furiously wrote, ‘Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a  Craig White, The Essential Listening to Music (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2013), 2.  Arthur Danto, What Art Is (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 37.  Martin Hoondert, “’How God gets into Music:’ Een Sociologische en Cultuurwetenschappelijke Benadering van Muziek,” in Elke Muziek heeft haar Hemel, eds. Martin Hoondert, Anje de Heer en Jan D. van Laar (Budel: Damon, 2009): 61– 78.

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feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. (…) Expression has never been an inherent property of music.’⁹ Expression, or meaning, only comes to the fore in the perception of composers, listeners, and performers. I will follow the line here that sounds and notes become music, because someone frames or perceives them as such. These perceptions result in, and are based on, the particular sequence and order that music is made of. The ordering makes the individual sounds and notes relate to each other and to the frame that they are put in. In turn, listeners relate in their own ways to the performed sounds and the artistic frame. The attribution of meaning is located in this activity of relating, which in turn possibly may lead to a perception of sacred value. Attending concerts and festivals may be seen as part of people’s larger quest for attributing meaning to their lives. Invited through works of art, this quest is precisely performed at the fine line between the non-ordinary and the ordinary. In its academic study, the term music usually implies western classical music.¹⁰ In the context of this research project, I use the term in a broader sense. This use is rooted in the conviction that the sacred is potentially perceived at any time, place, and context; during performances of classical and non-classical music alike. There is no need to elevate classical music above popular music. In the words of Alex Ross: ‘Yes, the music can be great and serious, but greatness and seriousness are not its defining characteristics. (…) Music is too personal a medium to support an absolute hierarchy of values.’¹¹ The study of this personal character of music has seen a development of its own. Musicologist Sander van Maas identified this as an obsession with the idea of interiority.¹² The connection between the focus on the inner self in the realm of music and of spirituality is also recognized by Partridge, who called it ‘a sacralization of subjectivities, an increasing focus on states of consciousness, emotions, passions, sensations, bodily experiences, dreams, visions, and feelings. There has been a turn within.’¹³ This turn in the study of music occurred in conjunction with the practices in the concert halls. These transformed from a dynamic social encounter into a mostly individual preoccupation, requiring silence and concentration. The dom-

 Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (London: 1975 [1935]), 115.  Christopher Small, Musicking. The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 3.  Alex Ross, Listen to This (London: Fourth Estate, 2010), 3.  Lieke Wijnia, “Het Sacrale als Horizon,” Musica Sacra Maastricht Magazine (2013), 12.  Christopher Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus. Popular Music, The Sacred, & The Profane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 180.

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inance of silence in the concert hall coincides with the emancipation of instrumental music as played by symphony orchestras or string quartets, according to Van Maas. These types of music appeal to the listener’s interior capacities like the state of mind and imagination.¹⁴ In an analysis of the origins of American symphony orchestras, historian Lawrence Levine designated this transformation of classical music as the sacralization of music. When classical music became regarded as a divine expression and set-apart activity, it was deemed to deserve according treatment (cf. Anttonen’s rule-governed behavior). Silence and contemplation implied respect for this divine, sacred character of music.¹⁵ In his description of the transformations in the music industry since 1700, historian Tim Blanning used the same term of sacralization. ¹⁶ Music became regarded and treated as a set-apart entity. Sociologist Virinder S. Kalra applied the replacement thesis of religion and art, in his description of how the diminished dominance of institutional religion in Europe resulted in the attributions of classical music with an aura of sacrality instead.¹⁷ Departing from different contexts, Levine, Blanning, and Kalra’s observations reinforce how this process of sacralization results from human practices, in which the notion of silence as expression of respect and reverence plays a crucial role.

7.1.1 Modes of Listening The respondents’ engagement with the music occurred on different levels. A first level was that of the topic of the music and the story that was told by means of it. Some respondents valued a storyline, and if applicable lyrics, very much. Cees called the text generally supportive of the instrumental sounds, while his wife rather preferred to listen to all the performed sounds as such, whether sung or played.¹⁸ Mildred did not see the need to know what a musical piece was

 Sander van Maas, Wat is een Luisteraar? Reflectie, Interpellatie en Dorsaliteit in Hedendaagse Muziek (Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2009), 12.  Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/ Lowbrow. The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 83 – 168.  Tim Blanning, The Triumph of Music. Composers, Musicians and their Audiences, 1700 to the Present (London: Penguin, 2009).  Virinder S. Kalra, Sacred and Secular Musics: A Postcolonial Approach (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), 47.  Interview with Cees and Atie, 08.10. 2013. “Mij is wat ze zingen ontzettend van belang. (…) Ik vind tekst wel degelijk ondersteunend.” “Ik doe het niet hoor. (…) Ik luister gewoon. Ik hoef dat niet.”

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about, she rather just listened to the sounds.¹⁹ Ann consciously followed the words of the lyrics, but did not attribute primary importance to the storyline.²⁰ Cunera felt that every musical piece told its own story and was not really in need of any words. She said to hardly pay attention to lyrics and preferred to experience a performance in an associative way. She rather let her mind run free while being immersed in the musical sounds.²¹ Vivienne distinguished between the performances she felt were especially created for the festival and the ones produced for other reasons. She based this observation on a comparison of the performance of Boudewijn Tarenskeen’s LUTHER and the performance Mariken (2013) of the Maastricht Theatre Academy to performance of klezmer music. She felt that the first two, by means of their particular story lines, were written into the annual festival theme of transformation and conversion. LUTHER and Mariken were really made for this theme. It results in other kinds of art. With the [Klezmer] clarinet and cello duo, those musicians makes this art like other people have to breathe, because they need to. It is in them and it needs to come out, there is no other option. In my experience this results in something more intense, because it really has to happen, rather than that something is produced [for the sake of a theme].²²

She addressed two elements in an artistic production, which are not necessarily binary opposites. On the one hand, there is the drive that artists can use as departure point for their work. On the other hand, there is the reality of the cultural sector consisting of institutions like concert halls or festivals that offer opportunities to have pieces performed, but simultaneously work within particular frameworks that artists need to consider. For Vivienne, this latter aspect resulted in a certain artificiality, which influenced her experience of the music and the play. While in the former she could engage with the genuine enthusiasm and drive she thought the performers expressed.

 Interview with Mildred, 15.10. 2013. “Generally, I don’t really feel I need to know what the story is about.”  Interview with Ann, 01.11. 2013. “I always follow what is being sung, but it is usually not the most important aspect.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “No, I don’t really [process] the words (…) I read along, but it might as well be lalala. (…) The music tells its own story. That is how it always works for me, my thoughts jump back and forth. (…) I experience it in a very associative way.”  Interview with Vivienne, 21.10. 2013. “LUTHER en Mariken [waren] echt gemaakt op het thema. Maar dat dat dan andere kunst op kan leveren. Kijk bij zo’n klarinet en cello duo, die musici maken deze kunst zoals andere mensen moeten ademen, dat moet gewoon. Dat zit erin en dat moet eruit komen, dat kan niet anders. En dat levert dan toch in mijn beleving iets intensers op omdat het echt moet, dan iets dat geproduceerd is ofzo.”

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During the 2013 festival, Elly attended the performance of La Conversione di Maddalena (1701) by Giovanni Bononcini. Beforehand she was curious about what kind of story would be told about Mary Magdalene in the oratorio. However, during the performance she was slightly disappointed as there was no translation of the Italian lyrics in the program booklet. ‘I thought it was a shame. (…) Other than that, the music was very beautiful and the church in [the] Wyck [neighbourhood] is also really beautiful. But, what are they singing about?’ She did not feel she would be missing much of the stage action when there would have been a translation in the program booklet she could have read during the performance. ‘It is not a play, you know. You do not need to focus on the podium all the time, (…) I’d rather have the text in front of me to know what they are singing about. And in this case particularly, because Mary Magdalene is a contested figure. That makes me curious what kind of image is presented of her.’²³ Knowledge of the story line can thus also provide an opportunity to stronger engage with the music and the sounds. Elly’s experience emphasizes a second aspect within the mode of listening: how the visual and the aural relate to each other. On the one hand, looking at the performers and seeing who is playing which instrument or singing which part at what particular moment during the performance can enhance the listening experience. On the other hand, trying to close off from the world around can also enhance the engagement with the performed sounds, whether these are performed words or notes. Cunera described both types of experiences. During the performance of Bernd Alois Zimmerman’s Stille und Umkehr (1970), she appreciated the sight of the musicians and their hard labor on the stage due to the complexity of the score.²⁴ Seeing them conduct their work made the performed sounds more accessible to her. Then there was also her experience of a Tallis Scholars concert during the 2013 festival, during which she closed her eyes and felt carried away. ‘I can completely be taken away to other places and moments. Imagine that it is really cold or warm or you’re badly seated, what happens then is that you do not feel that anymore. Or when it is really good, you are out of there, actually you are

 Interview with Elly, 04.10. 2013. “Dat vond ik inderdaad jammer. (…) Terwijl het verder, qua muziek vond ik dat weer heel mooi, en de kerk is ook heel mooi in Wyck. Maar ja, waar hebben ze het over? (…) Nou weetje het is toch geen toneelstuk wat erop gevoerd wordt he. Het is wat betreft, hoef je je niet constant op het podium te focussen. (…) Dan heb ik liever de tekst voor me om te weten wat zingen jullie nou eigenlijk. En dan met name omdat Maria Magdalena toch omstreden is, dacht ik, dan ben ik benieuwd waar ze mee komen.”  Festival diary Cunera, 20.09. 2013.

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out of there.’²⁵ While the first kind of experience strengthened the positioning in the here and now, the second kind of experience carried away into a perceived other world. This relates strongly to a third level of the listening modus: the effect of the performance on the posture and attitude of the listener. Many different engagements during a live performance are possible. On one end of the spectrum is the experience of being fully overwhelmed, turning off all intellectual engagement, and simply letting oneself be surrounded by the sounds. On the other end there is a full engagement with what is going on, paying full attention to the way the music develops, and how the performers are playing their instruments. These are two different kinds of listening experiences, both characterized as rewarding by the respondents. Han described these two listening experiences as conflicting within one concert. In reference to the 2013 concert by the Tallis Scholars, he wrote how he experienced ‘a “battle” between bathing in overwhelming polyphonic sounds and paying attention to everything that [was] going on in the music.”²⁶ For him, the polyphony afforded both kinds of listening experiences. He contrasted this with the performance of the Gesualdo Concort during the same festival year, which demanded his full attention. ‘Especially because it is not so easy on your ears, it demands an active attitude, it keeps you sharp.’²⁷ With regard to the performance of Stille und Umkehr, Han emphasized the inwardness and quietness of the piece. Han called it “composed silence,” which he characterized as ‘very exciting. (…) You keep waiting whether there will be an outburst. This is not happening, which heightens the contemplative (or sacred?) character. I was on the edge of my seat.’²⁸ Mildred preferred the listening experience of being overwhelmed and being taken aback, just like Vivienne. They both saw this as ultimate musical experiences.²⁹ For Vivienne it primarily meant turning off her analytical skills. This often occurred during performances

 Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “Dan kan ik inderdaad helemaal vertrekken naar andere plekken en momenten. Wat dan in ieder geval ook gebeurt, stel je voor dat het daar warm of koud is, of je zit slecht, dat voel je dan ook niet meer. Of als het heel goed is, dan ben je daar weg, dan ben je daar eigenlijk weg.”  Festival diary Han, 24.09. 2013. “Het is wel een ’strijd’ tussen ’baden in de weldadige polyfone klanken’ en ’letten op alles wat er gebeurt in de muziek’.”  Interview with Han, 01.10. 2013. “Juist omdat het niet lekker in het gehoor ligt, vraagt het een actieve houding, houdt het je bezig.”  Festival diary Han, 24.09. 2013. “Je zit te wachten of er nog een uitbarsting komt. Komt niet; en dat verhoogt het contemplatieve (of sacrale?) karakter. Puntje van mijn stoel.”  Interview with Vivienne, 21.10. 2013. “Being overwhelmed during the performance, that is my favorite.” Interview with Mildred, 15.10. 2013. “That is a sign that your brain is working too much and you are not letting yourself be immersed [by the music].”

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of music so unknown to her that it did not fit within her frame of reference. When music would not allow her to engage with it intellectually, but she thought it to be appealing, the only thing left was opening up emotionally and allow for the possibility of being overwhelmed.³⁰ For both Mildred and Vivienne, who were active music players themselves, being overwhelmed was preferred before being engaged intellectually. Vivienne simultaneously enhanced her experiences with her knowledge of being a musician. ‘I always greatly identify with the musicians. When you can see their facial expressions, you can identify with them or feel as you are part of them.’³¹ Han was also an analytical listener, but of a different kind. He owned a large music library and prefered to listen to different performances of the same musical compositions. He liked to discover the different approaches by different performers. In his diary he noted how tenor Mark Wilde was schooled in the British choir tradition and was therefore best equipped to sing British songs, suitable to his training tradition. Han felt that continental composers did not write for performers who were used to sing in a group, like Wilde, but more for individual characters. Therefore, he felt the songs of Benjamin Britten were better performed than the songs of Johannes Brahms during Wilde’s 2013 festival performance.³² This response reflected the knowledge of someone who may be regarded the kind of musical expert for which it was generally felt Musica Sacra Maastricht catered. The interviewed performers (composers and musicians in the festival) also expressed particular modes of listening, although their primary association with music was that it is their profession. As Michael Finnissy stated: “Art is just like doing the housework. It is dusting and cleaning most of the time. It is just hard work.”³³ Still, it was often a profession chosen and fulfilled with utmost drive and affection. Most performers were consciously searching to main-

 Interview with Vivienne, 21.10. 2013. “It corresponds with being a musician. I experience it as a problem that often I listen to music too analytically. (…) The concert with the cello and clarinet at the final day, that was so strange to me that I could not listen to it analytically, because it was so unfamiliar. Suddenly I could all let it go and then it touches [you] much more. That is why I like Musica Sacra, because much of the music is new and unfamiliar to you.”  Idem. “Ik identificeer me altijd heel erg met de musici. Als je de gezichtsuitdrukkingen kunt zien, dan kun je je er meer mee identificeren, of je er deelgenoot van voelen.”  Interview with Han, 01.10. 2013. “English tenors have a choir sound, they are trained in this. They become part of the whole, which makes them sound rather casual when they sing a solo part. The songs that are written in England take this into account. Continental songs are not written for casualness but for character. You can hear this, especially when an English tenor sings continental songs.”  Interview with Finnissy, 19.09. 2014.

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tain the balance between their love for music and their professional affiliation with it. Hans Leenders called music his hobby, even after all the years he has been professionally active in the business. ‘But you need to work on retaining the fun, meaning continuously searching for exciting programs. Searching for your boundaries. (…) Musica Sacra [Maastricht] often offers me new input, things that I do not know. And that means, that I as a musician am being challenged to get to know a language I did not know before.’³⁴ Marcel Verheggen added that even the music he had played many times over, still remains to have secrets and surprises in store for him. ‘You are never finished. There are always more layers to discover. (…) This searching and finding of new layers is what makes it challenging.’³⁵ Performing music potentially reveals the opportunity for something new. This made one particular piece never fully known or clear, which in turn made Verheggen want to continuously engage with it further.

7.1.2 Text and Sound The experience of music consists of various elements, among other the produced sounds and silences, the performance location, and, if applicable, performed texts or lyrics. The combination of these various aspects is what makes the performance as a whole. In her experience of LUTHER, Mildred acknowledged how performance style could be in the way of communicating the music and storyline. ‘When artificiality comes to dominate, that is too bad.’ She felt this to be something particularly Dutch. ‘All the arts in The Netherlands. You have to be creative, in text and the way of performing, but the technique only comes second.’³⁶ Mildred and Ann had similar experiences with regard to LUTHER, in which the actor transforms from being Luther’s translator into a narrator, seemingly himself. Ann called the change of performance mode of the actor “a nasty

 Interview with Leenders, 19.01. 2015. “Het is inderdaad nog steeds mijn hobby. (..) Dat plezier moet je er wel in houden, en dat betekent, spannende programmering blijven zoeken. Zoeken naar je grenzen. (…) Musica Sacra [Maastricht] levert mij vaak nieuwe input. Dingen die ik niet ken. En dat betekent dat ik als musicus wordt uitgedaagd om me te verdiepen in een taal die ik niet ken.”  Interview with Verheggen, 06.02. 2015. “Als je muziek maakt, ben je nooit klaar. Er zijn altijd weer meer lagen. (…) Het zoeken en het nieuwe lagen vinden, dat maakt het uitdagend.”  Interview with Mildred, 15.10. 2013. “Ja, als de gekunsteldheid op de voorgrond komt, dat het overheerst, dan vind ik het jammer. (…) Dat is ook typisch Hollands he. De hele kunsten in Nederland. Je moet creatief zijn, in teksten en hoe je het doet, maar de techniek komt op de tweede plaats.”

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theatrical trick.”³⁷ While she appreciated the subject matter and the musical take on it, the performance style was too dominant for her. Contrasting these experiences, Cees was very excited about this performance. He already knew previous work of composer Tarenskeen and found especially the set-up of the performance very special. He was prepared for something out of the ordinary, which to his mind was exactly what he got. In the majority of the respondents’ reactions, the quality of the performers was most valued when their singing or playing technique was seemingly effortless. When the set-up of the performance was experienced as contrived, this greatly influenced the experienced skillfulness of the performers. When the quality of performance skills was not experienced as high, these played an important role in the attribution of meaning to the performed music. While Cunera appreciated being confronted with something completely new and unfamiliar during the performances of the ensemble Kashôken in 2012, she was quickly bored by the singing voices and found the atmosphere very unsacred. She felt it to be exotic entertainment rather than a sacred ritual. She assumed ‘the performers must have felt this as well.’³⁸ Even though skillfulness is seemingly something that can be judged objectively, the respondents proved otherwise. The performance of John Tavener’s The Repentant Thief (1990) during the opening concert of the 2013 festival edition was generally discussed in a positive way. But the Conservatorium orchestra received various judgments. Where Margot felt the youthful orchestra played well and looked very promising,³⁹ Mildred felt the orchestra lacked aura. “They looked frightened of the difficult parts, rather than showing any enthusiasm for their music making.”⁴⁰ Both respondents regarded clarinet player Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer as very skillful and praised him for his performance. Margot connected his way of performing to the story of the repentant thief on which Tavener based his composition. “The clarinet player was completely cut out for this role. When he went through his knees, with his small upper legs  Interview with Ann, 01.11. 2013. “een theatrale rot-truc”  Email correspondence with Cunera, 16.10. 2012. “De ‘rituele zang’ is aanvankelijk boeiend, maar het soort geluid van de stemmen gaat mij gauw vervelen (…) Temeer omdat de sfeer van het geheel ongewijd, kermisachtig was. (…) Het [wordt] hier hoofdzakelijk als exotisch vertier, als amusement ervaren en zeker niet als gewijd ritueel. Dit zullen de uitvoerders ook gevoeld hebben.”  Festival diary Margot, September 23, 2013. “Nice performance, the young musicians seem very promising.”  Interview with Mildred, 15.10. 2013. “Maar dit conservatorium orkest straalde helemaal niks uit. Eerder dat ze bang waren als er moeilijke loopjes kwamen, dan dat ze daar zaten zo van nu maak ik lekker muziek.”

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he truly seemed a thief in the night, who sighed of relief in the direction of the conductor after having escaped.”⁴¹ Where Margot made this direct connection between the story and the style of performance, Mildred used the expression “he really told a story” to express her praise for the clarinet player. When asked what kind of story that was, she did not relate this to the story of the repentant thief. By the time of our interview, she did not remember the actual story the composition was based on, but clarified she felt that the clarinet player was “a very expressive person. Someone who demanded everything from his clarinet. Yes, then it becomes a story.”⁴² This idea of a story that is told relates to the narrative setting in which the concert audience is immersed. There are various ways of relating to this setting. One can follow the lyrics and the singing or one can appreciate the singing voices for their sonic qualities as much as the played instruments. Yet, during the previously described concert, the storyline played a different role. Margot related the posture and performance style of the soloist to the main character in the story that was the source of inspiration for the composer. For her, these two matched very well. While Mildred shared the enthusiasm for the soloist, she related the idea of storytelling to his expressiveness, which is in turn also an important element in performance method. Of interest here is that she used the terminology of “storytelling” while this was not particularly sufficient for what she was trying to say. She tried to capture the experienced relationship with the performer, characterized by the appealing way that the performer behaved on stage, with the notion of storytelling. This was the nearest term with which she attempted to make her intangible experience a tangible one. Jesse Rodin approached the relation between text and sound in Renaissance music from another perspective. ‘One question in the medieval church would be, “who would have heard it?” I think that very few people would have heard it in any kind of detail. (…) But even if you were not close, it is probably very attractive and undifferentiated. (…) [A]ll the fancy notational and compositional artifices were effectively inaudible to all these people.’⁴³ And Rodin wondered if people would have cared. He saw a very distinct difference between audience (or,

 Festival diary Margot, September 23, 2013. “De klarinettist was helemaal geknipt voor zijn rol. Als hij door de knieën zakte, leek hij met zijn smalle bovenbenen echt een dief in de nacht die weer opgelucht ademhaalde richting dirigent als hij ontsnapt was J”  Interview with Mildred, 15.10. 2013. “I have completely forgotten it. So probably that story did not really matter that much, but more that he was someone who had a story to tell.” “Het was gewoon een heel expressief iemand. En die alles uit de klarinet haalde. Ja, dan wordt het een verhaal.”  Interview with Rodin, 17.09. 2014.

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more specifically, churchgoers) and composers who were looking for a challenge. He painted a picture of a commissioning practice that enabled composers to experiment with musical language, on the condition that the liturgical wording would be present in the end result. As such he saw two separate layers of meaning, in the text and in the sound, which only sporadically merged into one. ‘In the fifteenth century the music is not very close to the meaning of the individual words. There are certain obvious things they do and they certainly set the text, but very often there are other kinds of musical concerns that take precedence. And it is not like madrigals; it is not expressive in that way.’⁴⁴ He continued, ‘There is almost a degree of an autonomous realm for aficionados doing this very fancy composing and the singers who can do it. Beyond that it changes very dramatically, it becomes something less focused.’⁴⁵ In this line of thought, several layers of meaning were likely to have different effects. For Rodin, the textual meaning was secondary. His primary interest concerned the musical constructions and how to perform these. He also thought many contemporary listeners would have this priority. Some people are there for the details. They want to know how I am going to do the tempo change; I am going to do it correctly by the way, but they want to know that stuff. And that is my interest really. We are always aware of what the texts are, what the context is, and what the meanings are – in motets especially –, but fundamentally I approach them as very fine raw pieces of music, and I think about how to bring out musical shapes that are effective in another way than we define it today.⁴⁶

He especially looked at wording, to which many contemporary singers would add extra emphasis, because they were regarded with specific importance and were therefore perceived of as deserving of special treatment. However, because nowadays singers regarded these words as important did not automatically imply that Renaissance singers would have added the same musical importance and thus emphases on them. He explained, in contemporary practices, ‘Kyrie is up tempo and Christea is sung slowly, because we feel like it deserves that. While in the period it would be sung the other way around. The text can be important, but not necessarily in the way we think it is important.’⁴⁷ Both Tarenskeen and Finnissy regarded the lyrics set to music in their response to the question about what it is that makes music sacred. Tarenskeen ex-

   

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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pressed uncertainty about whether every kind of music based on liturgical texts was self-evidently sacred music.⁴⁸ Finnissy departed from the other end. It is an interesting question to ask what sacred means without words in music (…). Yes, I [do] think it [is] possible, because in some senses music is also sacred in as much as it, (…) transcends words, and to a certain extent it transcends logic, and it transcends all the other pseudo-scientific explorations of the post-enlightenment. So there is a sense in which music, if it is not exactly sacred in a conventional way, it is always numinous. It is always a crossing from one kind of experience to another kind of transcendent experience. But for me, music is mostly sacred when it has sacred text, and certainly from the point of view from the audience it is easier to communicate the sacred content with words.⁴⁹

Two approaches to the sacred in music are apparent here. On the one hand, there is Finnissy’s usage of a broad, more abstract line of thinking, which reinforces the experiential character of music. On the other hand, he also maintained a narrower, direct link between the sacred and the notion of religion, which was most effectively recognized in musical texts or liturgical function.

7.1.3 Physicality and Place In their descriptions of the experiences of musical performance, respondents would often refer to physical matters. This physicality was often linked to evoked emotions during a concert. When the focus group was asked about most memorable Musica Sacra Maastricht performances, many of them connected their memories to physical states. Elly remembered a performance that took place in the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek, but she did not recall the performers or the music. She only remembered her impression of the performers’ mis-en-scene. One singer was centrally positioned, with four singers in the surrounding corners, all facing each other. This staging, in combination with the architecture of the basilica, made Elly recall her memory: ‘[I]t truly made me shiver, it was so beautiful.’⁵⁰ In her memories she had connected the notion of beauty to that of her physique while experiencing this perceived beauty. Cunera recalled a concert of a sitar player in the monumental Keizerzaal. ‘I never forgot it. It was [the combination of] the location and the music and the very small

 Interview with Tarenskeen, 27.05. 2014. “Can you say that music based on a sacred text, no, a liturgical text, is automatically sacred music? I am not sure about that.”  Interview with Finnissy, 19.09. 2014.  Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012. “Echt daar kreeg je het koud van, zo mooi.”

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group. I felt extremely privileged and elevated.’⁵¹ This feeling privileged and feeling elevated reflects a combination of intellectual, emotional, and physical effects of a performance. For Cunera, the feeling of elevation was furthermore connected to an emotional dimension. She stated that her primary aim of attending concerts was to be moved. ‘I always go to performances to be moved, also with theatre and film. And I regret it when that does not happen. (…) I would always like to experience a sense of emotion. I look for it, expect it, and often it happens.’⁵² Attending a performance with the expectation of being emotionally moved set the bars quite high. However, this was usually the aim of the program committee and might just be one of the primary reasons why a vast share of visitors kept returning to the festival. A recurring topic in descriptions of musical experiences were the evoked physical states, such as tingling, goose bumps, and tears. Cees discussed the difference between attending familiar and unfamiliar music by means of referring to his physical state. There are things in the festival you know and those are very pleasant to attend. And that music will remain in your head for a long time. But the completely new, that gives you tingles, that is very special. I chew on it for a long time afterwards and that makes it even more beautiful, even more special. It remains in my head for a long time. Now, still. It is very close-by. I hold the visual imagery near to me and I hold the sounds very near to me.⁵³

Through this metaphor of chewing, Cees indicated how for him musical experience did not end when the performance ended, but he remained physically and intellectually engaged with his experiences afterwards. Han indicated very precise parts in the different compositions that had physical effects on him. He referred to the polyphonic singing in the performance of Gregorian chant and Renaissance music by the ensemble Trigon, and the violin solo in the third part of Richard Strauss his Vier Letzte Lieder (1949) as giving him goose bumps. Han did not only feel that a performance of the Gesualdo Consort was a festival high Idem. “Die ben ik niet vergeten. Dat was en die locatie en die muziek en een heel klein groepje en ik voelde me bijzonder bevoorrecht en opgetild.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “Ik ga altijd naar voorstellingen om geraakt te worden, ook naar toneel en film. En als dat dan niet gebeurt vind ik dat wel heel jammer. (…) [D]ie emotie, ik denk dat ik dat wel altijd wil ervaren. Dat zoek ik, verwacht ik, en dat gebeurt ook vaak wel.”  Interview with Cees, 08.10. 2013. “Er zijn wel dingen die je kent in het festival en dat is dan fijn om er bij te zitten. En die muziek die blijft ook een heel tijd in je hoofd. Maar het splinternieuwe, daar krijg je kriebels van, dat is heel bijzonder. Ik kauw het heel lang door en daar wordt het nog mooier, nog bijzonderder van. [I[k [heb] het heel lang nog in mijn hoofd. Nu nog. Heel dichtbij is het. De beelden zijn heel dicht bij en de klanken zijn ook heel dichtbij.”

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light due to the beauty of the music, but also because it moved him intensely. He wrote, ‘The responsorial psalms are beautiful! Right at the first notes, the tears appear. (…) Not all of them move me to the same extent, but they are all beautiful.’⁵⁴ Cees often used the phrase of music going deep. He became very emotional during a performance with a glass harmonica. He said later, ‘[Those sounds] vibrate right through you. I thought it was magnificent, I thought it was very special.’⁵⁵ A final aspect of musical experience that was often referred to was that of being overwhelmed. Vivienne adequately formulated this, when describing her experience of the Kanon Pokajanen, performed by ensemble Aquarius during the 2013 festival. In her festival diary she wrote, ‘I felt like this performance lasted for thirty or forty minutes, while in reality it lasted for two hours.’⁵⁶ Later, during the interview she elaborated upon this. ‘I think that can be generalized, when you really like something or are completely captivated, time flies. When you are in the dentist’s waiting room, time passes much slower. So I thought that was an argument in favor of the concert. You must be listening to something special, when time seems to pass by quicker.’⁵⁷ When her thoughts go in overdrive, she has to let go. ‘It was especially like I could not stop thinking. Then you have to surrender yourself, surrender to the concert, to the circumstances you find yourself in.’⁵⁸ This reflects how for Vivienne her perception of time changed, and with that her perception of her presence in the world. As referred to before, she was a scholar of music and found it often challenging to turn off the analytical modus when listening to musical performance. However, during this performance her analytical skills went in overdrive, which made them incomprehensible for her. The final resort, then, was to surrender to the music and be taken in by the performance. Her changed perception of time, and consequential train of thought about her presence in the world during that performance, formed an im-

 Festival diary Han, 24.09. 2013. “De responsoria zijn prachtig! Meteen bij de eerste tonen komen de tranen. (…) Niet allemaal raken ze me even diep, maar allemaal zijn ze prachtig.”.  Interview with Cees, 08.10. 2013. “[Die geluiden] trillen dwars door je heen. Ik vond het geweldig, ik vond het heel bijzonder.”  Festival diary Vivienne, 19.09. 2013. “Ik had het gevoel dat het maar 30/40 minuten duurde, terwijl het in werkelijkheid 2 uur lang duurde.”  Interview with Vivienne, 21.10. 2013. “Dat is op zich wel een algemeenheid, als je iets ontzettend leuk vindt of als je er helemaal in zit, dan vliegt de tijd voorbij. Als je bij de tandarts zit te wachten dan gaat de tijd langzamer. Dus ik vond dat wel pleiten voor het concert. Als de tijd sneller lijkt te gaan, dat je dan wel naar iets bijzonders zit te luisteren.”  Idem. “Ja, het was vooral dat ik mijn gedachten niet stop kon zetten. Dat je je over moet laten gaan, overgeven aan het concert, aan de omstandigheden waar je in zit.”

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portant feature in her description of her perception of a non-ordinary temporality in which she found herself. The festival sees different types of performances, ranging from small and intimate to grand and spectacular. Both kinds of performances have distinct characters and leave particular impressions on the visitors. The intimate and informal atmosphere that clavichord player Menno van Delft achieved with his instructive talks in between the music pieces was praised⁵⁹ as much as the vast choir and its number of young singers during the performance of Mendelssohn’s St. Paul. ⁶⁰ The physicality of performances also relates to the locations where the music is performed. The general expectation is to have sacred music performed in a suitable environment: a church, monastery, chapel, or another type of devotional place. Many of the interviewees indicated they preferred to have the pieces performed in a church rather than the concert hall. On the one hand, this was because of acoustic reasons, on the other hand, because a church building offered an environment to which the pieces could relate. The concert hall presents performances in a white-cube environment. Such a hall is designed for all attention to go to the performance itself. Yet when a performance is staged in a church, there is a specific style of architecture, a decoration scheme, and a particular religious tradition to relate to. The performers as well as the audience members did not only relate to the produced sounds, but also to the physical environment in which the performance took place. This is what Mike Svoboda had in mind when composing his piece for a church building. As far as I understand the festival, it fits perfectly. It has kind of a sacred thing, but it is not church music in a way, you know. It is definitely for the space in a church, for the atmosphere in the church, for all that concentrated cultural heritage that you take with you when you enter a church. (…) Just the architecture, whether it is modern or old, there is always a lot of stuff to look at. And this is piece is kind of playing with that too, there is a lot of time where you can remember what you just listened to, and can look at the place when you hear the sound fade away again. It should have like four- or five-seconds reverb, also for the harmonies.⁶¹

Finnissy looked differently upon the question of location. The composer did not have a say in where Remembrance Day was going to be performed during the festival. ‘I would have preferred it being done in a church. That is partly for acoustical reasons. It is a piece that needs a bit of resonance. And sometimes concert halls can be a little but unsympathetic. I do not know. (…) The festival has chos-

 Email correspondence with Han, 15.10. 2012.  Interview with Elly, 04.10. 2013.  Interview with Svoboda, 20.09. 2014.

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en to put it there [in the theatre, LW], and that is their decision. It can be performed anywhere.’⁶² Unless it is a commission for a particular context, Finnissy said to never take the performance location into account when writing a piece. ‘I do not see music that way. It is enough of an issue to get it out of my head and on to the paper. And part of that is not imagining of where it is going to be.’⁶³ LUTHER was performed in the Protestant Sint Janskerk, while later throughout the cultural seasons reprises were also staged in concert halls and catholic churches. Tarenskeen preferred his piece to be performed in a church building: [There] it is much more dangerous than in a concert hall. In the concert hall it turns into a concert again, it is a safe building where everything is possible and has been done already. But in such a church: when you look at the walls, (…) you immediately see the history. The darkness and those people, those devout people and so much is not allowed, and [the] social control. That echo remains there, it is always in the air, that social echo.⁶⁴

The aim of depleting the heaviness of Luther’s monumentality might be more effectively reached when the piece would be performed in a church building representative of this monumentality. According to Tarenskeen only then the challenge would truly come to life. During a festival performance, these kinds of challenges were, however, not only related to the intentions of the performers. As indicated before, some performances were experienced as too challenging by the hosts of the concert locations. Kurris regarded a performance, in which among others a ballet dancer was dancing around a stage-lit altar, as a bridge too far. The festival performance had crossed the boundaries set by liturgy. Leenders discerned a difference between the attitude towards hosting performances in the St. Servaas basilica and the Onze Lieve Vrouwe basilica. The former was very strict in stating that it was a church and not a cultural temple, while the latter was often prepared to explore the possibilities for hosting cultural initiatives. ‘They are always looking for the boundaries. I find that quite special.’⁶⁵ The staging of the festival in these different locations in Maastricht required

 Interview with Finnissy, 19.09. 2014.  Idem.  Interview with Tarenskeen, 27.05. 2014. “Omdat het stuk dan gevaarlijker is dan in een concertzaal. In de concertzaal wordt het weer een concert, een veilig gebouw waar alles wel kan en waar ze alles al een keer gehad hebben. Maar in zo’n kerk: als je naar die muren kijkt, (…) zie je toch meteen de geschiedenis. Die donkerte en die mensen, [dat] godsvruchtig publiek en heel veel mag niet, en sociale controle. (…) Die echo die blijft daar, die blijft daar altijd hangen, die sociale echo.”  Interview with Leenders, 19.01. 2015. “Die zitten altijd een beetje te kijken, waar zitten de grenzen. Ik vind dat wel bijzonder.”

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the churches to re-evaluate their own spatial and moral possibilities and limits regarding the hosting of cultural, non-liturgical events. This resulted in a continuous negotiation process between the festival producers and the church hosts, as well as eventually in the minds of visitors who engaged with the performed music.

7.2 The Implications of Art Music Since 2013, Musica Sacra Maastricht was called an arts festival rather than a music festival. This implied the expansion of the range of activities into other realms of arts in addition to the performance of music. Concerning all the artistic disciplines, an implicit consensus existed about what was qualitatively good and interesting among the committee members. The audience members and the performers also expressed particular implicit expectations and assumptions about the kind of music belonging to the festival program. This was particularly noticeable in their use of the genre of sacred music. This genre largely excludes popular music and rather focuses on liturgical music and classical music based on religious subject matters.⁶⁶ The implied consensus among the committee members was maintained on the basis of a difference between what they called consumption music and music written and performed in order to be engaged with. The music in the festival should not be all too accessible or too easily consumed. Rather, it should offer a particular challenge for the audience and demand a certain level of involvement. This difference is prevalent in academic literature. Defenders of classical music mainly employ it when they discuss the difference between popular and classical music. Musicologist Julian Johnson created a distinction between music functioning as art and music that has other functions such as entertainment.⁶⁷ His primary argument was that music functioning as art obtains an important social role, which is largely denied by contemporary culture. His book was a plea for a revaluation of classical music, based on arguments that point to the importance of classical music.

 An exploration of the use of the binary popular-classical music for the purpose of academic research was presented in chapter 1. The binary is used here only to clarify the arguments of the discussed authors.  Julian Johnson, Who needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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We understand ourselves as particular, physical beings, but we also value the ways we exceed the physical, the ways our capacity for thought, feeling, and imagination seem to transcend our bodily existence. Music-as-art performs a similar alchemy: in projecting a content beyond its acoustic materials, it does not deny its physical aspect but redeems it as the vehicle of something that exceeds the physical. In doing so, it offers us not only a symbol of our transcendent nature, but also a means for its repeated enactment.⁶⁸

In principle this statement is supported by the data gathered from the audience members at the festival. However, the question remains whether this does not count for all music functioning as art, because this function is not the privilege of classical or Western art music per se. While Johnson turned popular music into an arch nemesis, as I previously argued, the terminology falls short. Many popular subgenres, such as folk, metal, and singer-songwriter, which would not fit within the realm of classical music, can still function as art. It would be questionable whether performers of these subgenres would regard their music as popular at all, and not rather as alternative or even – yes – art. So, while Johnson’s statement about art music has relevance, his demarcation of the kinds of music that possibly could have this function is narrow. In addition, this distinction between classical and popular music bears witness to a tradition of political implications. While Johnson argued for a renewed political acknowledgement of the social relevance of art music, philosopher Theodor Adorno emphasized the political dangers of undermining the relevance of classical and art music.⁶⁹ For Adorno music had the power to seduce, influence consciousness, and contribute to social structures. If the mainstream cultural industry increasingly received a dominant position in society, platforms for alternative and subversive music diminished and could even vanish. For societies to resist monothinking, it was of crucial importance that music and other art forms undermining the accepted structures remained to be part of the public domain. The concern of Adorno was aimed at the ever-increasing dominance of the commercial, global music industries, which hardly left any room for competition between music genres and the display of difference: “Mass culture is not interested in turning its consumers into sportsmen as such but only into howling devotees of the stadium. (…) The power of the culture industry’s ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness.”⁷⁰ Adorno’s analysis was rooted in the Marxist tradition, in which the commercial culture industry was regarded as a suppressive power, continuously affirming the popular status quo and ac-

 Idem, 130.  Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry (London: Routledge, 1991).  Idem, 90, 104.

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cepting the established power structures as a given. It was seen to suppress the subversive elements found in classical and alternative music. Adorno, therefore, concluded with respect to popular music what Marx stated regarding religion: it is “the opium of the masses.”⁷¹ Even though the Marxist tradition has seen many critiques, it is still prevalent in current scholarship on the relationship between popular and classical music and its social implications. Moreover, it is reflected in the data, primarily in how the program committee discussed this festival’s position in the Dutch cultural sector and how performers discussed their reasons for making music. From a self-identified periphery, in relation to the commercialized and mediatized music sector, the festival and the performers felt they offered a counter balance by means of the music they selected and performed. The visitors also discussed this sense of counter-culture; in that they not often found the music they ascribed special meaning to elsewhere than at Musica Sacra Maastricht.

7.2.1 Experience and Interpretation While the scope of the kinds of music able to function as art is subject to debate, Partridge concluded: “the significance of music-as-art is (…) not immediately discernable. Its value is realized through contemplation and intellectual effort.”⁷² To a large extent, the program committee and the performers at Musica Sacra Maastricht shared this view. The performed music was not mere entertainment; a high level of engagement and cultural baggage was required. The complexity in the programmed music made it more challenging for the performers to transmit, also demanding a particular mental investment from the audience. The program committee sometimes feared that due to this emphasis the festival would be seen as an elitist festival, suitable for only a small audience. However, they prioritized the existence of a platform for this kind of music at the cost of giving in to what they regarded as popular demand. Moreover, they propagated the consensus that the possible revelatory or sacred potential of music does not come easy; it required a mental investment of both the performers and the audience members. Audience members used different appreciation strategies for early music, more often aesthetically pleasing and more accessible than the music dating to modern and contemporary times. For the latter category, there was not neces-

 Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977 [1844]), 127.  Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus, 22.

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sarily the expectation that the music would be beautiful, but rather that it would be interesting and demanding. Whether it was old or new music, the audience members always expected, or at least hoped, to become overwhelmed by a musical performance. This feeling took two forms: of being carried away into another world, in ecstasy and exaltation; and of being extremely present in the moment, in the world created through the musical performance, being highly alert and aware. These were two complementary experiences, which audience members both described in terms of being overwhelmed. When these experiences occurred, the performance began to operate at the level of, in the terminology of Roy Rappaport, high-order meaning. In high-order meaning the distance between signs, significata, and those for whom they are meaningful may be greatly reduced, if not annihilated, as he for whom it is meaningful feels himself uniting with or participating in that which is meaningful to him. Meaning stops being referential, becomes a state of being, and as such seems totally subjective. Our hierarchy of meaningfulness is, among other things, a hierarchy of subjectivity.⁷³

In either experience of feeling overwhelmed, the musical performance that caused this experience influenced the state of being of the listener. This changed state of being may be seen as a dynamic of internalization of the performed music, on embodied or intellectual levels. However, while during the performance meaning may stop being referential, after the performance the experienced changed state of being will become subject to reference again, by means of interpretation. I have studied the experiential mode of engaging with music on an interpretative level. The sensory elements of a musical performance were subjected to interpretation when they were attributed meaning. On this interpretative level, discursive features also had a prominent role. They could take the form of, for instance, a musical composition’s subject matter or source of inspiration, the biography of the composer or musician, the occasion for which a piece was written, or the compositional structure of the music. Within the context of the festival, all of these features were used in the assessment whether in the first instance a piece was suitable for the annual festival theme, and, second, whether it was suitable within the frames of the religious or secular sacred. Performers were mostly concerned with the suitability for the annual festival theme, in which the sacred was implied, but less so with the suitability of a particular music piece with the notion of the sacred as such. The features by means of

 Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 73.

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which audience members attributed meaning also covered subject matter, memories of previous musical experiences, and knowledge of genre and music history. Furthermore, they tended to position their most current festival experiences in relation to previous festival experiences: their festival histories offered a framework within which they positioned their most recent experiences. Both the program committee and the performers did not desire to convey a moral message by means of the music selection. Most of them emphasized their intention of offering the audience a tool for reflection or wish to challenge them. The program committee and the performers wanted to offer opportunities to engage with rather than to provide educational or moral lessons. While this might be the overt intention, in the process of selecting music pieces the committee made clear decisions and judgments on what was (and was not) suitable for the festival. The same went for the performers in their repertoire choice. These choices were never value-free or random. They were based upon the larger scheme in which the festival operated, and provided a particular foundation from which the audience members departed in their meaning attributions to the pieces. This tendency relates to what Rappaport described as the efficacy of ritual: “[I]t is not ritual’s office to ensure compliance but to establish obligation.”⁷⁴ The program committee and the performers did not request compliance to their particular outlooks in their selections of the musical pieces, but in their programming of these particular performances within this particular festival context they established a sense of obligation – a framework that demanded engagement and relating to – by those who attended. Partridge addressed this paradox in terms of those who “read” the “musical texts” and how they construe meanings retrieved from these readings. [W]e can think of the music as less an object and more an event, in the sense that it is an experience shaped by the reader, but under guidance of the text. Firstly, what each listener makes of the music is shaped by particular mattering maps and cannot be entirely determined by music itself. Secondly, (…) people are not free to read anything they want into musical texts, in that, while their investments may be shaped by such maps, the music itself also brings something to the encounter and contributes to the process of meaning making; it encourages certain affective investments and discourages others.⁷⁵

While the music itself, the context in which it was presented, and how it was performed might encourage particular emotional investments from audience members, it remains to be seen how these investments actually take place. After leav-

 Idem, 124.  Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus, 171.

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ing a concert, each visitor would have a different story to tell about what he or she took from the music. The many different layers of meaning attribution through and to the music offer grounds for further analysis. Here it suffices to observe that although people no longer wish to follow one prescribed ideological voice, they do need a particular framework to relate to in order to formulate their own moral frameworks.

7.2.2 The Attribution of Meaning As sounds in musical compositions only gain meaning by means of attributions of the composer, performer, and festival organizer and listener, the contexts in which the festival committee put particular performances was very carefully considered and debated. The primary layers of musical meaning were found in the biographies of the composers, the sources of inspiration and subject matter of the compositions, and the occasions the compositions were written for. In turn these aspects were assessed on their levels of religious or secular sacrality and their suitability for the annual theme. By means of this last step, the committee provided the composition and the composer with a new context and layer of meaning. A method to shed light on the variety of attributed meanings and their functioning in a particular framework is that of semiotics. This approach allows for analysis of musical performances with respect to how they are constituted by signs. This is useful in the attempt to understand how different audience members have individual ways of dealing with the signs transmitted through the performance. These varied responses indicate the music functions in different manners on several levels of meaningfulness. According to the Peircian model, a sign consists of three properties: the representamen (the form in which the sign appears, how it is represented), the object (to which the sign refers, what is represented), and the interpretant (the sense made of the sign, how it is interpreted).⁷⁶ In contrast to his fellow semiotician Ferdinand De Saussure, with the category of object Peirce provided in his model a position for the world beyond the sign itself, the reality in which the sign is perceived.⁷⁷ For Peirce, the meaning of a sign always consisted of representation and interpretation. While this research project does not allow for a full semiotic analysis of musical signs, I would like to take one aspect of Peircian semiotics to cast light on what is at stake in the types of experiences of different

 Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 29.  Idem, 33.

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visitors. This aspect regards the different levels on which perceived meanings may function. These levels can be approached by the distinction between three modes of relationship between the representamen on the one hand and the interpretant or the object on the other: symbol (based on conventional agreement), icon (based on partial resemblance), and index (based on direct connection).⁷⁸ One and the same sign (in this case: feature in a musical performance) may be perceived in these three different manners, dependent on each participant in the performance. Yet, it has to be noted that the relationships between the different sign properties hardly ever function in pure symbolic, iconic, or indexical manner. As with many academic constructs, the different modes are also ideal types. I will work with these ideal types in the following analyses, to explore different manners of meaning attribution resulting from several musical performances. One of the performances that elicited a wide variety of strong responses was LUTHER. ⁷⁹ It may be stated that this performance took place in an overall symbolic frame of reference. The composer deliberately took a topic and a musical format on which many conventional agreements exist and decided to explore these agreements with his artistic choices within the performance. Elly’s experience was characterized by disappointment and disagreement, while Cees had an ecstatic, insightful experience. The difference in these responses resulted from their respective treatments of the form of the performance, how they perceived the signs transmitted by the performance, and how they related it to the world beyond the performance. For Elly, the treatment of the subject matter, the persona of Luther, predominantly functioned in a symbolic manner. To her, both the text and the performance style, which conveyed the doubts as well as the strong convictions of Luther, were wrong representations of the historical figure. She approached the performance style and the texts in a primarily symbolic mode, as misrepresenting the implicit conceptions she adhered to. This perceived misrepresentation resulted in her disappointment. For Cees, on the other hand, the performance style and the texts functioned predominantly on an indexical level. The text, in particular one sentence on how religion and religious figures become footnotes in the larger context of history, elicited an insightful realization. For him these words created an indexical relationship between the form of the sign and the world beyond the performance. For him it led to an understanding of how the process of history writing

 Idem, 36.  See Chapter 6 for an elaborate description of the audience response to Luther, and Elly, Cees, and Han’s responses in particular.

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works. This realization made him ecstatic and highly appreciative of the performance. Elly’s experience was primarily rooted in conventional agreement, whereas Cees’ experience was foremost grounded in a sense of identification. For Elly the conventional agreement on the persona and the history of Luther was broken, she grounded her meaning attribution in the distinction from convention (low-order) of what she witnessed in the performance and her previously existing knowledge and beliefs. Through his experience Cees grounded his attribution of meaning in the identification with the performance. This one sentence in the text in particular evoked an insightful experience for him. Through this experience, he connected the thoughts and knowledge it evoked with the sentences spoken during the performance. Although the performance took place in an overall symbolic frame of reference, for Cees the indexical mode trumped the other modes. The iconic relationship between sign properties could also be recognized in the data. It is a relationship grounded in resemblance. Such an experience may be found in Han’s response to the performance of Strange and Sacred Noise. After this percussion concert, he was ecstatic and called this concert the reason why he keeps coming back to the festival. Later he wrote how, because of this concert, he finally understood the workings of tribal drumming ceremonies. Without identifying with the religious connotations of these kinds of ceremonies or characterizing his own experience of the music as a religious experience, to a certain extent he could relate to particular similarities in appearance and effect between both types of performances. Without equating the meanings he would attribute to both types, he grounded the meaning he attached to the festival performance by means of resembling it to a tribal ceremony. During Strange and Sacred Noise, one visitor left after the first part of the performance. For her the sound was so penetrating and harmful to the senses that she was unable to attribute any kind of meaning beyond the volume of the music. In contrast to Han, her experience was rooted in the notion of convention, in this case a convention she found the performance not to agree with. Her conventional appreciation of music was violated by this performance. It may be observed that she perceived the relationship between the form of the sign and the context in which it took place on a symbolic level. Her meaning attribution was grounded in distinction from convention. A final example that demonstrates the relevance of the semiotic modes typology is the discussion about Holst’s The Planets. The primary response to the proposal of programming this orchestral composition was that the festival committee would not wish to be associated with it. In a next proposal, which everyone in the committee commended, it was suggested that the organ adaptation of The Planets would be performed. Between the first and second proposal, a

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shift in meaning attribution took place. While the orchestral version was regarded as too popular and too accessible, the organ adaptation of the same composition fitted into the category of unique, challenging, complex, and consequentially more suitable within a dynamic of the sacred. The orchestral composition functioned primarily on a symbolic level, while the organ adaptation was judged from an iconic perspective. From a meaning attribution grounded in convention in response to the first proposal, the second proposal elicited an attachment of meaning founded on resemblance. The connotations of popularity and accessibility were never completely discarded, but the change in musical arrangements had transformed the perceived meaning of The Planets from symbolic to indexical features. This analytical exercise is meant to convey the different levels on which musical performances and the signs these transmit may function. Rappaport linked the three levels of meaning to the possible different characters of semiotic signs. He related the low-order to the symbol, the middle-order to the icon, and the high-order to the index. He saw high-order meaning as most significant in humans’ meaning-making practices, yet stated all three “bases of meaningfulness”⁸⁰ of importance for ritual behavior. Following this statement, I would suggest all three orders of meaning, and the three signs modes are of importance for possible perceptions of the sacred. Perceptions of iconic, symbolic, and indexical nature may all lead to an internalization of the musical performance. The examples regarding the symbolic mode concerned disagreement on convention, indicating a strong commitment to those perceived conventions. Furthermore, Han’s iconic experience also obtained a certain sacred character for him, which he described as the primary reason of continued festival attendance. Cees’ experience of indexical nature also led to a particular internalization of the transmitted signs and their perceived meaningfulness. Whether these experiences were at the heart of perceptions of the sacred was not so much a matter of relationship between sign properties, but rather of agreement with these relationships, resulting in a sense of internalization on either intellectual or embodied level.

7.2.3 What Music Conveys In the festival, both the program committee and the audience members sought to establish a balance between what was familiar and unfamiliar to them. There

 Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 72.

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was an attempt at balancing the known and the unknown in their selections. This balance corresponds with several theoretical approaches. First, it reflects the typology of Demerath on the variety of sacred experiences.⁸¹ His distinction between affirmatory and compensatory experiences may be related to the feelings of homecoming and adventure in the respective choices for familiar and unfamiliar musical performances. Also, the difference between the “two broad classes of messages”⁸² that Rappaport discerned as being conveyed by ritual performance (canonical and self-referential) may be of use in thinking further about how musical performance is perceived. Canonical messages convey and express that which is grounded in Ultimate Sacred Postulates. The distinction between self-referential and canonical messages demonstrates Rappaport’s focus on liturgical rituals, and causes many questions with regard to the analysis of musical performance. The primary observation in the context of this project is that music is largely unable to convey canonical messages. The fieldwork demonstrated that two aspects are important here. The first is whether it concerns instrumental or vocal music. As argued before, musical sounds have no intrinsic meanings, but those relating to the music attribute meanings to it. In the expression of a particular message, words are necessary; whether they are sung by performers, used by the composer in the score, or a program committee in festival booklets. Still, the use of words is not a guarantee for what visitors take from the performed music. As the findings at Musica Sacra Maastricht have shown, the conveyed messages were always the result of negotiations between perceptions of the festival organizers, performers, and visitors. The second relevant aspect is whether composers, musicians, or a program committee have the desire to convey a particular message. Many of the respondents stated that they had no intention whatsoever to convey a specific message. Even when there was a clear framework, like in Finnissy’s Remembrance Day or Svoboda’s Bucher der Zeiten, the composers still maintained to leave it to the visitors what these eventually would take from it. This creates a problematic position for the notion of canonical messages in the family resemblance between ritual and music. The problem is that in both the contemporary production of music and the contemporary perception of music a strong moral message is seen as out of place, or even improper. The presence of such a fixed message could possibly turn art into advertising or even propaganda, which is something the committee members and performers ex-

 N.J. Demerath, “The varieties of sacred experience: Finding the sacred in a secular grove,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39:1 (2000): 1– 11.  Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 52– 54.

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pressed to want to avoid at all times. A critique given by one of the respondents was that a performance was too literal. ⁸³ When an artwork is too literal, it may be interpreted that its self-referential potential is overshadowed by the canonical. The artwork then communicates too directly what the listener (or viewer or reader) should take from it, rather than that it offers a platform of possibilities. These observations lead to a paradox about the current position (and popularity) of sacred music. Rappaport based the distinction between self-referential and canonical messages on his study of religious and liturgical rituals. At Musica Sacra Maastricht, a mixture of religious and secular music was presented. And, overall, it may be concluded that religious music, as conveyed by the genre of sacred music, still has a significant presence in the contemporary music scene. Yet, if the contemporary consumer does not appreciate canonical messages, why is religious music so popular? Visitor records of the festival show how concerts of early music, which at Musica Sacra Maastricht may be largely equated with sacred music, have the highest visitor numbers. Yet, according to the Rappaportian logic this type of music conveys canonical messages per definition. Drawing from the data analyses of the three involved groups, I would argue that the popularity of music with religious or liturgical connotations can be understood in terms of the canonical and self-referential. Religious music, originally created and performed in an overall symbolic frame intended to signify its sacred nature, is rooted in Ultimate Sacred Postulates and expresses these by means of conveying canonical messages. Yet, in its performance at Musica Sacra Maastricht – and I dare say, in all concert formats – this type of music is largely undone of its canonical potential. A contemporary audience does not necessarily perceive sacred music for its canonical value; rather it perceives it for its self-referential value. An exponent of this was audience member Han, who stated that as an atheist he could truly enjoy moments when performers would sing about the glory of God, as this would intensify the experience. The music’s roots in a particular canonical tradition did not matter for him, because he purely related to the music for what it could mean to him on a self-referential level. Surely, he acknowledged the formulation of particular USPs, but decided not to engage with them for their canonical value. I would extrapolate this analysis to the performance of music associated with the sacred music genre in general, and think this process underlies a transformation by means of which religious music becomes suitable for, and maintains to have a function in, secularizing cultural contexts.

 Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013.

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7.3 Reflection Resulting from the combination of the offered and experienced sound and silence in a particular context, visitors tended to describe how many of their festival experiences resulted in a sense of reflection. When music made them feel calm, this was often described to be followed by a sense of thoughtfulness, introspection, and reflection. The musical experiences resulting in such introspection were likely to be associated with the notion of the sacred. Not seldomly music led to profound insights relating to larger, abstract notions and existential questions. For Cees this was a fundamental feature in his experience of music and in the reasoning why music played such an important role in his life. In his festival diary, he made some notes about an opera concert during the 2013 festival edition. The songs were alternated with poetry of William Shakespeare. Not so much the music, but the poetry touched him. Cees perceived the texts of Shakespeare to be sacred in themselves. One poetry line, “[W]e are afraid of our own phantasy,” impressed Cees. He later said, ‘I thought that was so profound. (…) Only that which we are scared of is our phantasy. Otherwise there is no reason to be scared. I thought that was very beautiful [and] it really made me think.’⁸⁴ As discussed previously, his experience of the performance LUTHER resulted in a similar feeling of profound insight. Where Cunera attended concerts with the expectation, or at least the hope, to be touched emotionally, for Cees the intellectual experience of a musical performance was of equal importance. This intellectual experience did not necessarily have a positive character. The insights Elly gained during her experience of LUTHER were equally valuable when it came to processes of meaning making. By being confronted with a representation of how she would never regard the figure of Luther, she was simultaneously affirmed in how she did see him and what this meant to her. The previously described strong physical experience that Han had during the percussion concert Strange and Sacred Noise, made him reflect on how he could actually relate to and describe this experience. It contributed to his experiential knowledge, an insight to the senses that provided him access into a realm he never thought to be able to comprehend. In addition to intellectual insights, reflection could also take place on the sensory level.

 Interview with Cees, 08.10. 2013. “Dat vond ik een hele diepe. Waar ben je bang voor, alleen maar waar we bang voor zijn is onze fantasie. Anders hoef je niet bang te zijn. Dat vond ik heel mooi [en] dat zet[te] mij (…) aan het denken.”

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Respondents characterized many recollections of performances with a meditative quality or an atmosphere of stillness, which they in turn associated with the notion of the sacred. Elly strongly related quietness and calm with sacrality. For Han these performances were part of his most cherished memories of the festival.⁸⁵ In addition to the performances leading to a sense of reflection or stillness within the listener during or after the performance, also the performances themselves could be characterized as such. Contrary to what may be expected, a performance of relatively quiet and calm music can cause a very intense listening experience. Han described this in his experience of Zimmermann’s Stille und Umkehr during the festival of 2013, when he recounted later to have continuously sat on the edge of his seat.⁸⁶ A third category is where these two dimensions of stillness come together. For Margot it was an argument in her selection of concerts. In addition to her favorite locations, she picked the concerts she thought would be atmospheric and calm.⁸⁷ For example, she would never select a performance of music by composer Louis Andriessen, because she found his work too dynamic and all over the place.⁸⁸ It is not this kind of intensity she wished to experience. She rather desired to experience a melodious and atmospheric intensity, a sense of being overwhelmed in a pleasant way. The sense of reflection was not only experienced during the festival performance, but attributed to music in a broader sense. For all respondents, music – and the arts in general – played an important role in their lives. With regard to the value of the arts in her life, Cunera described their intrinsic value. ‘In all periods of my life, whether it was comforting, [offering] an escape, or just [for] fun, nice, enriching. (…) I do not simply consume. Everything I do, I try to follow-up with reading material or listening to a recording, to really study it. It is not like eating a cream-cake. It enriches me.’⁸⁹ Such engagement with artistic practices has a fundamental character. Cunera felt it provided meaning to her surroundings and her personality. It is one of her primary sense-making strategies. She shaped this strategy by providing herself with study material on the creations

 Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012.  See section 6.2.2, where Han describes his listening experience as a continuous sitting on the edge of his seat.  E-mail correspondence with Margot, 03.09. 2012. “I selected these performances because I think they are going to be very atmospheric and calm.”  Ibid. “I don’t like the masses of Andriessen, too busy.”  Interview with Cunera, 18.10. 2013. “In alle periodes van mijn leven, of het was troost, of vlucht, of gewoon leuk, fijn, verrijkend. Maar ik moet wel zeggen dat ik niet alleen consumptief bezig ben. Van alles wat ik doe, probeer ik daarna erover te lezen, terug te luisteren op cd, om me er toch in te verdiepen. Het is niet van hap, slik, weg. Mij verrijkt dat.”

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and performers afterwards. This way, the concerts kept resonating in her life, long after the performances were over. During the focus group meeting the respondents were asked to visually express how they related the festival to their everyday lives by creating a drawing. Cunera drew a world consisting of three parts. The top part consisted of the sun, the clouds, the stars, and musical notes. The bottom part consisted of people living their everyday lives, and doing their usual, normal stuff. The layer in between showed a small group of people listening to musical notes coming from above. Cunera felt the festival offered the privilege of being part of this small group.⁹⁰ It was a representation of how the festival offered a world, however temporary, that was non-ordinary in relation to her everyday life. The experiences she obtained in this temporary world, she took with her when being back in her everyday life. These remained as valuable to her as before, even though the meaning potentially changed after she conducting more study, offering more reflection, afterwards. For Verheggen, moments and opportunities for contemplation and reflection were a crucial part in engagement with artistic practices. ‘As soon as you produce an artistic act, you are outside of the ordinary world. Then you are involved in something that cannot be said in any other way, so you have started to think about it in this way. And that does not necessarily need to be sacred, but it is something that goes further.’⁹¹ This going beyond ordinary life occurs in the process of trying to find expressions for that which cannot be expressed in words. In this process, which inevitably requires contemplation, Verheggen recognized opportunities for the sacred. ‘Some people have no affinity whatsoever with sacrality, but by offering them good and qualitatively high music, I do think something happens to them. Whatever that may be. At least they have experienced something of beauty and whatever that might mean.’⁹² According to Verheggen, even if the music or the context in which it is performed were not at all concerned with the notion of the sacred, there still lies an opportunity for a sacred dimension in music that is composed well, in terms of structure, form, musicality, artistry, and creativity. Finnissy also discussed the impact of music, and the arts in general, in terms of evoking beyond mainstream or ordinary experi-

 Focus group meeting, 19.05. 2012.  Interview with Verheggen, 06.02. 2015. “Zo gauw je een artistieke daad verricht, sta je eigenlijk al buiten het gewone leven. Ben je eigenlijk al bezig met iets dat je niet op een andere manier kunt zeggen, en dan ben je al bezig met nadenken. En dat hoeft helemaal niet perse meteen sacraal te zijn, maar wel iets dat verder gaat.”  Idem. “Want sommige mensen zullen niks hebben met sacraliteit, maar door goede en kwalitatief hoge muziek te bieden, denk ik toch dat er iets gebeurt met ze. Wat het dan ook is. Maar ze hebben in ieder geval iets ervaren van schoonheid of wat het te betekenen heeft.”

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ences. Establishing a relationship of emotional or intellectual engagement between a composition and the audience fulfilled a role that, according to him, mainstream media cannot establish in this day and age. He regarded artistic practices as essential in the intellectual and spiritual functioning of society. He did not necessarily see a difference in function between different artistic disciplines. ‘There is not a divide. All human experience is the same. (…) There is no difference in transmuting an imaginative experience into music as there is into paint or sculpture or anything else. You go through the very similar set of experiences, issues, problems.’⁹³ As such, the composer and performer establish a relationship with the audience, in turn with the intention of evoking a particular type of experience, one of reflection. For respondents from all types of involvement in the festival, reflection was seen as one the main aims, even highest attainable results, in the festival. When musical performances had the ability to touch and elicit something in them, they often described this in terms of reflection. It offered a moment of standing still, of focus, of stepping out of time, experienced in a wholly other, non-ordinary way. Yet, in previously presented theoretical considerations, the notion of reflection has been used to reinforce a non-performative, non-impactful relation to religion and ritual: a type of relation that exists on the surface rather than in the interior. Belting’s notion of the likeness of religion in images emphasizes how reflection is stimulated, but does not offer the experience of a fundamental presence outside of oneself. In Rappaport’s differentiation between play and ritual, play might evoke reflection, while ritual has the potential to transform. From the perceptions described by the respondents throughout this book, I would argue that such differentiations deserve reconsideration. The question rises whether reflection, either in the form of intellectual stimulation or physical impact, does not indeed have performative potential, the potential to actually establish meaningful impact or change in people’s lives, minds, and bodies.

7.4 Conditions While a situational approach to the sacred, as has been used throughout this study, potentially places perceptions of the sacred anywhere, the field of Musica Sacra Maastricht demonstrates how the sacred is framed. Within the festival’s perceptions of the sacred, certain conditions apply, when it comes to quality, aesthetics, locations or content. These conditions especially relate to creating a plat-

 Interview with Finnissy, 19.09. 2014.

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form for reflection, described in the previous paragraph as one of the highest goals. In relation to the artistic performances at the festival, not only the notion of sound is crucial here, but also that of silence. Which, in turn, does not only take place in the concert locations, but also in relation to the world around the festival. It takes place in a bustling city, in which activities in the public space are abundant. Even when concerts take place within architectural buildings like churches or a repurposed factory hall, the outside world is never far away. One of the most telling examples was the performance of Strange and Sacred Noise, in which the music itself was loud and physically impactful. Yet, a siren-blasting ambulance that drove by at fast speed still managed to intrude with the performed music inside the Timmerfabriek. The chances for disturbance from the outside world was a theme continuously on the mind of the program committee. While the committee expressed a sense of high demands to performers and other partners, the outside world at large is more difficult to control. At best, a lobby toward local and provincial partners could be conducted. However, this was perceived as a challenging, often one-directional relationship. The relationship toward the city council and provincial partners was primarily experienced by the program committee in terms of misunderstanding. The committee saw its festival to occupy an underdog position with regard to other local musical and cultural events. In 2012 the festival saw itself forced to switch its usual third weekend for the first weekend of September because of the World Championship Speed Cycling that was held in the Maastricht area. Such an event, accompanied by speakers, music, and cheering audiences, clashed with the peaceful environments required by the festival concerts. However, during this first weekend of September a popular music festival was organized at the outskirts of the city. Due to the wind the beats of the festival would still reach some of the concert locations in the inner city and interfere with the performed music during Musica Sacra Maastricht. During the 2013 festival, back to September’s third weekend, the city council organized a triathlon on the Saturday and Sunday. This also meant public disturbance of the required environment of quietness. In a conversation about this, the city council admitted it had made a mistake in the planning, but was unable to change it. With prevalence given to such alternative outdoor (and popular) events in the city, the program committee felt underappreciated in local governmental planning. On the one hand, the committee would appreciate a more favorable treatment of what it was trying to achieve on a cultural level. On the other hand, it was felt that those who were in charge of the planning did not al-

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ways fully grasp what the committee was trying to achieve with the festival, resulting in this perceived undeserved treatment.⁹⁴ In order for the sound to optimally resonate for the participants, a context of silence and quietude was necessary. A temporary world had to be created in which the music could function as loudly or as quietly as it was intended to by the composers. In addition to a context in which the music could optimally function, such a setting also allowed the audience members to fully engage with the music. Silence became a predisposition to listen to the music, hear it better, and experience something different, something set-apart. In these performing and listening experiences, a mode that anthropologist Timothy Ingold has called attentionality was required. Attentionality refers to a process of going along with things, ‘with opening op to them and doing their bidding.’⁹⁵ It refers to an embodied and mental presence, to which participants are invited during an artistic performance. A presence in which the music (or other performed artistic manifestation) was able to fully speak to those participating in the performance, constitute a temporal new world or even overwhelm them. This mode of attention does not only refer to the physical and mental state of the participant, but also to the context in which the performance takes place, and indeed the world beyond this context that has equal impact on what happens inside. Visual culture scholar Rina Arya addressed this combination of embodied presence and the setting in which this takes place in her study on the spiritual in visual art, departing from the question how the dimension of spirituality manifests itself in engagement with artworks.⁹⁶ Overall, she observed, the spiritual is not intrinsically present in artworks and is not dependent on medium or style. Yet, resulting from her methodology, Arya discerned the spiritual in the responses elicited by the artworks. From this she identified two conditions required for evoking responses that might be understood in terms of the spiritual: receptivity and context. ⁹⁷ In line with Ingold’s notion of attentionality, receptivity indicates a type of openness to being fully in the present moment and an opened-up attitude towards whatever the artwork might have to bring. “We place ourselves in the space of the artwork through the viewing and through the process of contem-

 Meeting program committee, 05.04. 2012.  Timothy Ingold, “On Human Correspondence,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23:1 (2007): 9 – 27.  Rina Arya, “Contemplations of the Spiritual in Visual Art,” Journal for the Study of Spirituality 1:1 (2011): 76 – 93.  Idem, 87.

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plation become absorbed by the artwork.”⁹⁸ Through such an open attitude, engagement with artworks – including artistic performance – becomes a multisensorial experience of immersive nature, which does not only affect sight, but other senses as well. As such, engagement with art is an embodied experience. The second condition for the spiritual in art is that of a context, which Arya characterized as being of “appropriate” nature. Artworks situated in contemporary museums call for meditation and reflection, more than cognitive or rational responses. “The context of the art gallery is less prescriptive”— it reflects the white cube principle of the theatre, in theory anything is possible in the museum and meanings are hardly ever fix. The spiritual then becomes “activated in the encounter.”⁹⁹ Whereas Arya analyzed such encounters in terms of spirituality and studied three artworks accordingly (an orthodox icon and artworks by Mark Rothko and Bill Viola), I would argue a similar line of argumentation can be made for the sacred. Art, music, sound, and silence, are not intrinsically sacred. Rather they become sacred by means of experience, construction, and the consequential attribution of value. It is in the encounter, with its many facets including setting and the conditions in which this setting optimally functions, through which people come to regard an artwork or artistic experience as sacred and treat it accordingly. When the receptivity or context are disturbed, for whichever reason, an attribution of sacred value might be in danger. Or, it might even heighten the attribution of the sacred through a discourse of differentiation: the argument that the world beyond is not considering or respecting artistic performances that take place with, in our case, a festival setting, can also strengthen the perception that this is what actually matters. As a final example, I would like to share an observation from outside the research period, taking place during the 2020 festival edition. It illustrates how various sacred forms (regarded from the broader approach to the sacred) coexist and compete for different types of attentionality in the public space, turning into a competition between sound and silence in the public space. On the Sunday afternoon of the 2020 festival edition, themed Acceptance and Resignation, a concert took place in the Sint Janskerk by ensemble Aventure. They performed a program titled Cranc, Onzeker, Broos (Unwell, Uncertain, Vulnerable), featuring late medieval Marian songs and lamentations from the Gruuthuse Manuscript (ca. 1400), performed by one singer and three recorders. Overall, a performance that was – in line with its subject matter – vulnerable for disturban-

 Ibid.  Idem, 89.

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ces from outside and required a context of silence to be fully experienced. When committee members and visitors were headed to the Sint Janskerk to attend this concert, it turned out that at the Vrijthof Square a demonstration was taking place. Black Lives Matter protesters were chanting and giving amplified speeches at the end of the square at which the Sint Janskerk bordered. Several committee members approached participants in the demonstration, to ask how long it would continue to go on for and to see whether they could do something about it – because the demonstration would offer a disturbance for the concert. Observing how the committee members talked to the people involved in the demonstration, offered an image that captured how various forms of the sacred co-exist. In their co-existence these forms compete for attention and, most importantly in the context of the festival, for a sounding presence in the public space. Protests tend to occur with speakers and microphones, taking a stand and trying to gain attention within, in this case, an urban setting. The demonstration for the sanctity of black lives was exemplary of this. Instead, for the type of sacred addressed by the festival, silence and quietude was required. Inside the church it was quiet when the concert began. But, at times, the performed music was confronted with the sounds from outside, notably the cheering and chanting during and after speeches. Halfway through the concert, the demonstration was over and the space beyond the church returned to being somewhat quieter – at least quiet enough for the concert to continue undisturbed through the end. It was another addition to the list of events for which the municipality granted permission to coincide with the festival in the public space. But mostly it was an example of how manifestations of the sacred can demand different, or even opposing, conditions. The Black Lives Matter protesters voiced themselves, creating a strong and amplified presence, while the festival performance required silence as precondition to be heard. It reinforced the fragile nature of the sacred as it is conceived of by the festival. The coinciding of these two events on that Sunday afternoon in Maastricht was a telling embodiment of the fragmented state of the contemporary sacred.

7.5 Experience of Time When the precondition of a silent context for the performances of music during the festival is met, this potentially results in an experience as described by Vivienne before: an altered experience of time. The final section of this chapter offers an exploration of this type of experience, which equally relies on attentionality, receptivity, and context. Let us first look at a – by now – famous event that took place on the morning of Friday January 12, 2007. A man played the violin in an

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arcade in front of the L’Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington DC. During 43 minutes he played six classical pieces. A total number of 1097 of people passed by him on their way to the metro trains below or to the streets outside. Of all those people, seven took time to stand still, pay attention to the violinist, and listen to the music, and only one person recognized him. After the invitation by a journalist, internationally acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell had agreed to participate in this experiment to see how people would respond to his playing in public.¹⁰⁰ Both stated afterwards to be unaware of the historical precedent of this experiment that took place in 1930. Violinist Jacques Gordon had then performed during fifteen minutes on the busy Michigan Avenue in Chicago. In this experiment, similar patterns were observed: few people stopped and listened, and only one expressed recognition of the performer.¹⁰¹ In response to the results of the 2007 experiment, senior curator of the National Gallery of Washington, Mark Leithauser compared Bell’s performance in public with a painting usually on display in the museum, taken out of its context and placed elsewhere. While considered a masterpiece in the museum, the question remains whether it would be regarded as such on the walls of a restaurant. His conclusion of this parallel was “context matters.”¹⁰² In contemporary culture, art is usually presented in a context set apart from the everyday. Viewers and listeners are made aware of this set-apart character and invited to adjust their attention to this context. This special place also affords a setting apart in the viewers and listeners’ attentionality. It steers the decision whether or not to take time out of the everyday world, stand still, and join the temporalities of the transient worlds offered by the artwork. This experiment is an example of how the non-ordinary and the ordinary can interact and relate to each other. It is reminiscent of Ammerman’s search for religious tendencies in everyday life and of Bellah’s argument of how the ordinary character of everyday life

 Gene Weingarten, “Pearls before Breakfast: Can One of the Nation’s great Musicians cut through the Fog of a D.C. Rush Hour? Let’s find out,” Washington Post, 08.04. 2007. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/pearls-before-breakfast-can-one-of-the-nationsgreat-musicians-cut-through-the-fog-of-a-dc-rush-hour-lets-find-out/2014/09/23/8a6d46da-433111e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html  Sander Lindenburg, “Journalist wint prijs met oud idee,” Villamedia, 04.07. 2008, https:// www.villamedia.nl/artikel/journalist-wint-prijs-met-oud-idee; David Mikkelson, “Did Violinist Joshua Bell Play Icognito in a Subway?”, Snopes, 29.12. 2008, https://www.snopes.com/factcheck/joshua-bell-company/  Weingarten, “Pearls before Breakfast.”

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requires a touch of non-ordinariness in order to be sustained.¹⁰³ However, rush hour did not seem to be the most optimal moment to establish a relationship between the two dimensions. It indicates that music needs – to some degree – to be set apart, identified, and presented as non-ordinary, in order to allow for the attunement of focus in its direction and possible valuation processes afterwards. At Musica Sacra Maastricht, the music was set-apart by means of the festival format and the individual performances that provided conditions for the attunement of focus. The music, and all other artistic activities, were presented within the very particular frame of the sacred, resulting in a discursive frame in which religion automatically had a place (see Chapter 4). Moreover, the set-apartness of the performances invited visitors to join and engage with the non-ordinary character of the temporary realities constituted by the music. The fact that the music and its implications were so explicitly located in a frame of the sacred, enabled visitors to relate these to their non-set-apart ordinary worlds of everyday life. If this distinction had been less well-defined, relationships between the ordinary and the non-ordinary presumably would have been less easily established. Throughout this book I have discussed performances during Musica Sacra Maastricht, how these relate to a discursive framework dominated by the notion of religion, as well as how these are able to realize an experience of the relationship between the ordinary and the non-ordinary. The question remains how to characterize this discerned relationship. How is this relationship between the ordinary and non-ordinary realized? As the Washington Post experiment reiterated, in addition to aspects such as receptivity and context, I would like to add the notion of time to this framework of analysis. People need to take the decision to step out of their perception of everyday, routine time, and engage themselves with the temporary world as offered by the art. Rush hour in a Washington DC metro station was obviously not the most suitable time for people to first, take the step out of ordinary time, and second, allow themselves to engage with artistic, non-ordinary time. The perception of time is elemental in understanding how the relationship between the non-ordinary and the ordinary is established, which can in turn be seen as a condition for the perception of the sacred. This is discussed both in the context of individual concerts and artworks, as well as the context of the festival.

 Nancy T. Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes. Finding Religion in Everyday Life, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

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7.5.1 Musical Time A useful point of departure in a discussion of time is the difference between chronos and kairos. These ancient Greek terms indicate the difference between ordinary clock time consisting of hours, minutes and seconds (chronos) and non-ordinary quality time that consists of moments of significance (kairos). Non-ordinary time does not let itself be measured by the units of which ordinary time consists. According to musicologist Rupert Till: Music seems to be a bridge between chronos and kairos, capable of moving a person between the two. When one experiences music (…), one is no longer synchronized to the pulse of the second, the hour, the day, the year, one’s internal clock is linked to the musical time that is passing, whether bars, beats or phrases. It thus helps one to become unlocked from chronos, from a normal perception of time, and for one’s state of mind or consciousness to change.¹⁰⁴

Musicologist and ritual studies scholar Martin Hoondert described this unlocking from chronos as experiencing the “now” of music. By means of processing previous sounds and anticipating future ones, the past, present, and future are all united in the sounding of the music and the way listeners engage with it. ‘We hear the tone in the relations-network of tones, although what we actually hear is always a “now” in which the past and the future resound. In other words, in the “now” of the music we experience time to its full extent.’¹⁰⁵ Art forms like music, dance, or theatre have their own temporal dimensions; they exist by the grace of performance. In the experience of such performances, these dimensions override the structural time dimension of everyday routine. It would be interesting to see how non-temporal art forms, like literature, painting, and architecture function in terms of inviting for oscillation between chronos and kairos. Despite the lack of internal temporal dimensions, I would argue these kinds of artistic disciplines have their own instrumental ways of achieving this effect. Non-temporal art forms address the senses and ratio by means of their specific material and technical qualities. Rappaport additionally differentiated the distinction between chronos and kairos. He stated how there are not two, but three different temporal regions; social (mundane) time, cosmic (slow, never-changing) time, and organic (quick,  Rupert Till, Pop Cult: Religion and Popular Music (London: Continuum, 2010), 9.  Martin Hoondert, “Musical Religiosity,” Temenos. Nordic Journal for Comparative Religion 51:1 (2015): 131. Hoondert based his analysis of music’s workings on: Kathleen Harmon, The Mystery We Celebrate, The Song We Sing. A Theology of Liturgical Music (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press: 2008).

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high frequency) time.¹⁰⁶ Social time parallels chronos, while cosmic and organic time can be seen as two different perceptive levels of kairos. According to Rappaport, people leave social time and enter cosmic and/ or organic time during participation in ritual performance. Note how cosmic time resonates with canonical messages, while organic time resonates self-referential messages possibly conveyed by the ritual performance: ‘Liturgy does more than create two “states” of time. It relates them to each other.’¹⁰⁷ For Rappaport, ritual performance is truly “time out of time,” as it makes its participants step out of social time, into cosmic and organic time. I would further argue that the differentiation of cosmic and organic time dimensions in the realm of the non-ordinary can be related to the two kinds of overwhelming experiences I identified in the respondents’ descriptions. The “being carried away” experience resonates with the cosmic, never-changing time, whereas the “extra present” experience resonates with the organic, vital time frame. In addition, during one musical performance both states of mind can occur. The audience of a musical performance or other type of artwork, positions itself by trying to grasp and follow the time set out by the artist, which in turn influences their experiences of time. Rappaport reinforced the role of such experiences in life, functioning as a bridge between perceptions of non-ordinary and ordinary character. ‘Such extraordinary or even mystical experiences seem to be profoundly satisfying but, more important here, they may provide deeper and more compelling understandings of perfectly natural and extremely important aspects of the physical and social world than can be provided by reason alone.’¹⁰⁸ While I argued before that instrumental music is not at all, and vocal music only to a certain extent, able to convey canonical messages, I do think Rappaport’s distinction is of importance in the perception of time. In the light of this research, the notion of the canonical can be regarded to represent something that people long and seek for in their engagement with musical practices – some eternal truth or extra-ordinary experience to rely on. There is a longing for the perceived sense of security, homeliness, or understanding that these kinds of messages convey. Yet, their content, and the question where and how to encounter them are no longer prescribed. The continuous engagement with music, as prevalent in the practices of respondents from all three groups, I would argue, demonstrates the search for the self-formulation of a sense of canon, which paradoxically occurs primarily on a self-referential level.

 Rappaport, Ritual and Religion, 224– 225.  Idem, 234.  Idem, 404.

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This paradox of longing brings us back to Catherine Bell’s characterization of public events such as theatre and film and artistic performances: they offer a, however temporary, graspable and controllable microcosm that for the duration of the artistic performance is the world.¹⁰⁹ Participants may bring (parts of) their own everyday life into this temporary world and relate it to the non-ordinary character of the world as constituted by the artwork. In this process of the ordinary and the non-ordinary informing each other, conditions are shaped for perceptions of the sacred. However, in order to establish a situation in which these two dimensions inform each other a change in the perception of time has to have occurred. It is a stepping out of ordinary time, into the timeframe as offered or invited to by the work of art and its performance. This change of time was for instance reinforced by the program committee in their mission statement in addressing how the fast-paced world does not allow opportunity for reflection and sense making. Or visitor Vivienne, who mentioned it in relation to her experience of Kanon Pokajanen, when she said the duration of the two-hour concert felt like forty minutes. Changed perceptions of time can be understood in terms of internalization. In the case of music, the listeners internalize (parts of) the performed music, which is key as to how a relationship between the ordinary and the nonordinary is established. The ability of music to relocate the listener in time is ‘enormously important for understanding its spiritual and psychological significance.’¹¹⁰ This sense of relocation was consistently at the heart of the expectations and hopes with which committee members programmed and audience members visited performances during Musica Sacra Maastricht. The experience of the relationship between the non-ordinary and the ordinary ultimately becomes a particular experience of time rooted in identification. While aspects like context, place, and practice should be regarded as fundamental features as well, the experience of a meaningful relocation in time is, in my view, the most decisive in described perceptions of the sacred.

7.5.2 Festival Time In addition to the performance of individual works of art, the researched field offered another dimension: the festival format. A festival like Musica Sacra Maastricht enabled a close to continuous immersion in musical and other artistic

 Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 160.  Partridge, The Lyre of Orpheus, 40.

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performances for the time period during which the festival lasted. The relocation in time may possibly take another, longer durational form here. This was mentioned by many of the audience members as being a special and particular experience that they aimed for through their festival visit. Due to the set-up of the program, the attendance of one performance after another, from morning till late in the day, could become a very intense experience. While the programmed music might have required a moment of reflection after the performance was over, the festival format demanded that visitors moved on to the next performance. This movement from one performance to the other became an intrinsic part of how visitors experienced the music and the temporal dimension they inhabited while taking part in the festival. This was especially notable when concert schedules were running late. Then visitors would not mind leaving before the concert was over in order to get to the next performance. This behavior defied the purpose of a carefully composed concert program, but within the context of the festival format, visitors felt that leaving early was allowed and sometimes even required. Setting out and following a festival itinerary resulted in a particular tension and excitement, establishing a changed temporal experience, which was navigated with different moral values. It might even be observed that in these cases the perceived festival time dominated musical time. Some visitors experienced the intensity of the festival setting as a complicating factor. It resulted in a continuous build-up of intensity, the moving from one performance to another, in which the feeling of anticipation may be identified as a leading factor. I would argue that within a festival format this feeling of anticipation and the excitement plays an important role, in addition to the experiences of the music. It is part of what makes the extended weekend a festival. This seemed especially so, because in the context of Musica Sacra Maastricht, while being on the move from one performance to the other, visitors can encounter much of the local heritage in the old city center. Perhaps this moving from one place to the next should be taken up as potential platform of reflection in the festival program. The time that a moment of reflection demands, and the routes that can be walked or cycled, possibly offer elements of consideration for the program committee in the creation of the festival program. Yet predominantly I think it could be stated that the festival format offered first and foremost a collection of multiple intense moments constituting different temporal experiences. These could only properly be reflected on afterward. The festival offered an itinerary between different temporal dimensions through which the relationship between the non-ordinary and the ordinary was continuously negotiated, and later reflected upon. At Musica Sacra Maastricht, dynamics of differentiation were often rooted in opportunities of reflection and contemplation. The program committee, the audi-

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ence members, and the performers all regarded the music as providing moments of reflection at given times and places, established through its performance. Engagement with the music led to contemplation and re-evaluation of aspects from daily life. Through engagement with music, this relationship between the ordinary and the non-ordinary was realized. The realization reflects the reflexive character of the relationship between the ordinary and the non-ordinary. Reflexivity is a key feature of ritual performance and how it relates to everyday life.¹¹¹ It is an indicator of a circular relationship between how cause and effect exert influence on each other. Like ritual, engagement with art has the potential to realize a reflexive reality in which the relationship between the ordinary and the non-ordinary is negotiated, not in the least in the space between sound and silence.

 Barry Stephenson, Ritual: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 91.

8 Conclusions Several of the chapters in this book began with a description of a particular festival performance. By returning to these particular moments in time, I have tried to bring to life the relationships established during these performances. Relationships between musical notes and architectural space, between audiences and performers, between selection strategies and the festival context. And, not in the least, between the ordinary and non-ordinary dimensions of festival participants’ life worlds – or the sacred. This study on intertwined forms of religion and the arts in contemporary perceptions of the sacred was rooted in various theoretical approaches: ritual studies, art theory, culture studies, sociology of the sacred, anthropology of images. It was my aim to combine and build upon these different, but all broad and open approaches to perceptions of the sacred through a focus on artistic performance within the festival context. I also tried to emphasize the relevance of the study of the sacred for music practices, ranging from Western art to popular music. Despite the fact that the field I studied was not a proponent of this standpoint, the split between these academic fields, certainly in terms of music festivals, might be overdue in the use of the lenses of the sacred and ritual. Without dismissing the genre of sacred music, this study had the intention of demonstrating how the approach of the sacred in music entails more than the usual references to a genre definition. Although I primarily focused on music and performance arts, it would be relevant to conduct further research on the perception of the sacred in other artistic disciplines. Relevant conceptual distinctions can be found in the difference between temporal and non-temporal arts. It is worthwhile to examine in addition to music, how disciplines such as film, theatre, and dance function as a platform for the sacred. This, in turn, can be related to how disciplines such as painting, architecture, and literature invite for the realization of the relationship between the non-ordinary and the ordinary, changed perceptions of time, and consequential valuation processes. A comparative framework of contemporary practices is in order. This allows for the study of artistic practices while they take place. Yet a historical approach to this topic could be of interest as well, in order to shed light on how arts and religion interrelated and were perceived as sacralized forms in earlier times. Such a research project could contribute to an explanatory approach to the perception of the sacred, in working towards answering the question why people engage with the arts and how its functioning has transformed over time. Such explanatory routes might be found in cognitive or cultural-evolutionary approaches in the study of religion. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-009

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Another relevant route of inquiry is that of context: would there be a difference between artistic performance presented in a context like Musica Sacra Maastricht and performances that are not framed in a context directly concerned with the sacred? Does the music at the Utrecht Early Music Festival function in similar ways as the music at Musica Sacra Maastricht? Or – to create a broader perspective by overcoming the popular-classical music binary – does the performed music at the Dutch Lowlands or Danish Roskilde Festival function similarly to the music at Musica Sacra Maastricht? With regard to the Maastricht festival, the annual themes ultimately related to patterns in, or questions pertaining to, human behavior. This provided the programmed performances with a layer of meaning that invited audience members and performers to reflect on these patterns and questions. If the festival would be void of such a thematic and conceptual context, it would be left to the audience members to gather from the performances what they can or desire to. Similarly, it is up to the performers to convey meaning through their performances. When art is presented in a context with a direct concern with the sacred, the potential realization of this relationship is already present. It is then up to the audience and the performers how they want to relate to this meaning, but at least the invitation is there. Additionally, there is an academic concern. If a selected field is not directly related to the notion of the sacred (or religion for that matter), as a researcher one has less emic concerns to deal with in the data analyses. The notion of the sacred would then function primarily on the third order, rather than, as in this case, also on first and second-order levels. I am not saying this would result in any less interesting research projects, yet these would be studies with a different character. This project has been an attempt to contribute to the theoretical understanding of the sacred from the perspective of artistic practice. On the other hand, it has been an attempt to understand the contemporary function of art, and its resonance with religion, from the theoretical perspective of the sacred. By means of this reciprocal point of departure, it was my intention to contribute to revisiting the theoretical potential of the sacred and to offer new ground for the study of artistic practices. With the aim of having the empirical field and theory inform each other in a reciprocal manner, the conceptual exploration benefitted from having a field that was directly concerned with the sacred.

8.1 Relating Difference In this book I have been mainly concerned with how individual festival experiences enabled an understanding of the possible interpretations of artworks presented in a frame of the sacred. Throughout this book, I have emphasized that

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the three groups were identified on the basis of their type of involvement in the festival, not on the basis of a sense of collectivity. Regarding the relationship between the collective and the individual in the perception of art, Roy Rappaport observed: ‘For a work of art to be successful it need not stimulate the same emotional response in all who experience it. Indeed, if emotion is in its nature not fully describable, how can anyone know if another feels as he or she does?’¹ Such emotional engagement is important, not for its individualized contents, but for occurring at all. Rappaport continued, ‘It is likely that everyone responds emotionally to a particular object or event rather differently, for each person brings a uniquely conditioned emotional and rational constitution to it. What is important is that the work elicits a response of some sort.’² It might even be preferable if no collective agreement exists on the meaning of artworks. While people with similar experiences can be drawn together into a collective, the realization of a relationship between the non-ordinary and ordinary occurs primarily on an individual level. It could be argued to be art’s ultimate aim to establish this relationship on the individual level. Only then such perceptions might lead to debates on meaning and value among all those who have experienced a particular artistic performance on their own terms. If its meaning is collectively agreed upon, perhaps the artwork presents a missed opportunity. When it comes to the artistic performances at Musica Sacra Maastricht, perceptions of the sacred were located in the experience of difference. They also require an experience of time that is different from the routine clock-time. Yet, in order to get a grasp on a non-ordinary perception, a relationship to the ordinary is needed as well. In order to appreciate what may constitute the sacred, it needs to be related to that which does not. This act of relating is not merely an idea, but a realized, generative activity, consisting of lived-through performances and constructions. The experience of art and music does not solely concern the temporary presence in another world but is also about bringing something of the nonordinary into the everyday world. Knowing the difference between ordinary and non-ordinary dimensions eventually results in, however temporary, bringing the two together. Members of the program committee hoped the festival would offer a counter balance to the ordinary, mainstream musical scene; the majority of audience members marked the festival weekend in their annual calendars and spent one or more festival days in Maastricht; and performers hoped to contribute something (whether it was of soothing or challenging character) to the real-

 Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 387.  Ibid.

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ities of their audiences. All these individuals experienced a drive to participate in the festival: because it eventually contributed to their desire of living meaningful lives. The notion of difference also related to the incorporation of tradition and a sense of the past in the festival. Parallel to ritual action not merely being a representation of something, the festival by means of its activities constitutes a reality in its own terms. It was not a restaging of a particular past, but rather it built upon notions of tradition and explored opportunities to develop these further. One possible reason of looking back to the past was that the present was regarded as deficient, a notion prevalent in the discourse of both the program committee and the performers. Their looking back was done in an instrumental way, deemed useful and relevant for working towards a better future. By means of the selections made for the festival program, the committee was continuously aware of running the risk of being judged as elitist and too complex. Yet, their drive to continue along this road was a strong conviction of contributing to the improvement of a future world. Within the festival context, the past took shape in two ways: in the performed early music and in the selected concert locations. Especially the locations can be seen as part of the discursive framework in which the festival operated. The choice for performance sites with a religious character contributed to the use of the past as a means to engage through the present towards the future. It resonates the aims of the Toekomst Religieus Erfgoed program, in which the continued relevance of such sites forms a driving force. These locations functioned as a frame within which the music was positioned. This was especially experienced as such by the audience members and the performers. Despite the fact that the theater functioned as the logistic heart of the festival; both the audience members and the performers preferred concerts in historic, monumental, or religious locations. Concert halls are designed for the purpose that anything is possible there and anything can be staged. They are open spaces in which anything can be expected. When a musical performance is staged in a monumental site like a church, from the outset there is something to relate to. This can consist of, for instance, the history of the building and its users, a set of values as expressed by the tradition within which the building functions/-ed, or the architectural and artistic expressions that make up the site. Church architecture connotes a large set of canonical messages. Whether or not audience members subscribed to these, a performance in such a space demanded the act of relating, from both the performers and the audience members. It created a context for the musical piece, which most visitors and performers found very commendable.

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On a more abstract level, this idea of relating to a set space or thing as a point of departure can be found as an assumption implied by the notion of the sacred. Prevalent features in the data were the ideas of boundaries and constraints.³ The notion of the sacred in music implied for many a fixed space, and performers and audience members operated in relation to this space. The performers explored the boundaries, whether they wanted to cross them, and which implications this may have had for their work. In turn, the audience members, in their experiences of the performances would also have to explore these implications and relate these to their own boundaries. For instance, remember how the composer and different audience members responded to LUTHER. The outcome of such exploration can have a positive, negative, or indifferent character. Yet, crucial was its relational character. In turn, through this relational character, a sense of presence was established.

8.2 Paradox of the Sacred While in theory everything can be potentially attributed with sacred value, it does not automatically follow that everything is valued as such. The sacred is not merely a social construct, performed through discourse. There are materialized and institutional frames that demand negotiation. This frame functions as a given, self-evident archetype, which at Musica Sacra Maastricht was formed by the notion of religion, its institutions, rituals, and heritage. While art functioned in the service of religious and political authorities for long, over time it came to function independently as well. This process of independence has been characterized with the term sacralization: art got set-apart, became revered for skill and beauty, protected from contamination, and cherished for meaningful resonance. By means of taking the notion of the sacred as a departure point, at Musica Sacra Maastricht the setting apart of the art generally occurred in relation to the institutional framework of religion, notably Christianity. As expression of the postsecular, the festival aimed to intertwine religion and art into something new under the term of the sacred. The program committee’s focus on the sacred functioned as an invitation for themselves, as well as performers and visitors to explore the meaning and value of the programmed music in this particular frame. The focus on the sacred turned the festival into a continuous invitation to explore the relationship between the non-ordinary and the ordinary. While all three groups in-

 Veikko Anttonen described the sacred as a “category boundary.” See Chapter 3.

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volved in the festival expressed great appreciation for the festival activities, the term sacred retained a problematic and paradoxical position. The festival committee needed the notion of the sacred in order to produce, in their view, a culturally and socially relevant festival. It enabled them to select particular themes, composers, compositions, which offered challenging, exciting, and thoughtful explorations. The differently involved respondents acknowledged this function and what it enabled the program committee to do. Yet, they generally did not really appreciate the term sacred, for the predominantly institutional religious connotations it had to them. Still, the committee required the term as departure point, in order to achieve the annual festival program, which the same respondents greatly appreciated. The discursive implications of the term sacred functioned as a catch-22, seemingly an unsolvable paradox. This can only be countered with a continuous reclaim of the potential of the sacred, in the field as well as in academic contexts. I have discussed the work of scholars who argued for a broadened theoretical use of the sacred. In addition, the field showed signs of understanding as well. Reviewer Kasper Jansen wrote about the 2015 festival: ‘For a long time, Festival Musica Sacra presents a broad program [with] much more than only religious music.’⁴ Other reviewers also mentioned this over the years. Yet, the use of the notion of the sacred in the public domain continuous to elicit initial connotations with a first-order sense of religion. This paradox reflects the development of sacred forms.⁵ Of particular relevance is the transition from the pre-modern to the modern and contemporary eras. The sacred of the pre-modern age, the imperial sacred, was a sacred form that institutional authority endowed with universal legitimation, including consequential moral claims. By means of symbolic language, these claims could easily be communicated and quickly disseminated beyond geographic boundaries. This sacred form developed into a modern conception of the sacred, designated as the fragmented sacred. This form does not give preference to authoritative claims based on morality and legitimacy, but is rather based on abstract symbols and ideas. These in turn underline the social structures and consequential moral behaviors. The fragmented dynamic is characteristic of the contemporary world, in which sacralized forms like religion and the arts co-exist and interact on the basis of abstract symbolism and ideas. As I have tried to show in this book, these fragmented forms are not necessarily separated, loose entities, existing independently from each other. Rather, in their co-existence they inter Kasper Jansen, “Met Zachte Trom op Weg naar het Einde,” NRC Handelsblad, 22.09. 2015, https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/09/22/met-zachte-trom-op-weg-naar-het-einde-1536194a1105819.  Gordon Lynch, On the Sacred (Durham: Acumen, 2012), 43 – 67.

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act and impact one another. Exactly in this interaction, negotiations of the sacred can be found and traced.

8.3 Variety in Religion When painter Mark Rothko first toured Europe in 1950, he was said to be unimpressed by most of the art he saw: ‘I looked at hundreds of [M]adonnas, but all I saw was the symbol, never the concrete expression of motherhood.’⁶ Not all representations have the ability to convey a message, not all recipients process that potential message similarly. This is often overlooked in the assumed self-evident nature in the relationship between the sacred (in the form of religion) and music. The dominance of religion in the framework of the festival and the used discourses does not necessarily relate to a similar dominance in sensory, experiential practices. This has been noted before in the distinction between religious experiences and experiences of religion. People can say that the sacred in music for them relates to religion, to Christianity, or to liturgy, but this does not self-evidently mean that these notions are defining features in their own experiences. The sacred in music can refer to something other, on a spiritual, embodied, or mental level. Not every aspect of religion conveys or contributes to the dimension of the sacred. For a large part, the presence of institutional religion at the festival took the character of art and heritage. Religion was less regarded for its canonical values and predominantly for its self-referential potential. The majority of the respondents treated religion as heritage, as culture, not as confessional practice. In the festival program, the lived practices were considered by means of the musical contributions to the Sunday liturgies. During these events, religion and art co-existed directly. Sometimes this co-existence resulted in a clash, with the most notable example of the confession during the concert of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna. I have posed the argument that the artistic and heritage turns have the potential to adapt religion, its institutions, and rituals, and thereby to create room for its presence and relevance in secularizing contexts. As the fieldwork at the festival indicates, while a share of people continues to regard religion for its confessional, canonical value, a larger share values the stories, architecture, music, and rituals from a cultural or artistic perspective. How, then, to view the role of art and heritage in the continuity and transformation of religious tradition? While in sec-

 Pelagia Horgan, “Sacred Art,” Aeon Magazine, 21.11. 2014, http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/ how-should-secular-people-approach-sacred-art

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ularizing contexts religious institutions decrease in societal prominence, trends are not all negatively colored. In the introduction I discussed the recent developments around church buildings and other types of religious heritage in The Netherlands. Government-led and -endorsed programs are abundant, with the aim of preserving and repurposing religious heritage for (partially) new audiences.⁷ Such heritage efforts have emerged in response to the threat of demolishing or eradication of religious sites and objects, due to dechurching. Moreover, these efforts all include locals and communities. They are primarily of participatory nature. Parallel to processes of dechurching and secularization, these changing circumstances grow awareness about religious sites and objects. Threatened with demolishing or non-public repurposing, people tend to notice these sites and objects and they are no longer taken for granted.⁸ The heritage efforts that often result from this no longer taking for granted, are driven by the conviction that religious sites, objects, material, and immaterial culture are of continuing significance despite the changing religious landscapes. It predominantly demonstrates a changed way of dealing with these sites and objects. Where older generations have massively stepped away from religious traditions they grew up with, younger generations do not necessarily grow up within a particular tradition. While this results in a larger religious illiteracy, at the same time members of younger generations do not carry similar complex baggage towards religion.⁹ Increasingly young people become acquainted with religion through art and heritage, potentially resulting in curiosity or interest, rather than anger or frustration. This process of growing illiteracy paired with less hostility and potential interest is traditionally seen as a loss or eradication.¹⁰ Rather, I would argue – while

 Exemplary is the publication Kerkgebouw-en [which translates into Churchbuilding-and, LW] 88 Inspirerende Voorbeelden van Nieuw Gebruik – van Appartement tot Zorgcomplex (Wageningen: Blauwdruk, 2021) presents 88 examples of reused church buildings. The extensive book was published in collaboration with the National Heritage Agency.  This leads to the paradoxical observation that there is hardly any attention for the church buildings when these are in religious function, but once a reuse or re-designation looms, people begin to feel the urge to become involved. This moment of transformation has recently gained attention in the media. See for instance: Anton Stolwijk, Buiten Dienst. Toen God kleiner moest gaan wonen en ik meekeek (Amsterdam: De Geus, 2021); “Wat moeten we met alle leegstaande kerken?,” Docs podcast, episode 8, 2021.  I fully acknowledge the generalized character of this observation. Yet, in broad terms, it can be observed – for instance through artistic practices – how younger generations deal with religion differently than the generations before them.  See for instance, the telling title of Hans Rookmaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 1994 [1970]). In response, Jonathan A. Anderson and William A.

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acknowledging the difference (and loss, at times) – that the perspective of continuity and transformation is more relevant in tracing contemporary complexities. Christianity is not disappearing from a postsecular society like The Netherlands. Rather, it takes on different forms and is appreciated for a pluriformity of reasons. At the very least, art and heritage provide opportunities for engagement with religion in secularizing contexts, a continuity allowed for by the resonance of various sacralized forms.¹¹ This might be cause for clashes or debate, but debate is very much a sign of life and continuity.

8.4 Comparing Sacralities Whether or not it was believed in, agreed with, or experienced as significant, for all participants institutional religion, particularly Christianity, had an important presence in the festival. The imperial sacred that Christianity represents has become one part among many that make up the fragmented sacred. As comes to the fore throughout the examples discussed in this book, in its fragmented nature the sacred becomes a notion of comparison.¹² To the program committee, Dyrness titled their study of religion in modernism, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture. The Religious Impulses of Modernism (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016).  The resonance of various sacred forms, allowing for a continued (albeit transformed) presence of religion in Dutch society, can be found for instance in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam. This church has an official museum function since 2013, has monumental status, and is in use by a congregation of the Dutch Protestant Church (PKN). The museum function of the church has been of large importance for the continued use by the congregation of this church as a house of worship. On its own, the congregation would not have managed to. Over the past years there have been continuous conversations – and debates – about the impact of several of the contemporary art projects in the church on the liturgical space. Another relevant, and recent, example is the impact of the campaign Het Grootste Museum van Nederland [The Largest Museum of The Netherlands], of which fourteen houses of worship take part. Launched by Museum Catharijneconvent, participating churches and synagogues have fixed opening hours like museums and offer audio tours for visitors to become more familiar with the architecture, art, and history of the site. The campaign adds a heritage-layer to the existing sites, to create awareness of heritage sites in people’s own vicinity – namely religious sites. Interestingly enough, the dynamics of this heritage campaign also has the potential of strengthening the sites’ religious function. At least in one of the participating churches, the number of congregation members has increased since the start of the campaign. Thank you to Simone Regouin for telling me about this. I aim to take up this topic of impact of heritagization on congregational activities as a future research project.  The sacred functions in a comparative manner similarly to how religions are compared in the world religions paradigm. For how such comparisons are operated in the museum setting, see Charles D. Orzech, Museums of World Religions. Displaying the Divine, Shaping Cultures (London:

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the performers, and to a certain extent the audience members, imperial and alternative fragmented sacralities co-exist and are compared on notions like authenticity, quality, and aesthetics. This reinforces the nature of the sacred as discursive feature. The program committee deliberately operated within the tension caused by this co-existence of sacred forms. The departure point for the committee was the paradoxical character of the sacred: it contains a presence of religion, combined with a continuous search for non-religious implications of the term. This paradox, fundamentally comparative, made the festival not a reenactment of religious pasts or presents, but led to an engagement with contemporary reality in which various approaches to the sacred – or, in other words, various sacralities – had a presence. In the introduction to this book, I described two different approaches to the notion of icon in a Dutch and a German museum. While the Dutch museum gave expression to the wish to redistribute its sacralizing potential into new and previous unacknowledged parts of the artistic arena, the German museum maintained a broad approach to the iconic object as manifestation of presence. The breadth of this latter approach was reflected in the resulting exhibition that included officially acknowledged icons from religious traditions joined by iconic objects from the (art)world at large. The two museums’ approaches to the iconic and its resonating power, reflect the diverse and fragmented nature of the postsecular and the variety of domains in which the sacred is potentially perceived – which in turn elicits a sense of comparison between them. Furthermore, cultural buildings – museums, libraries, concert halls – are often designated as the new religious buildings of modern times. Through my findings at Musica Sacra Maastricht and their theoretical implications, the argument holds that religious buildings – churches, chapels, monasteries – in turn can equally be designated as the new cultural buildings of our times. Both types of sites represent an architectural category created and used to house, protect, and celebrate matters with the potential to be valued as sacred. In a postsecular context, paintings, books, and music have joined the category of religious icons, relics, and rituals. These buildings offer set-apart conditions, facilitate and enhance a type of rule-governed behavior that sacred matters require. While art has become a sacralized form in and of itself, particular aspects of religion are increasingly perceived as culture, appreciated and cherished for artistic, historic, and heritage value. By means of this transformation process, Bloomsbury, 2020). A future road of enquiry could be found in exploring this comparative nature further. Would the comparative study of religions offer an opportunity to expand into the study of secularized forms of the sacred as well? And, given the many critiques on the world religions and comparative studies of religion, is that something that should be strived for?

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features of religious traditions retrieve new meaning and are adapted to contemporary secularized contexts. This reciprocal dynamic between art and religion is crucial in understanding contemporary sacred-making practices, as well as the potential role of art and heritage in the continuation of religious traditions under changing circumstances. The most impactful changed circumstance since early 2020 has been the COVID19 pandemic. It resonates with Lynch’s observation of how the sacred emerges and becomes acknowledged mostly when it is under threat. If anything, the pandemic has placed the fundamental relational nature of human behavior, including art and religion, under threat. As one of the few Dutch festivals, Musica Sacra Maastricht could take place in September 2020, a period of relative leniency in health measurements. With adjusted seating arrangements and visitor numbers, the festival prophetically themed Acceptance and Resignation took place over four days in Maastricht. However, most of the time since early 2020, the cultural sector has seen forced closures, cancellations, and limited visiting capacity. Even when shops and other services would be open on appointment basis, Dutch museums, theatres, and cinemas remained closed and festivals were cancelled. As this difference in treatment between shops and cultural institutions was met with public indignation, another comparison often came to the fore: the comparison between art and religion. Due to their special constitutional status, church communities and religious groups were allowed to gather in small numbers.¹³ In op-eds and interviews, the comparison between art and religion was presented as a reason why museums and theatres should also be allowed to re-open under precautionary rules. After all, the question was posed, did art not fulfill the same function as religion in contemporary society? Jacqueline Grandjean, then director of the Oude Kerk Amsterdam, asked this rhetorically in a newspaper interview about a petition that was launched to reopen the museums.¹⁴ After more than a hundred days of closure, the petitioners became fed-up with not being able to visit museums, while these institutions had taken strong precautions for safe visits. The Oude Kerk is housed in a church building that is also used by a Protestant congregation. In the article, Grandjean expressed her understanding for the possibility of

 Despite their constitutional right, not many religious communities did congregate during the peaks of the lockdown. To avoid health risks, but also out of solidarity with other closed societal domains.  Anna van Leeuwen, “Musea willen niet langer wachten met opengaan: ‘Kunst biedt troost, verbinding en inspiratie’,” Volkskrant, 22.03. 2021, https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/ musea-willen-niet-langer-wachten-met-opengaan-kunst-biedt-troost-verbinding-en-in spiratie~b3a12b75/.

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congregation gatherings on Sunday mornings, but then, she argued, the museum function of the building should also be allowed again. The official multi-use designation of the church building made it possible for Grandjean to open the doors to a new exhibition on April 15, 2021 – while other museums could not open at that moment.¹⁵ It made the Oude Kerk, with its double function of resonating sacralities, a postsecular intertwinement par excellence. The petition also reinforced the power of arts and heritage in general. It voiced the value of engaging with set-apart objects in sacralized settings, of establishing relationships between the ordinary and non-ordinary – especially in times of hardship and uncertainty. As such it is not surprising that the comparison between religion and the arts has been used often in times of Covid – as religious institutions had different freedoms from cultural institutions. In an op-ed, religious studies student Laura Vendrik discussed whether it had become time for a debate on the expansion of the special constitutional freedoms in current law only in place for religious institutions.¹⁶ Considering the changed (i. e. secularizing) societal circumstances and accordingly changed roles of both religious institutions and artistic practices, the question followed whether wider constitutional freedoms should not also apply to cultural institutions presenting such artistic practices. In times of pandemic hardship, the arts were seen as capable of offering similar kinds of relief as religion potentially could. And importantly, that this is a primary reason of why people turn to art and religion. Such observations and societal discussions signal dynamics of the postsecular; the sacred is encountered in various domains existing in continuous resonance with another, a resonance characterized by comparison between and beyond religions.

 Noel van Bemmel, “De Oude Kerk is Weer Open. Niet voor Gebed, maar voor Kunst,” Volkskrant, 16.04. 2021, V2–V3.  Laura Vendrik, “Het Theater is Steeds Meer als een Kerk,” Volkskrant, 01.01. 2021, https:// www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/het-theater-is-steeds-meer-als-een-kerk~b4c7d513/.

Appendix A. Annual Festival Themes Year

Translation in English

Original in Dutch

 Canticles

Hooglied

 Rites

Riten

 Requiem

Requiem

 Time of Suffering

Lijdenstijd

 The Greatest Beauty of Women

De Schoonste onder de Vrouwen

 Creation

Schepping

 Visionaries and Prophets

Zieners en Profeten

 Saints and Idols

Heiligen en Idolen

 Apocalypse

Apocalyps

 Psalms

Psalmen

 Mysteries and Miracles

Mysteries en Mirakels

 Job

Job

 Of God and Gods

Van God en Goden

 Pilgrimage

Pelgrimage

 Holy War

Heilige Oorlog

 Angels and Demons

Engelen en Demonen

 Away from the World – Hermits and Monks

Weg van de Wereld – Kluizenaars en Kloosterlingen

 Visions of Eternity

Visioenen van Eeuwigheid

 Witnesses: Confessionals and Martyrs

Getuigen: Belijders en Martelaren

 Man and Woman, He created Them

Man en Vrouw schiep Hij hen

 Devotion

Devotie

 The Joy of the Law – The Burden of Freedom

De Vreugde der Wet – De Last van de Vrijheid

 Rites and Rituals

Riten en Rituelen

 Introspection, Transformation, Conversion

Inkeer, Ommekeer, Bekering

 The Awe-inspiring

Ontzagwekkend

 The Way

De Weg

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Appendix A. Annual Festival Themes

Continued Year

Translation in English

Original in Dutch

 Sacrifice of Love

Offer van Liefde

 In the Beginning

In het Begin

 Avenge, Forgive, Appease

Vergelden, Vergeven, Verzoenen

 To Pray, to Implore

Bidden en Smeken

 Acceptance and Resignation

Aanvaarding en Berusting

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Appendix B. Ethnography The primarily used method in this project was ethnography.¹ The anthropological notion of gaining knowledge through presence, participation, and continuous negotiation between the researcher and the field stands at the heart of performing ethnography – and of this research. Anthropologist Sarah Pink described ethnography as follows: [E]thnography is a process of creating and representing knowledge (about society, culture and individuals) that is based on ethnographers’ own experiences. It does not claim to produce an objective or truthful account of reality, but should aim to offer versions of ethnographer’s experiences of reality that are as loyal as possible to the context, negotiations and intersubjectivities through which the knowledge was produced.²

This definition demonstrates the fundamental two-fold character of ethnography. First: it is a process of creating and representing knowledge. This research method is not a fixed model applied to a set of data resulting in irrefutable conclusions. It is a continuous process of entering, exploring, and analyzing a particular field. The knowledge that is gained during this process is consequentially applied to enable digging deeper into the field. It is best seen as a continuous cycle of presence in the field, description, and analysis. Second, it is crucial to understand the centrality of the ethnographers’ own experiences in conducting an ethnographic research method. The departure point of a research within the continuous research cycle constitutes of two things. First, the observation that something interesting is going on and worth researching while it is taking place. Second, the researcher explores that field by becoming part of it, while it is taking place. The experiences gained during this becoming part of are points of departure in the continuation of the research: in the form of for instance chats, interviews, and reflections. Conducting ethnographic research entails individuals exploring a field, of which these individuals become part while studying it. Every researcher will carry out ethnography on its own terms, thus it primarily means that the researcher is itself in fact his or her most important instrument.

 This Appendix focuses on three ethnographic methods in particular. A broader overview of the development of ethnography as a field of study can be found in: Barbara Tedlock, “Ethnography and Ethnographic Representation” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2000): 455 – 484.  Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research (London: Sage, 2007), 22. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-011

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Furthermore, the knowledge that is created and represented is dependent upon what people in the field are willing to share. The inclusion of others’ words and interpretations of experiences cannot occur without the gain of trust. To fully become part of the research field depends on acceptance of those present in the field. Engagement in shared experiences can play a crucial role in this process of gaining trust. The shared attendance and experiences of festival performances offer a platform to develop this upon. At Musica Sacra Maastricht I used a combination of three types of ethnographic involvement: participant observation, sensory ethnography, and interviewing. Each method was adjusted to fieldwork at a festival site.

Participant Observation This classic anthropological strategy enables the researcher to be present in the field and find a suitable and effective way of engaging with the subjects. Its name reflects the dual character of conducting fieldwork: participant observation. Both the aspects of observation and participation can take place in a variety of degrees, according to the researcher’s familiarity with the field and the field’s acceptance of the researcher’s presence. While the do’s and don’ts of participant observation can be found elsewhere,³ this section positions participant observation in the context of musical performance. Experience is a crucial aspect in the engagement with music. Words alone will never be able to capture its essence. However, as philosopher and psychologist William James stated, “Through feelings we become acquainted with things but only through our thoughts do we know about them.”⁴ Seeking a balance between the two elements provides an attempt at understanding the engagement with music – whether this is of highly experiential, embodied, and irrational character, of discursive, rational, and mental character, or a combination of both – through people’s thoughts about them. As researcher in the field this attempt at understanding departs from my experiences of the musical performances. By becoming acquainted with the music and the festival context, a common

 See: Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography, Principles in Practice (London, New York: Routledge, 1995); Jan Blommaert and Dong Jie, Ethnographic Fieldwork, A Beginner’s Guide (Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2010); Karen O’Reilly, Ethnographic Methods (London: Routledge, 2005); James P. Spradley, Participant Observation (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980).  Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 375; cf. William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1890), 221.

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ground is useful as departure point in talking to people about their experiences. Ethnography does not only allow for the study of musical performances, in itself it also has a performative character. The ethnographer can never be a complete outsider or objective observer, nor fully immersed and one with its population of study. Rather there are varying degrees of involvement with the field. The term performative ethnography is used to capture this more or less dynamic character of the ethnographic researcher, of when the researcher “ceases to be a mere questioner and instead becomes a provider of occasions for acting.”⁵ By providing occasions to act, the ethnographer gains a certain degree of influence. Behaved acts or spoken words can have the power to influence existing realities or create new ones. This power of transformation is not intrinsic to all behavior or words, but behavior or spoken language may result in it. Carrying out an ethnographic project contains a transforming potential. The act of asking people about their experiences and interpretations can influence their perceptions of the music and the attributed value. Within the festival I predominantly noticed this with the diary keeping. One participant told me how he experienced everything more intensely, because he was actively processing the performances already during the festival weekend – trying to put everything into words. In this case, the diary keeping actively contributed to the festival experience. However, other participants would also do this on their own account, this type of active processing. It demonstrated the kind of active engagement to the festival many of the participants had.

Sensory Ethnography The meaning-making and valuation processes in the festival were approached as Timothy Ingold described the relationship between the individual and its environment. Taking part in a festival or an individual performance is based on the understanding that: Perception (…) is not the achievement of a mind in a body, but of the organism as a whole in its environment, and is tantamount to the organism’s own exploratory movement through the world. The perceptual systems not only overlap in their functions, but are also subsumed under a total system of bodily orientation. (…) Looking, listening, and

 Veit Erlmann, “But What of the Ethnographic Ear? Anthropology, Sound, and the Senses,” in Hearing Cultures, Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity, ed. Veit Erlmann (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2004), 19.

Sensory Ethnography

239

touching, therefore, are not separate activities, they are just different facets of the same activity: that of the whole organism in its environment.⁶

By means of participant observation, I as researcher (an organism) am just as much part of the festival (the environment) as the committee members, the visitors, or the performers (fellow organisms) are. In their own ways, they all perform exploratory movements and rely on their systems of bodily orientation. Ingold implied the interconnection between the different senses and how individuals position their bodies in the environment. Despite the intense physical or mental states that music might unleash, musical performances – particularly those of classical music – also know a particular code of conduct. Within the boundaries of this code, performers and visitors found their own ways of exploring the environment in which a performance was realized. With my system of bodily exploration, I as ethnographer moved within this festival environment. The past few decades this bodily or sensory aspect of conducting research has gained an increasing prominence in the approaches to the construction and representation of knowledge. Both music and the sacred are continuously negotiated and performed categories. In their intangible character, the question is how to approach the practices indicated by these notions in the field. Over the last decades, the monopoly of vision in performing ethnography has been tackled and shifted to a broader regard of other senses. Histories have been published on how all the senses over time have been of great importance in cultural transmission, cases were made in pointing out the importance of the combination of all senses in the mediation of cultural experience – and thus in researching cultural experience. Even more so, the western five-fold concept of the senses was challenged.⁷ Pink summarized the three main issues that characterize sensory ethnography. It offers an exploration of the question of the relationship between sensory perception and culture, it questions concerning the status of vision and its relationship to the other senses are raised, and it demands a form of reflexitivity that goes beyond the interrogation of how culture is ‘written’ to examine sites of embodied knowing.⁸ The increasing focus on the value of the complete sensory sys-

 Timothy Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London: Routledge: 2000), 261.  Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures (London etc.: Routledge, 1993); David Howes (ed.), Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005); Kathryn Linn Geurts, Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community (Berkeley etc.: University of California Press, 2002).  Sarah Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography (Thousand Oaks etc.: Sage, 2009), 15.

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Appendix B. Ethnography

tem for academic research coincides with the complexity of putting the resulting sensory experiences into words. This is relevant in terms of both the notions of music and the sacred. In addition to studying sensory experiences of the members of the field, my sensory experiences as ethnographer were of equal importance. In addition to keeping an analytical mindset, I engaged with the field in order to experience and gain insider knowledge. In turn, this knowledge was used as a tool in analyzing an event or performance, but also as a departure point in approaching interviewees and in analyzing the words they used to describe their experiences. The focus on all of the senses and acknowledging the data that sensory experiences produces, heightened the awareness of the body: not only the bodies of the researched participants of the field, but just as much my body as researcher. As ethnographer Amanda Coffey pointed out: Our bodies and the bodies of others are central to the practical accomplishment of fieldwork. We locate our physical being alongside those of others as we negotiate the spatial context of the field. We concern ourselves with the positioning, visibility and performance of our own embodied self as we undertake participant observation.⁹

Generally during festivals many bodies are gathered in relatively close proximity to each other. It differs per festival how people experience this nearness. Standing in the crowd near the main stage of the Glastonbury Festival will be a completely different experience than sitting front row at a sold-out concert during the Utrecht Early Music Festival. In addition to these obvious aspects, observing the particularities of the character of the festival was a primary task. Personal experiences greatly mattered. However, despite my appreciation for “the sets of discourses through which [people] mobilize embodied ways of knowing in social contexts,”¹⁰ I still had to keep in mind that I was partaking on an equal level in discursive practices as the research participants were. As Pink put it, “our sensory perception is inextricable from the cultural categories that we use to give meaning to sensory experiences in social and material interactions (including when doing ethnography).”¹¹ Awareness of these categories was crucial in using autobiographical data for research purposes, as sensory categories were of equally constructed nature as the words used to provide meaning to them.

 Amanda Coffey, The Ethnographic Self, Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999), 59.  Sarah Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2009), 28.  Ibid.

Interviews

241

Interviews Ethnographic research knows many conversational types, which are all of importance in the data gathering. Depending on the field and the encounters in it, conversational techniques were applied. These ranged from spontaneous interactions like chats in the theater café to structured interviews with specific goals in mind. In the end, all interactions resulted in some type of data; provided some kind of knowledge. The usefulness of data was not always known from the start. Since ethnographic research is a continuous process of gathering, processing, and analyzing, data gathered at later moments could shed new light on previously assembled material. A festival site is pre-eminently a site where spontaneous encounters and short chats occur. Due to the intensity of the program and the way visitors and critics planned most concert visits ahead, they were inclined to stick to this itinerary. The members of the program committee attempted to divide attendance of all performances among each other and musicians were committed to their rehearsals and performances. No time was expected for conducting indepth interviews during the festival weekend. These moments for interaction and reflection needed to be postponed until after the festival. During the fieldwork, the three standard interview types – structured, semistructured, and unstructured – were used alternately, depending on the situation. Generally, it can be stated for research with an explorative character that the conversational structures developed from highly unstructured into increasingly more structured. As the research progressed, data was gathered and processed, followed by even more gathering and processing. Patterns within the data would become traceable and questions could increasingly be directed at understanding these patterns. While the gained insights and knowledge would become more detailed, the larger context that was continuously taking place needed to be considered as well. Thus, in addition to the development of a specialist view, the explorative eye needed to be kept open simultaneously. During these interviews, it was important to recognize the tendency that anthropologist Martin Stringer denoted as belief statements. ¹² How people experience something and what they say about it afterwards is per definition not the same. While it was necessary to study experience by means of description, it was also significant to be, at the very least, informed about the conditions in which the experiences occurred. In exploring the cognitive features of this phe-

 Martin D. Stringer, Contemporary Western Ethnography and the Definition of Religion (London, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008), 42– 44.

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Appendix B. Ethnography

nomenon, anthropologist Pascal Boyer recalled the term theological correctness. ¹³ It is a phenomenon that can be expanded beyond theological knowledge. People have different types of knowledge regarding either what they think something should mean or what they feel something means. In the context of musical performance, it was important to retrieve from interviewees not only what they thought they should have gathered from a particular concert, but even more so what they actually gathered and experienced on their own terms.

 This term was coined by Justin Barrett in an unpublished PhD dissertation. See: Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained. The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 87– 89.

Appendix C. Three Groups of Participants The identified groups of participants within this research project consisted of the program committee responsible for the festival program, the audience members, and performers. Each group is described in more detail below.

Program Committee The members of the program committee were studied from the start of research project. The committee had monthly meetings during which matters concerning program content and practicalities were discussed. These meetings lasted approximately four to five hours and were usually attended by all committee members.¹ Occasionally, representatives of cultural institutions or ensembles were invited to present their intentions for their contributions to the festival program. The program committee acted as a uniform body, but the opinions within the committee were strong and individual. Therefore, in addition to attending the meetings, conversations with individual committee members took place, to provide more insights in their motivations and reasoning concerning the festival program. Also, during the festivals, the program committee was asked about their initial responses to the concerts and the festival edition in its entirety. The Monday after the last festival day, a collective evaluation was held with all committee members, representatives of the production team, and the communication officer. My attendance of the meetings not only provided background information to that which was eventually communicated in the public domain, but even more so a look behind the scenes. It was just as relevant to gain knowledge about the concerts, ensembles, and locations that were on the longlist but eventually did not make the final program; lively discussions on thematic issues; or compromises resulting from practical concerns. This provided me with insights in the qualitative preferences of the individual committee members, voicing pros and cons in response to particular genres, composers, or performers. Of course, the resulting program predominantly mattered, as the other groups also related to this. However, the behind-the-scenes knowledge contributed to an understanding of the selection process, expectations, and judgments afterwards. All the official meetings of the program committee were recorded and transcribed. Parts with apparently less-relevant discussions were summarized in  The members of the program committee are introduced in Chapter 2, section 2.3. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-012

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Appendix C. Three Groups of Participants

these transcriptions. The immediately relevant parts were fully transcribed.² These transcriptions formed the basis for discursive analysis, for instance when looking at the use of the terminology of sacrality and the sacred in relation to the programmed concerts and selected locations. Due to the large number of meeting hours, the transcription process did not parallel the actual meetings. By transcribing the meetings slower than the real-time meeting pace, a larger understanding grew for decision-making processes. As decisions on particular program aspects usually covered multiple meetings, transcribing at a slower pace often provided me with the opportunity to take a step back when looking at the data, with insider knowledge of future steps in the decision-making process. In the book, the program committee members are referred to by their initials. FD: Fons Dejong, dance programmer for Theater aan het Vrijthof (since . festival project lead). JG: Jacques Giesen, president of the program committee. JL:

Jos Leussink, committee advisor hors categorie, former Radio  programmer.

RP: Russell Postema, senior producer radio . SB: Stijn Boeve, project lead, classical music programmer for Theater aan het Vrijthof (until .).

Audience Members The audience was by far the largest and most variable of the three involved groups. As audience research has shown, the majority of the visitors consisted of recurring visitors. The terminology of audience members does not imply full representation of this group, but is rather representative of a type of involvement in the festival. As this is not a quantitative research, there were no guidelines for representation of age, demography, gender and numbers of participants. Instead, the qualitative approach to this group can be characterized by a selection of members that fully engaged with the festival. They needed to be willing and able to talk about their engagement and experiences. Critics were identified as a sub-group of the audience members. Relatively easily identifiable, this group displayed a particular type of engagement. While after the 2012 edition only

 The criteria for relevance are discussed in Appendix E.

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245

one review appeared in a local newspaper, the appointment of a new communications officer for the 2013 festival resulted in considerably more media attention. Before the 2012 festival edition took place, a festival intern organized a focus group meeting with five frequent visitors. I was invited to join this meeting and ask some questions that were relevant for my research. Primarily this meeting was of value in getting introduced to several strongly engaged visitors. When the 2012 festival program was announced, I invited these five visitors to further participate in my research and asked about the reasoning behind their concert selection, their expectations beforehand, and their experiences afterwards. In addition to the focus on the program committee, this communication already offered a valuable introduction to some visitor concerns and ideas. For the festival edition of 2013 a more structured visitor strategy was used. In the digital newsletter a call for participation was announced. This participation consisted of keeping a daily festival journal during the four festival days by jotting down expectations, initial responses, and trying to capture experiences in words.³ In turn these journals formed points of departure for interviews with the journal keepers, which were scheduled as soon as possible after the festival. I received ten responses to this call, which eventually resulted in nine festival diaries. Asking audience members to keep a festival journal was a method to create a level of equality between the researcher and the audience members. It created a parallel with the field notes of the researcher and it provided insights into the language that was used to describe musical experiences, in addition to the terminology used during the interviews. Moreover, participant observation took place throughout the festival days and provided insights in the behavior during and reception of the concerts. Additionally, there were random encounters with the audience members, some short, others longer. During each of the festival editions, I attended as many concerts as possible.

 Nancy Ammerman observed how diaries are rarely used in the study of religion, while they are fairly common in other social-scientific research domains. In a time-constraint context like Musica Sacra Maastricht, diaries offered a useful tool to obtain initial responses from visitors. Moreover, while several informants indicated they usually do not like to be asked for a response to a concert directly after it has ended, they did not mind writing first impressions down in their diaries. Nancy Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 17.

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Audience members are referred to in various ways. Three respondents from the audience decided to remain anonymous in the research reports. These are referred to with pseudonym first names and their real years of birth: Ann (), Mildred () and Vivienne (). Six respondents allowed use of their own names. They are referred to by their first names and years of birth: Cees (), Cunera (), Elly (), Jacob (), Han (), and Margot (). Pieces of the following critics were used: Vikkie Bartholomeus (De Limburger) Floris Don (NRC), Elle Eggels (Dichtbij NL), Philippe Grisar (Klassiek Centraal), Rinus van der Heijden (Jazz Enzo), Kasper Jansen (NRC); Biella Lutmer (Volkskrant), Sander van Maas (Muziek van Nu), Maurice Wiche (De Limburger).

Performers Music is at the heart of the festival, joined by a parallel program of theatre, dance, film, and visual arts. The group identified as performers consisted not only of musicians, but also of composers, artists, actors, and directors. Sometimes people took up multiple roles in one performance. Therefore, it was decided to group everyone involved in the realization of an artistic production under the term performers. In addition to the more general participant observation during the concerts, performers were invited for interviews. In the selection for interviewees a balance between local, national, and international performers was aimed for. All three types were engaged with the festival on different levels. Generally, local performers knew the festival more intimately, because they performed there on a regular basis or were visitors themselves. International performers saw this festival as every other: an opportunity to perform and national performers were somewhere in the middle between these two. From a scholarly perspective, the main question for the performers concerned the importance, or even influence, of the fact that they performed in a context presenting their music in relation to the sacred. From the performers’ perspective, the primary considerations concerned acoustic, technical, and spatial details. Beforehand the program committee carefully contemplated the concert locations, but was also bound by practical production matters. Local performers were more likely to influence the concert locations than national or international ones. Also, the engagement between performers and visitors was of interest here.

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247

Performers are referenced with their full names. Five interviewees performed during Musica Sacra Maastricht: conductor, composer, and organ player Hans Leenders (), pianist and composer Jonathan Powell (), actor Titus Muizelaar (), organ player Marcel Verheggen (), and conductor and musicologist Jesse Rodin (). Of six interviewees work was performed during Musica Sacra Maastricht: composer Mike Svoboda (), who also took part in the performance of his own piece, composer Michael Finnissy (), composer Boudewijn Tarenskeen (), and three art students of the ABK exam group of : Sid Clemens (), Andreas Gaida (), and Miguel Trigo Moran (). Of one respondent who visited during the committee meetings, data has been included. Dr. Fons Kurris (), pastor of the Onze Lieve Vrouwe basilica and Gregorian chant expert.

Appendix D. Fieldwork Concert Attendance Order of listing: performer(s), program title, composer (if applicable), location. Program titles originally in Dutch have been translated into English. Locations are mentioned by their Dutch names.

2012: Rites & Rituals Thursday 06/09/2012 16.00 – 20.30 Symposium Sacrality in the Public Domain: 30 Years Musica Sacra, Maastricht, Theater aan het Vrijthof 21.00 – 22.00 Kashôken, Dai-hannya-tendoku’e, St. Janskerk 22.30 – 23.30 Intro In Situ, De Horla, Studio Intro In Situ Friday 07/09/2012 16.00 – 17.00 Amsterdam Piano Quartet, Le Sacre du Printemps, Igor Stravinsky, Theater aan het Vrijthof 20.00 – 21.10 Mannheimer Hofkapelle, Music from the Freemasons Lodge: Carmen Saeculare, Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, Theater aan het Vrijthof 22.00 – 23.00 Schola Maastricht, Ritual Elements from the Sacrum Triduum Paschale, Martinuskerk Saturday 08/09/2012 11.00 – 12.00 Slagwerk Den Haag, Strange and Sacred Noise, John Luther Adams, Timmerfabriek 13.00 – 14.00 The Orlando Consort, Veni Sancte Spiritus/ Preco Preheminencie, John Dunstaple/ Nuper Rosarum Flores, Guillaume Dufay/ Vultum tuum Deprecabuntur, Josquin Desprez, Kapel Zusters onder de Bogen 14.30 – 15.30 Studium Chorale, Viu Urbis, Kurt Bikkembergs/ As I crossed a Bridge of Dreams, Anne Boyd, Matthiaskerk 16.00 – 17.00 Ensemble Lucilin, Cortege, Harrison Birtwistle/ Le Sette Chiese, Bruno Mantovani, Theater aan het Vrijthof 20.00 – 21.15 Sirin, Russische Rituelen, St. Servaas Basiliek 21.45 – 23.15 Stracc, 13.0.0.0.0. The End of Times, Theater aan het Vrijthof Sunday 09/09/2012 13:00 – 13:45 Matangi Quartet, The Cusp of Magic, Terry Riley, Theater aan het Vrijthof 14.00 – 15.00 Menno van Delft, Clavichord, Keizerzaal Sint Servaasbasiliek 17.00 – 17.30 Conservatorium Amsterdam, Moments Rituels, Anubis, Gerard Grisey/ Moments Rituels II, Ton-That Tiet, Stadhuis

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18.00 – 19.00 Severin von Eckardstein, a.o. 5 Danses Rituelles, Andre Jolivet/ Sonate nr.7 ‘Messe Blanche,’ Alexander Skrjabin/ Charmes, Federico Mompou, Theater aan het Vrijthof 20.00 – 21.15 Ensemble Elyma, Fiesta Criolla, Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek

2013: Introspection, Transformation, Conversion Thursday 19/09/2013 15.00 – 19.30 Symposium Introspection, Transformation, Conversion, Theater aan het Vrijthof 20.00 – 22.00 Ensemble Aquarius, Kanon Pokajanen, Arvo Pärt, Lambertuskerk Friday 20/09/2013 16.00 – 17.15

Studium Chorale, Forms of Emptiness, Jonathan Harvey, Sint Servaasbasiliek/ Maastricht Conservatorium, The Repentant Thief, John Tavener, Theater aan het Vrijthof 18.00 – 19.00 The Tallis Scholars, Deus in Adiutorium, Juan Gutiérres de Padilla/ Lamentations, Tomás Luis de Victoria/ Peccaviums cum Patribus Nostris, Christopher Tye, Zusters onder de Bogen 19.00 – 19.45 Musica Max Café, Theater aan het Vrijthof 20.00 – 21.15 Philharmonie zuidnederland, Stille und Umkehr, Bernd Alois Zimmerman/ Vier letzte Lieder, Richard Strauss/ Symphony 3, James MacMillan, Theater aan het Vrijthof 22.00 – 23.00 Capilla Flamenca and Hermes Ensemble, Aleph, Incipits, Daan Janssens/ Lamentations, Pierre de la Rue/ Lamentations, Alexander Agricola/ Victimae Pachali, Josquin Deprez, Martinuskerk Saturday 21/09/2013 13.00 – 13.45 15.00 – 16.00 16.30 – 17.30 18.00 – 18.45 19.15 – 20.15 21.00 – 23.00

Juul Sadée, Ketujan, Keizerzaal Emio Greco, PC – Double Points: Verdi, Theater aan het Vrijthof Klaas de Vries, Hundred Nights, Hundred Years, Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek Daan Vandewalle, Music of Changes, John Cage, Conservatorium P’ansori, Yongseok Choe, Byungtae Kim, Theater aan het Vrijthof Concerto Soave, La Conversione di Maddalena, Giovanni Bononcini, Martinuskerk

Sunday 22/09/2013 12.30 – 13.15 Musica Max Café, Theater aan het Vrijthof 14.00 – 15.00 Merlijn Twaalfhoven, Resonance – Sea of Sound, Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek 15.30 – 16.30 Capella Amsterdam, LUTHER, Boudewijn Tarenskeen, Sint Janskerk

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17.00 – 17.30 The Pilgrim Project #2: YATRA, GOTRA, Joost Vrouenraets and Rakesh MP, Lambertuskerk 19.00 – 21.00 Octopus Symfonisch Koor and Le Concert d’Anvers, St. Paul, Gustav Mendelssohn, Theater aan het Vrijthof

2014: The Awe-inspiring Thursday 18/09/2014 11.00 – 19.15 Jonathan Powell, Sequentia Cyclica Super Dies Irea, Kaikhosru Sorabji, Bonbonniere 20.30 – 21.45 Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen and Studium Chorale, The Beautiful Names, John Tavener, Theresiakerk Friday 19/09/2014 15.00 – 15.40 16:00 – 17:15

Elmer Schönberger, Festival Lecture, Theater aan het Vrijthof Philharmonie zuidnederland, Panic, Harrison Birtwistle/ Mystère de l’Instant, Theater aan het Vrijthof 18.00 – 19.00 Marcel Verheggen, The Planets, Gustav Holst, Sint Servaasbasiliek 20.15 – 21.30 Ballet am Rhein, Deep Field, Theater aan het Vrijthof 22.00 – 23.00 Cut Circle, Missa et Ecce Terrae Motus/ Dies Irae, Antonie Brumel/ Nuper Rosarum Flores, Guillaume Dufay/ Praeter Rerum Seriem, Josquin des Prez, Martinuskerk Saturday 20/09/2014 09.00 – 10.00 Anupama Bhagwat and Gurdain Rayatt, Morning Raga, Keizerzaal 14.00 – 14.45 Mike Svoboda, Die Bücher der Zeiten, Conservatorium 15.30 – 16.30 Lets Radiokoor, Lux Aeterna, György Ligeti/ Choir Concerto, Alfred Schnittke, Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek 17.15 – 18.15 Arne Deforce and Centre Henri Pousseur, Life Form for Cello and Clectronics, Richard Barrett, Sint Janskerk 20.00 – 21.15 Brussels Philharmonic and Ensemble Exaudi, Remembrance Day, Michael Finnissy, Theater aan het Vrijthof 22.00 – 22.45 Spectra Ensemble, Sternenrest, Willem Boogman, Lambertuskerk Sunday 21/09/2014 12.30 – 13.30 Ensemble Echoi, a.o. Of this Word’s Being, Roger Reynolds/ Zyia/ Psappha, Iannis Xenakis, Studio Intro in Situ 14.00 – 15.00 La Capeletta, Rex Salomon fecit Templum, Zusters onder de Bogen 15.30 – 16.30 Ensemble Agimont, a.o. Intonuit de Coelo, Nicolas Bernier/ Beati Omnes, qui Timent Dominum, André Campra, Matthiaskerk

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18.00 – 18.45 Musica Max Café, Theater aan het Vrijthof 19.00 – 21.00 Les Muffatti and Vocaal Ensemble Currende, Donner-ode, Georg Philipp Teleman/ Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, Georg Händel, Theater aan het Vrijthof

Appendix E. Data processing The collected data, sensory and linguistic, recorded, written, and spoken, required translation into the scope of this research. It was related to the theoretical framework and it needed to be presentable and understandable for an audience not necessarily familiar with the festival or even the study of musical performances. The data was gathered with the expectation to contribute to the theoretical understanding of the relation between music and the sacred.

Acknowledging Subjectivities The requirements for a proper translation process of ethnographic data into an ethnographic account that was suitable for research purposes have seen drastic changes over the course of the twentieth century. Termed as the Writing Culture debate, the presence of subjectivity in ethnographic accounts was increasingly acknowledged.¹ This awareness of subjective presumptions and voice of the researcher created a more nuanced ethnographic landscape, without resulting in one new dominant methodological discourse. Instead, it launched a trend of reflexivity amongst ethnographers in handling data and writing up their accounts, which still has a presence in current academic debates.² The notion of reflexivity did not result in a generalized methodological answer but in a continuous questioning of motivations and subjectivities. In this awareness of subjectivity and word selection in writing ethnographies, an additional dimension of complexity is provided by the sensory data.³ A high degree of transparency is required, because both my sensory knowledge and that of the interviewees played a key role in the data analysis. The only way to incorporate the sensory knowledge into the data set was to level it with the other types of data (written, spoken, observed), which were also transferred into research material. Thus, by putting the sensory into words, authorship remained to play an important role. This was one of the

 James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).  Allison James, Andrew Dawson and Jenny Hockey, (eds.) After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology (New York: Routledge, 1997); George E. Marcus, “Ethnography Two Decades after Writing Culture: From the Experimental to the Baroque,” Anthropological Quarterly 80 – 4 (2007): 1127– 1145.  Lorne L. Dawson, “Giving Voice to the Sacred”, in The Sacred and Its Scholars. Comparative Methodologies for the Study of Primary Religious Data, ed. Thomas A. Idinopulos and Edward A. Yonan (Leiden: Brill, 1996): 65 – 88. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-014

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reasons to ask audience members to keep festival diaries. It allowed their translation process (of experiences into words) to become part of the data set. With regard to the other groups; the critics put their experiences into words in the reviews, and the program committee recordings constituted a vast amount of experiences put into words. Finally, the performers often delivered program descriptions or interpretations about the pieces they performed during the festival. Afterwards these interpretations were related to their experiences during interviews. Thus, for all the groups there was written or spoken material, in addition to knowledge that was gained through the senses.

Processing Data The gathered data was structured along guidelines for qualitative research.⁴ The transcriptions of the meetings, interviews, and diaries were processed with the overall research question in mind. All relevant fragments were selected from the transcriptions. Relevance was informed by theoretical lines of enquiry.⁵ Fragments could agree with, challenge, or complement particular theoretical outlooks. Exploring the data for connotations with these theoretical lines and questions resulted in a wide variety of relevant fragments. After their selection, these were coded to indicate the themes discussed in the fragments.⁶ To ensure that

 Ben Baarda, Martijn de Goede and Joop Teunissen, Basisboek Kwalitatief Onderzoek. Handleiding voor het Opzetten en Uitvoeren van Kwalitatief Onderzoek. (Groningen, Houten: Noordhoff Uitgevers, 2009), 314– 338.  In the literature on coding there is a debate between proponents of coding without any theoretical frame in mind and those who claim this is impossible. I follow the second line of thought, in acknowledging that theoretical knowledge is at play in the steps of gathering data, selecting fragments, and creating codes. See: Matthew B. Miles and Michael A. Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1994), 58. The theoretical lines of enquiry that informed the data processing were: The use of the term the sacred, and its connotations (Evans, Anttonen); The variety of experiences of music and consequential meaning attributions (Demerath); The relation between the sacred and religion (Paden); The perception of non-ordinary powers and worlds (Taves); How people set-apart aspects of the performances and value these (Taves); How the sacred creates a sense of boundary in people’s perceptions (Anttonen); How musical performances may lead to moral judgments (Lynch); How a relationship between the real and ideal is negotiated by means of participation in the musical performances (Small); How the festival fosters a sense of collectivity, and the position of the individual within this temporary collective (Durkheim, Small); The balance between ritual and play (Huizinga), liturgy and show (Rappaport, Schechner).  The fragments were taken from the overall transcriptions, but not assessed solely on the information within the individual fragments. Rather their context was continuously considered.

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the resulting analyses represented the ways how respondents in the different groups understood themselves and their own practices, the codes were of firstand second-order character: reflecting respectively how people used particular words (like “sacred” or “religion”) in the field and their generalizations about these words. These codes were in turn grouped together to discern general themes, which offered the structure for the chapters on data analysis in the original dissertation on which this book is based. The data set of the program committee consisted of 24 audio recordings of program committee meetings between November 2012 and September 2014. The first twelve were fully transcribed; of the remaining recordings the relevant parts were transcribed while the rest was summarized. During the festivals daily evaluations took place informally at the end of each day in the theater. Relevant material collected from these gatherings was taken up in the field notes. The method for the analysis was as follows. With the general research question in mind, relevant passages regarding the performance and meaning of the sacred were selected from the transcripts. These passages were labeled and grouped under overarching themes. Consequentially, the relationships between these codes and themes were explored.⁷ As a result, patterns were discerned in the use of terminology on the sacred, the position of the festival theme in the construction of the festival program, the quality of the programmed music and performers, a sense of strategy in the decision-making process and activities of the program committee, the implications of the required diplomacy in creating an annual festival, and the presence of institutional religion in the discourse. During the festivals of 2012 and 2013 data has been gathered from several audience members, this process is described in Appendix C. The diaries and follow-up interviews with audience members resulted in rich and varied material. This offered a challenge in the organization of the data.⁸ Yet, in all its richness, organizing the data has led to a categorization that sheds light on patterns of meaning making and value attribution among festival visitors. During the inter-

Therefore, the preference was given to use coding, over a method like qualitative content analysis. See Jochen Gläser and Grit Laudel, “Life with and without Coding: Two Methods for EarlyStage Data Analysis in Qualitative Research Aiming at Causal Explanations.” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, 14:2 (2013), http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/ 1886/3528,  Ben Baarda, Martijn de Goede and Joop Teunissen, Basisboek Kwalitatief Onderzoek. Handleiding voor het opzetten en uitvoeren van kwalitatief onderzoek. (Groningen, Houten: Noordhoff Uitgevers, 2009), 314– 338.  The organization of the data occurred in similar ways as that of the program committee. For more details, see section 5.1.

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views, participants often referred to practical matters such as accessibility of concert venues and the time in between the concerts to move from one venue to another. Such practicalities have not been taken up in the data analysis, unless they were of influence on the experience of the performed music and the attributed meaning. The most relevant practical matter that is in the data analysis was that of seating and sight of the stage. As the festival was increasingly becoming an interdisciplinary platform, the range of performers was broadening. However, the core of the festival remained the musical performances. This range is reflected in the dataset. In addition to an actor and a group of arts students, the other interviewees were composers, conductors, and performing musicians. Most of the data was gathered around the 2014 festival, with the exception of one interview with a composer and actor of a 2013 performance.⁹ Some of the interviewees had been contributing to the festival for a longer period of time and were able to reflect on their experiences with the festival, regarding editions beyond the scope of this research project. Those present for a limited amount of time were interviewed during the 2014 festival weekend. Performers residing in the Netherlands were interviewed at a later stage, in between festivals. The data gathered with the interviews is complemented with information gathered from program committee meetings during which performers would present their ideas and plans for the coming editions. After the data collection and the transcribing process, the data was analyzed with the overall research question in mind. This analysis led to a selection of fragments, which in turn could be organized within three categories that shed light on the patterns of art production and meaning making amongst the performers. During the interviews, some of the performers were very straightforward in their motivations for their presence during the festival: because it was their job. Others were very focused on practical issues such as payment and rehearsal time. In as far as these matters influenced their perceptions of this festival, they were taken up in the analysis. The various interviews led to a large and varied body of data. Like the other data sets, this one was not meant to be representative of all the performers of the three festival editions; rather it was meant to shed light on the role of performers in the dynamics constituting the relationship between music and the sacred. The categorization of the data led to themes related to the analysis of the data sets of the program committee and the audience members, but with emphases on different matters

 This interview was conducted together with. Dr. Mirella Klomp (PThU), which resulted in a coauthored article. See: Lieke Wijnia and Mirella Klomp, “Tarenskeen’s LUTHER: Allowing for New Forms of Sacrality,” Yearbook for Liturgical and Ritual Studies 30 (2014): 243 – 259.

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Relation to Theoretical Framework After the analyses of the three data sets, these were in turn related to the theoretical framework. It was explored how the empirical data informed the theory. The analyses of the empirical data were mostly focused on how meaning was attributed in the field and at which point these could be characterized as having ultimate value. The question that followed was how to study the function of these meanings within the larger cultural framework in which they were attributed. How did the engagement with the musical performances relate to the festival context of Musica Sacra Maastricht? And which theoretical tools enabled me to ask relevant questions about meaning making and value attribution, to work towards an understanding in terms of the sacred? In looking at practices and their implications for meaning making and valuation processes, reflective tools were found in performance studies and semiotics. The field of performance studies, which partially overlaps with the field of ritual studies as discussed in Chapter 6, directed focus at the practices and their implications. Semiotics rather pointed at the functioning of meaning perceived and attributed to the performance of these practices. It offered an interesting ground to explore how the respondents perceived their realities through the meanings they attributed to the experienced music. Without engaging in a full-fled semiotic analysis, I take three semiotic modes as indicators of the different ways in which signs can be perceived and meaning may be attributed to these perceptions. Through the same sign these different modes may be established, dependent on the perceiver and their frames of reference. This part of Peircian semiotics was used as an analytical tool, in order to cast light on how the same music performance may be interpreted in opposite ways, resulting from how people construct their realities, and in turn how music functions in these realities. The ethnographic methods, as outlined in Appendix B, applied to the gathered data resulted in several levels of interest, levels on which the data informed the theory and vice versa. First, the level of practices: how the presence and actions of the members of the groups constituted the concerts and the festival. The second level consists of the discursive frame in which these practices took place. This frame was determined by first- and second-order concerns with the notion of the sacred and its relation to religion. And, the third level of interest is the dynamic underlying the practices within this discursive frame. It results from looking at the field from a third-order perspective, discerning a dynamic of how people establish a relationship between non-ordinary and ordinary perceptions of their reality through the performed music.

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References to Data Set in the Text Contributions by research participants that are paraphrased in the text, are accompanied by translated quotes into English in the footnote. Direct quotations in the text have the original Dutch quotations in the footnote.

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Index Adams, John Luther 77, 248 Adorno, Theodor 144, 197 f. Aesthetics 59, 64, 74, 79, 85 – 87, 89, 93 f., 109 f., 112 f., 117 f., 121, 129, 133 f., 136 – 138, 162 f., 170, 184, 191 – 193, 199, 207, 209 f., 226, 231, 234, 250 Affective space 11, 65, 164 Allah 82, 109 Allegri, Gregorio 67 Ammerman, Nancy 15 f., 167, 215 f., 245 Amsterdam 1, 5, 7, 9, 25 f., 61, 91, 151, 158, 229 f., 232, 248 f., 258 Anderson, Benedict 6, 111, 229 Ando, Tadeo 121 Andriessen, Louis 208 Anntonen, Veikko 47, 48, 51, 167, 226, 253 Annual theme 26 – 29, 70, 72, 79 f., 108, 117, 130, 132, 141, 143, 201, 223 Apocalypse 234 Aquarius (ensemble) 193, 249 Architecture 70, 76, 87 f., 191, 194, 217, 222, 225, 228, 230 Arnold, Jonathan 10 – 12, 32, 144 Art history 1 f., 6, 76, 83 Art music 67, 82, 92 f., 138, 179, 196 f. Arts festival 6, 14, 16, 20, 143, 196 Arya, Rina 6, 212 f. ASKO 25 Atmosphere 75, 84, 86 f., 112 – 114, 133, 137, 147, 161 – 163, 188, 194, 208 Attentionality 212 – 215 Audience 2, 4, 16, 18, 23 f., 26, 32 – 35, 54 f., 58 – 60, 70, 73, 76 – 81, 83 f., 87, 89 – 91, 93, 97 – 100, 102, 105 – 114, 116 – 118, 124 – 126, 128, 132, 134, 138 – 145, 148 f., 156, 158 – 161, 163, 169 – 174, 178, 180, 182, 189, 191 f., 194, 196 – 202, 204 – 207, 210 – 212, 214, 216, 218 – 226, 229 – 231, 239, 241, 243 – 246, 252 – 255 Aura 2, 69, 182, 188 Austin, John L. 168 Authority 50, 58, 102, 169, 227 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110559255-016

Aventure (ensemble) 213 Awe 27 f., 108 f., 121, 125 f., 178, 234, 250 Baroque 25 f., 252 Beelaert, Sylvester 25, 55 f., 124, 258 Behavior 4, 12, 14, 27, 30 f., 37, 39, 44, 47, 51 f., 154 – 156, 165, 167 – 169, 173, 176, 182, 204, 220, 223, 227, 231 f., 238, 245 Belief statements 241 Belief system 45, 48 Bell, Catharine 153, 156, 176, 215, 219 Bell, Joshua 215 Bellah, Robert 17, 46, 52, 215 f. Belting, Hans 4, 65 – 67, 117, 157, 210 Benjamin, Walter 2, 62 – 64, 99 Bennett, Tony 3 Bever 21 Bible 20, 26, 59 Blacking, John 34 f., 111 f. Black Lives Matter 214 Blanning, Tim 182 Bodar, Antoine 93 Boeve, Stijn 25, 244 Bononcini, Giovanni 125, 184, 249 Bossy, John 61 Boundaries 14, 48, 52 f., 71 f., 75, 81, 103, 123, 142, 187, 195, 226 f., 239, 253 Bourdieu, Pierre 71, 153 Bourriaud, Nicolas 114, 117 Boyer, Pascal 154, 242 Brahms, Johannes 186 Bremen 1 – 3 Britten, Benjamin 186 Brochure 23, 58 f., 79 f., 108, 113, 133, 147, 159 f., 164, 178, 184, 205 Buddhism 21, 74, 93, 134, 142, 159 f. Building blocks 37, 45 – 47, 50, 116 Butler, Judith 151 Calvin, John 106 Canon 1 f., 172 f., 205 f., 218, 225, 228 Canticles 26, 234 Capilla Flamenca 94, 249

Index

Cappella Amsterdam 58 f., 128 Caravaggio 66 f. Category-boundary 48 Cathedral 3 Catholicism 6, 8, 22 f., 63, 71, 76, 81 f., 86, 90, 93, 100, 105 f., 120, 158, 178 f., 195 Celebrity 12 Cellebroederskapel 84 Cerezales, Nathalie 17, 61 – 63, 68 – 71, 83, 99 Chain of memory 8 f., 18, 99 f. Chicago 5 f., 35, 65, 111, 154, 215 Chidester, David 37 – 39 Choir 25, 58 f., 71, 87 f., 92, 130 f., 158, 162, 186, 194, 250 Christianity 5, 8, 11 f., 17, 21, 33, 37, 61 f., 71, 74 – 76, 78, 80, 89, 93, 100, 140, 142, 153, 160, 165, 226, 228, 230 Chronos 217 f. Church 3 – 5, 8 f., 23, 58, 61, 71 – 75, 81 – 83, 85 – 87, 91, 93, 97, 105 f., 109, 118, 121, 123, 133, 141, 148, 158 – 160, 162 – 164, 178 f., 184, 189, 194 – 196, 211, 214, 225, 230 – 232 – Church attendance 7 f. – Church building 8, 23, 71, 75, 84 – 86, 133 f., 142, 147, 179, 194 f., 229, 232 f. – Church membership 8 City hall 24, 71 f., 83, 136, 164 Civil sacred 62 f. Classical music 6, 13, 24 f., 34, 54, 92 f., 108, 144, 181 f., 196 – 198, 223, 239, 244 Clemens, Sid 92, 247, 258 Clifford, James 139 – 141, 252 Coding 71, 142, 253 f. Coffey, Amanda 240 Collaboration 23, 70, 127, 129 – 131, 229 Collection 1, 5, 55, 62, 64, 140, 220, 255 Collective effervescence 116 Communication 49 f., 54, 77 – 81, 117, 128, 152, 168, 175, 243, 245 Comparison 2, 4 f., 7, 12, 18, 37, 45, 47, 52, 89, 96, 118, 123, 142, 158, 183, 217, 222, 230 – 233, 252

271

Concert 4 f., 10, 18, 21, 23 f., 28, 31, 33 – 35, 54, 58, 71, 73, 76 f., 79 – 89, 92 f., 103 f., 107 f., 112 – 114, 116 f., 121 – 123, 125 f., 128 f., 133, 135 – 138, 145, 147 – 150, 159 f., 162 – 164, 168, 171, 173, 177 – 179, 181, 184 – 186, 188 f., 191 – 193, 195, 201, 203, 206 – 209, 211, 213 f., 216, 219 f., 225, 228, 240 – 246, 248, 250, 255 f., 258 Concert hall 3 f., 103, 110, 112, 169, 181 – 183, 194 f., 225, 231 Conservation 8, 17, 60 f., 69 – 71, 98 – 102, 229 Contact zone 110, 137, 139 – 141 Contemplation 2, 6, 78, 83, 123, 182, 198, 209, 212 f., 220 f. Contemporary art 1, 5 f., 9, 26, 68, 94, 230 Continuity 68 f., 99 – 102, 107, 142, 166, 228, 230 Contrast 27, 73, 94, 117, 139, 147, 149, 153, 155, 160 f., 165 – 167, 171 f., 174, 176, 178, 201, 203 Conversion 72 f., 80, 125, 183 f., 234, 249 Cook, Nicholas 115 Counter-culture 12, 43, 143 – 145, 198 COVID19 232 Critics 33, 54, 81 f., 111, 113 – 116, 126, 161, 178, 227, 241, 244, 246, 253 Cult 63 f., 66 – 68, 217 Culturalized religion 64, 74 Curating 1 – 3, 64, 114, 215 Cut Circle 89, 250 Dance 25, 29, 71, 85, 125, 135, 147 – 149, 151, 156, 171, 174, 177, 195, 217, 222, 244, 246 Danto, Arthur 52, 180 Davie, Grace 99 Debussy, Claude 147 Dejong, Fons 25, 244 Delft, Menno van 194, 248, 258 Demerath, Jay 32, 41 – 45, 53, 143, 205, 253 Demonstration 214 DeNora, Tia 112 Dichtbij.nl 114

272

Index

Differentiation 53, 107 f., 110, 138, 143, 145, 157, 210, 213, 218, 220 Diplomacy 70, 72, 254 Discourse 2, 16, 48, 50, 61, 98, 108, 110, 112, 118, 120, 143 – 145, 151 f., 172, 213, 225 f., 228, 240, 252, 254 Divine 27, 43 f., 55, 62, 66 f., 182, 230 Dogma 83 Don, Floris 39, 72, 75, 78 f., 81 – 83, 92, 99, 109, 112, 136, 150, 155, 178 f., 183, 194 f., 208, 225, 237, 246 Duchamp, Marcel 2, 52 f., 145 Durkheim, Emile 14, 38 – 41, 50 f., 68, 115 f., 147, 151 f., 154, 253 Early Music Festival 20, 118, 145, 223, 240 Echo van Eeuwigheid 25, 93 Eckardstein, Severin von 128, 147, 249 Efficacy 123, 175 f., 200 Eggels, Elle 114, 246 Eliade, Mircea 38 Embodiment 15, 52, 56, 60, 66, 83, 108, 117, 144, 157, 163, 166, 171, 177, 180, 199, 204, 212 – 214, 228, 237, 239 f. Emotion 9, 11, 15, 43, 49 f., 55, 77, 93 f., 96, 106, 112, 135 f., 139, 164, 168, 171, 181, 191 – 193, 200, 210, 224 Entertainment 123, 126, 141 f., 144, 150, 161, 171, 175 f., 188, 196, 198 Ethnography 32, 51, 168, 236 – 241, 252 Evans, Matthew 43 – 45, 47, 52, 253 Everyday life 15 – 17, 27, 112, 145, 156, 165 – 167, 176, 209, 215 f., 219, 221, 245 Exclusion 117, 153 Experience 2, 10, 15 – 17, 23 f., 27, 31 – 33, 35, 37 – 44, 46, 48 – 53, 55 f., 65 – 67, 73, 76 f., 83 – 89, 91, 93 – 98, 100, 105 – 107, 110 – 113, 116 f., 120 f., 124 f., 131, 134 – 140, 142 – 146, 150 f., 153, 155 – 157, 161 – 164, 170 – 176, 178 – 181, 183 – 189, 191 – 193, 198 – 210, 212 – 214, 216 – 220, 223 f., 226, 228, 236 – 241, 244 f., 253, 255 – Experience of religion 77, 228 Falla, Manuel de 147, 177 Family resemblance 5, 29, 155 f., 174, 205

Fès 21 Festival brochure 23, 80, 147 Festival for Religious Music 22 f., 74, 81 f. Film 29, 125, 146, 174, 176, 178, 192, 219, 222, 246 Finnissy, Michael 91, 122, 186, 190, 191, 194, 195, 205, 209, 210, 247, 250 Folklore 51, 101, 167 Foucault, Michel 153 Fragility 18 f., 53, 178 f., 214 Fragmentation 14, 50, 67, 117, 119, 227, 230, 231 French revolution 61 f. Fribourg 21 Funding 21 f., 81 Gaida, Andreas 92, 247, 258 Gandhi, Mahatma 105 Geertz, Clifford 166 Genesis 26 f. Gennep, Arnold van 38 Gesualdo Consort 136, 192 Giesen, Jacques 24, 124, 142, 244 Glass, Philip 127, 133, 193 Glastonbury Festival 240 Gordon, Jacques 215 Grandjean, Jacqueline 232 f. Gregorian chant 26, 66, 73, 87, 95, 124, 192, 247 Grimes, Ronald L. 154 f., 173 – 175 Gubaidulina, Sofia 127 Habermas, Jurgen 101 f., 106 Habitus 69 – 71, 73 f., 89, 100 Haeghens, Hugo 25 Hamburg 21 Heaven 15, 27, 88, 93 f. Heiligdomsvaart 22 f., 100 f. Heritage 3 – 6, 8 f., 16 – 18, 20, 39, 54, 58, 60, 62 – 65, 67 – 70, 74 – 76, 83, 96, 98 – 100, 105, 111, 135, 150, 173, 220, 226, 228 – 233 – Cultural heritage 8 f., 20, 69, 83, 131, 194 – Heritage religion 64 – Industrial heritage 24 Hermes Ensemble 94, 249 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle 8, 9, 99, 100

Index

Herzogenburg 21 Hesmondhalgh, David 115 f., 172 f. Heykers, Hans 108 Hilliard Ensemble 85 Hinduism 21 History 2 f., 5 f., 8 f., 13, 18, 20, 22 f., 25 f., 33, 54, 62, 65 f., 82, 86, 96, 104 f., 107, 119 f., 134, 139 f., 153, 195, 200, 202 f., 225, 230, 239 Hölderlin, Friedrich 74, 75 Holland Festival 145 Holst, Gustav 108 f., 112, 203, 250 Holy 27, 30, 37 f., 48, 65, 95, 104, 118, 141, 158 f., 234 Huizinga, Johan 169 f., 253 Hymns 58, 159 Icon 1, 125, 202, 204, 213, 231 Iconic 1 – 4, 41, 125 f., 202 – 204, 231 Iconography 66 Icons 1, 101, 125, 231 Identity 9, 26, 42, 100, 108, 110 – 112, 118, 122, 126, 138, 141, 164, 175, 240 Idolatry 12 Imagination 6, 30, 100, 182, 197 Imagined community 70, 111 Inclusion 11, 237 Index 39, 202 – 204 Ingold, Timothy 212, 238 f. Innovation 22, 60, 67, 98 Institutional religion 10, 61, 63, 73, 78, 94, 98, 120, 164, 182, 228, 230, 254 Intertwinements 5 – 7, 17, 30, 58, 60 f., 222 Introspection 72 f., 80, 121, 125, 133, 142, 207, 234, 249 Islam 8, 21, 153 Isnart, Cyril 17, 61 – 63, 68 – 71, 83, 99 James, William 5 – 7, 20, 32, 41, 237, 252 Jansen, Kasper 82, 227, 246 Jazz Enzo 82, 246 Jensen, Jeppe Sinding 14, 30 f., 153, 166 f., 176 Jesus 74, 91, 105 Job 17, 25 f., 234, 255 Johnson, Julian 196 f. Jolivet, Andre 126, 147 f., 249

273

Kairos 217 f. Kalra, Virinder S. 182 Kashôken 88, 134, 142, 158 – 161, 188, 248 Keizerzaal 84, 191, 248 – 250 King, Martin Luther 105 Klassiek Centraal 82, 246 KRO 24 f., 81 Kubrick, Stanley 178 Kunsthalle, Bremen 1 – 3 Kurris, Alfons 141 f., 195, 247 Lambertuskerk 85, 133, 249 f. Lasso, Orlando di 126 Latvian Radio Choir 178 f. Leenders, Hans 92, 100 f., 122 – 124, 130 – 132, 187, 195, 247, 258 Leeuw, Gerardus van der 8, 38 f., 232 Leithauser, Mark 215 Leussink, Jos 25, 244 Levine, Lawrence 182 Ligeti, Gyorgi 178 f., 228, 250 Likeness 5, 65 – 67, 117, 157, 210 Lilienfield 21 Liminality 16, 151 Linenthal, Edward T. 37 – 39 Literature 24 f., 58, 105, 134, 139, 196, 217, 222, 253 Liturgy 10, 23, 33, 48, 54, 56, 58 f., 64, 67, 72 f., 89 f., 92, 99, 112, 119, 127, 141 f., 150 f., 155, 158, 164 f., 171, 178, 190 f., 195 f., 205 f., 217 f., 228, 230, 253, 255 Lived religion 16, 83, 167 Locality 8, 22, 24 f., 29, 34, 66, 113 f., 120, 129 f., 132, 138, 158, 161, 211, 220, 229, 245 f. Longing 78, 218 f. Lowlands (festival) 223 Lumiere 29 Luther, Martin 58 – 60, 82, 104 – 107, 187, 195, 202 f., 207 Lynch, Gordon 14, 31, 49 f., 53, 56 f., 67, 112, 152, 168, 227, 232, 253 Maas, Sander van 181 f., 246 Maastricht 6 f., 9, 17 – 26, 28 f., 31 – 35, 39, 41, 50, 53, 58, 68 – 71, 73 f., 78, 81 – 86, 99 – 101, 105, 108 – 110, 114, 116, 118 –

274

Index

123, 125, 127 – 129, 132, 134, 136, 139 f., 145, 151 f., 158, 161, 164 f., 169, 171, 173 f., 178 f., 181, 183, 186 f., 191, 195 f., 198, 205 f., 210 f., 214, 216, 219 f., 223 f., 226, 231 f., 237, 245, 247 – 249, 256, 258 f. Maastricht Academy for Media Design and Technology 29 Maastricht School of Theatre 24, 29 MacMillan, James 144, 249 Mainstream 11 f., 18, 42 f., 124, 144 f., 197, 209 f., 224 Mantovani, Bruno 126, 137, 248 Marginal 12, 42, 53 Marktoberdorff 21 Marxism 197 f. Mary Magdalene 86, 125, 184 Matangi Quartet 34, 248 Material culture 61, 83 Material religion 3, 70, 83 Matthew Passion 90, 104, 120 Matthiaskerk 85, 248, 250 MAX 24 f., 81 Meaning 14 f., 21, 30, 41 f., 44, 47 f., 50, 52 f., 55, 66, 75, 91 f., 98, 102 f., 112, 115, 122, 142, 151 f., 154, 156 f., 163 – 165, 170, 173 – 176, 180 f., 187 f., 190, 198 – 205, 208 f., 213, 223 f., 226, 232, 238, 240, 254 – 256 – Meaning attribution 14, 32, 112, 179, 200 – 204, 253 – Meaning making 14, 116, 127, 200, 207, 254 – 256 Media 24 f., 81 f., 112, 118 f., 128, 174, 210, 229, 236, 245 Memory 65, 68, 84 – 86, 88, 93 f., 99 f., 112, 157, 162, 164, 191, 200, 208 Mendelssohn, Felix 125, 135, 138, 194, 250 Messiaen, Olivier 126 Metaphysics 91, 176 Methodology 15, 18, 30, 32, 212 Modern art 1, 6, 62, 229 f. Modernity 4, 6, 100, 144, 170, 238 Molendijk, Arie L. 7, 33, 37, 39, 69 Moluccans 138 f. Mompou, Frederico 147, 249 Monastery 194

Mondrian, Piet 1 f., 91 Monument 23, 85, 104 Morality 49 – 51, 68, 72, 101, 104, 170, 196, 200 f., 205, 220, 227, 253 Muizelaar, Titus 58 f., 104, 247, 258 Museum 1 – 4, 16 f., 24, 62 – 64, 121, 139 f., 213, 215, 230 – 233 Musica sacra 6 f., 9, 17 f., 20 – 24, 28 f., 31 – 36, 39, 41, 50, 53 f., 68 – 70, 74, 78 – 83, 85, 92 – 101, 105 f., 108 – 110, 114, 116, 118 f., 121 – 123, 125 f., 130 – 132, 134, 140, 145, 151 f., 158, 161, 164, 169, 171, 173 f., 179, 181, 186 f., 191, 196, 198, 205 f., 210 f., 216, 219 f., 223 f., 226 f., 231 f., 237, 245, 247 f., 256, 258 Musicking 114 – 117, 145, 156 f., 172, 181 Mysticism 27, 47, 121, 154, 218 Negotiations 17, 56, 60, 68 – 70, 79, 89, 98 f., 101, 103, 129 – 134, 196, 205, 226, 228, 236 New-age 121 Non-negotiable 13, 15, 48, 51 f., 55, 73 Non-ordinary 17, 46, 52 f., 85, 94 – 96, 98, 110, 116 f., 143, 145 f., 152, 158, 163, 166 f., 181, 194, 209 f., 215 – 222, 224, 226, 233, 253, 256 Numinous 39, 48, 191 Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek 84 – 88, 93, 130, 141, 178 f., 191, 249 f. Oratorio 59 f., 82, 86, 103 f., 125, 127, 143, 184 Orchestra 59, 108 – 110, 135, 182, 188, 203 f. Organ 58 f., 71, 91, 97, 108 – 110, 130, 203 f., 247 Osdorp Posse 26 Othering 141, 143 Otto, Rudolf 27, 38 f. Oude Kerk, Amsterdam 230, 232 f. Ozouf, Mona 61 – 63 Paden, William 37, 39 f., 131, 253 P‘ansori 128, 140, 169, 249 Paradox 12, 200, 206, 219, 226 f., 231 Parallel program 29, 81, 126, 246 Pärt, Arvo 21, 82, 87, 127, 249

Index

Participant observation 237, 239 f., 245 f. Partridge, Christopher 11 – 13, 25, 31, 53, 65, 144 – 146, 164, 181, 198, 200, 219 Paul, St. 125, 135, 138, 194, 250 Paul, Herman 7, 61 Peirce, Charles Saunders 176, 201, 256 Perception 13 – 20, 27, 30 – 36, 46, 49, 53, 55 f., 60, 65 f., 70, 76, 78, 83, 86, 89, 91, 94, 97 f., 102, 110 – 112, 116 – 119, 121, 129, 134, 137, 142, 144 – 146, 151 f., 158, 167, 170 – 172, 174, 177, 179 – 181, 193 f., 204 f., 210, 213, 216 – 219, 222, 224, 238 – 240, 253, 255 f. Performativity 168 Performers 18, 22, 24, 26, 29, 32 – 34, 55, 59, 69, 87, 89, 110 f., 116, 118, 121 f., 124 – 126, 128 – 130, 132, 134 f., 137 – 140, 143 – 145, 154, 159 – 161, 169, 171, 173 f., 180 f., 183 – 186, 188, 191, 194 – 200, 205 f., 209, 211, 221 – 226, 231, 239, 243, 246 f., 253 – 255 Performing Arts Fund 22 Periphery 11, 124, 198 Phenomenology 37 f. Physicality 49, 52, 55 f., 84, 86, 112, 163 f., 167 f., 171, 191 f., 194, 197, 207, 210, 212, 218, 239 f. Pilgrimage 4, 27, 118 f., 234 Pink, Sarah 236, 239 f. Place 2, 5 – 9, 11, 14, 21 – 23, 27 f., 33, 39, 42, 45, 51, 54 f., 58, 60 f., 63, 65 – 73, 75, 82 – 89, 92, 95, 97, 99 – 102, 105 f., 110, 113, 118, 120 f., 129, 134, 137 f., 140 f., 145, 147, 151, 155 – 159, 162, 164 f., 172 – 174, 177 – 179, 181, 184, 191, 194, 200, 202 – 205, 207 f., 210 – 216, 219 – 222, 232 f., 236 f., 241, 243, 245, 254, 256 Play 26, 32, 59 f., 68 f., 91, 109, 111, 123, 130, 148 f., 157 f., 166, 169 – 171, 182 – 184, 188 f., 191, 194, 210, 215, 220, 237, 247, 252 f. Poels, Michel 58 f. Policy 15, 69 Polyphony 67, 89 f., 185, 192

275

Popular music 11 – 13, 53 f., 65, 70, 92, 112, 144, 164, 181, 196 – 198, 211, 217, 222 Postema, Russell 25, 244 Post, Paul 3, 6 – 8, 33, 37, 68, 101, 151, 158, 164 f., 167, 172 f., 191, 215 f. Postsecular 6 – 9, 17 – 20, 29 f., 60 f., 64, 68 f., 100 – 103, 226, 230 f., 233 Powell, Jonathan 92, 121 f., 126, 247, 250, 258 Pratt, Marie Louise 139 Presence 1, 5, 7, 19, 22, 29 f., 33, 37, 41, 43, 52, 56, 63 – 68, 74, 76 f., 79, 81 f., 84, 86 f., 89, 110, 117 f., 120, 144, 150, 157 f., 160, 163, 175, 179, 193, 205 f., 210, 212, 214, 224, 226, 228, 230 f., 236 f., 252, 254 – 256 Prez, Josquin des 67, 126, 250 Privilege 143, 197, 209 Procession 22 f., 100, 157 f. Production 3, 24 f., 33, 59, 85, 119, 125 – 127, 132 f., 140 – 142, 145, 183, 205, 243, 246, 255 Profane 11, 14, 38, 40, 48, 53, 65, 144, 164, 181 Program committee 18, 20, 24 – 27, 29, 32, 34 f., 69 – 74, 77 – 82, 89, 95, 108 – 112, 118 – 121, 124 – 134, 138, 141, 145, 147 f., 150, 160 f., 192, 198, 200, 204 f., 211 f., 219 f., 224 – 227, 230 f., 241, 243 – 246, 253 – 255, 259 Protestantism 8, 23, 58, 72, 82, 100, 105 – 107, 147, 159, 195, 230, 232 Psalm 26, 58, 193, 234 Quality 1, 37, 40, 43, 47 – 49, 55, 70, 79, 94, 109 f., 112, 118, 122, 124 f., 128 – 135, 147, 155, 169, 188, 208, 210, 217, 231, 254 Quest 15, 42, 116, 119, 181 Quran 109 Radio 4 24 f., 93, 108, 149, 244 Raphael 66 f. Rappaport, Roy 31, 48 – 50, 152, 154, 157 f., 167 f., 170 – 172, 174 – 176, 199 f., 204 – 206, 210, 217 f., 224, 237, 253

276

Index

Receptivity 212 – 214, 216 Reflection 2, 5, 7, 28, 56, 66, 75, 80, 86, 91 f., 95 f., 102, 111, 121, 123, 127, 133, 142, 146, 149, 158, 179, 200, 207 – 211, 213, 219 – 221, 236, 241 Reflexivity 102, 107, 146, 175, 221, 252 Reformation 66, 82 Relational aesthetics 114, 117 Relationality 18, 41, 110, 112, 114 f., 117, 137, 139, 156, 226, 232 Relics 22, 231 Religious experience 3, 32, 39, 41, 56, 77, 83, 101, 120, 203, 228 Religious heritage 8 f., 17 f., 69, 81, 111, 229 Religious heritage complex 17, 61 – 63, 68 – 70, 83, 98 f. Religious illiteracy 229 Religious sacred 21, 61 – 63, 67, 74, 89 Renaissance 26, 66, 89, 94, 189 f., 192 Repurposing 8, 229 Resonance 1, 5, 19, 25, 36, 83, 87, 94, 194, 209, 223, 226, 230 f., 233, 249 Respect 14, 70 f., 75, 160, 182, 198, 201 Review 12, 31, 43, 64, 82, 113, 178, 245, 253 Riley, Terry 34, 150, 248 Ritual 4, 15, 17 f., 21, 23, 27, 31, 33, 37 – 39, 42, 48 – 51, 53 f., 58, 61, 63, 65, 67 – 69, 73 f., 77, 83, 88, 98, 100 – 102, 123, 125, 140 – 142, 146 – 161, 163 – 172, 174 – 177, 179, 188, 199 f., 204 – 206, 210, 217 – 219, 221 f., 224 – 226, 228, 231, 234, 237, 248, 253, 255 f. Ritualizing 16, 155, 156, 173 RKK 25 Rodin, Jesse 89 – 91, 189 f., 247, 258 Romanticism 25 f., 62, 144, 150 Rome 83 Rosa, Hartmut 5 Rosenblum, Robert 62 Roskilde Festival 223 Ross, Alex 54, 115, 181 Routine 16, 145, 151, 154, 165, 173, 216 f., 224 Ruysdael Kwartet 128

Sacralization 2 f., 5, 39 – 41, 47 f., 54, 60 f., 63, 67, 117, 142, 179, 181 f., 222, 226 f., 230 – 233 Sacred music 10 – 13, 21, 31 f., 54, 82, 89 f., 92 f., 95, 97, 114, 119, 127, 144, 191, 194, 196, 206, 222 Sacred order 37, 39 f. Sadee, Juul 138 Santiago de Compostela 4 Schechner, Richard 166, 168 f., 175, 253 Schola Maastricht 87, 142, 158 – 162, 248 Schubert, Franz 103 Scripture 20, 30, 69 Secular 5 – 7, 9 – 15, 20 f., 30, 32, 41, 47, 51, 55, 60 – 64, 66, 68 – 72, 76 f., 80 – 83, 89 f., 93, 99, 101 f., 105 f., 111, 120 f., 144, 182, 205 f. Secularization 5 – 7, 10, 12, 17, 61 – 64, 67 – 69, 99, 101, 142, 144, 206, 228 – 233 Secular sacred 9, 72, 74, 89, 199, 201 Semiotics 143, 179, 201, 256 Sensitizing concepts 44 Servatius 22 Set apart 3, 14, 43, 46 f., 50 – 53, 107, 110, 143, 215 f., 226 Shingon 134, 159, 161 Silence 18 f., 139, 162, 177 – 182, 185, 187, 207, 211 – 214, 221 Sint Janskerk 58, 88, 105, 147, 159, 195, 213 f., 249 f. Sint Martinuskerk 86 Sint Servaasbasiliek 76, 108, 248 – 250 Situational 37 – 41, 49, 119, 210 Skrjabin, Alexander 147, 249 Slagwerk Den Haag 34, 248 Sloterdijk, Peter 65 Small, Christopher 2, 22, 43, 45, 88, 113 – 117, 133, 140, 142 f., 145, 147, 156 f., 159, 172, 174, 181, 188 f., 191, 194, 198, 209, 232, 253 Smith, Jonathan Z. 6, 154 Snijders, Wende 103 Snoek, Jan 152 Sorabji, Kaikhosru Shapurji 121, 126, 250 Sound 18 f., 30, 34 f., 54 f., 65, 67 f., 77, 83, 87 f., 92 – 95, 98, 112, 133, 137 f.,

Index

140, 157, 159, 163 f., 167 f., 172 – 175, 177 – 187, 189 f., 192 – 194, 201, 203, 205, 207, 211 – 214, 217, 221, 238, 249 Sound groups 34 f., 111 Space 3, 23, 37 f., 42, 63, 65, 70 – 73, 75 f., 84, 86 f., 99, 103 f., 110, 113, 116, 121, 133 f., 141, 145, 159, 164, 171, 178, 194, 211 – 214, 221 f., 225 f., 230 Spirituality 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 15 f., 21 f., 44 f., 47, 55, 61, 64, 67, 69, 78, 112, 121, 127, 160, 167, 181, 210, 212 f., 216, 219, 228, 245 Staal, Frits 174 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1 – 4 Stephenson, Barry 155, 169, 171, 221 St. Pölten 21 Strauss, Richard 192, 249 Stravinsky, Igor 90, 125, 180 f., 248 Stringer, Martin 241 Struth, Thomas 2 Studium Chorale 130, 248 – 250 Sublime 12 Substantive 30, 37 – 39, 119, 153 Supernatural 40, 43 f., 63, 67 f., 77, 95 Svoboda, Mike 74 f., 194, 205, 247, 250, 258 Sykes, Peter 108 Symbol 2, 14, 35, 47 – 52, 63, 101, 111, 141, 151, 154, 159, 166, 168, 175 f., 179, 197, 202 – 204, 206, 227 f. Taboo 11, 14, 53, 144 Tallis Scholars 85, 88, 128, 184 f., 249 Tarenskeen, Boudewijn 58 f., 82, 90, 103 – 107, 123 f., 183, 188, 190 f., 195, 247, 249, 255, 258 Tavener, John 109, 127, 163, 188, 249 f. Taves, Ann 13, 15, 32, 45 – 47, 52, 116, 253 Temporality 84, 93, 165, 194, 212, 217, 220, 222 Terribilis est locus iste 27 Theater aan het Vrijthof 23 f., 34, 147, 169, 244, 248 – 251, 258 f. Theatre 17, 25, 29, 79, 83, 87, 118, 128, 132, 159 f., 164, 170, 176, 183, 192, 195, 213, 217, 219, 222, 232, 246 The Hague 21, 31, 125 Theological correctness 242

277

Theology 7, 37 f., 69, 95, 217 Theory 3, 5, 7, 10, 12 f., 16 – 18, 20, 23, 25, 29, 31 f., 36, 39 f., 44, 47, 49 – 51, 53 – 55, 61, 65 f., 68 f., 71, 91, 115, 123, 143, 146, 151 – 155, 157, 167, 177, 205, 210, 213, 222 f., 226 f., 231, 252 f., 256 Time 6, 8, 10, 13, 17, 21 f., 24, 27, 29, 33, 37, 45, 47 f., 50 f., 63 f., 71 f., 74, 79, 82, 85 f., 88, 94, 99 f., 108, 113 f., 122, 126, 128, 130, 132 f., 136, 138, 140, 142, 144 f., 151, 154 – 156, 164 f., 173 f., 177 f., 180 f., 184, 186 f., 189, 192 – 194, 198, 206, 210, 214 – 222, 224, 226 f., 229 – 234, 239, 241, 244 f., 248, 255 Timmerfabriek 34, 133, 211, 248 Toekomst Religieus Erfgoed 8 f., 225 Tourism 20, 70 Transcendance 10, 43, 47, 121, 191, 197 Transformation 5, 61, 64 – 67, 72 f., 80, 100 f., 125, 146, 182 f., 206, 228 – 231, 234, 238, 249 Transgression 11, 18, 53, 144 Translation 18, 30, 58 – 60, 62, 99, 101 – 106, 108, 139, 159, 184, 187, 234 f., 252 f. Trigo Moran, Miguel 92, 247, 258 Trigon (ensemble) 192 Turner, Victor 151, 154 Twaalfhoven, Merlijn 87, 249 Typology 41 – 44, 50, 203, 205 Ultimate 13 – 17, 38, 45, 48 f., 51 – 53, 55, 69, 111, 116 f., 141, 151, 171, 179, 185, 219, 223 f., 256 Ultimate Sacred Postulate 49, 152, 154, 172, 205 f. Universality 47, 78, 90, 153, 172, 227 Utrecht 6, 8, 20, 145, 182, 223, 240 Valuation 12 – 17, 30, 35, 37, 39 f., 42 – 48, 51, 145, 151, 216, 222, 238, 256 Value 13 – 17, 30 – 32, 34 f., 37 f., 40, 43 – 49, 51 – 55, 60 – 64, 69, 78, 96, 100 f., 107, 117, 135, 137 f., 140, 144 f., 151 f., 167 f., 173, 180 f., 196 – 198, 200, 206, 208, 213, 220, 224 – 226, 228, 231, 233, 238 f., 245, 253 f., 256

278

Index

Vendrik, Laura 233 Verheggen, Marcel 91 f., 108 – 110, 122 f., 132, 187, 209, 247, 250, 259 Visual art 6, 29, 212, 246 Volkskrant 81 f., 232 f., 246 Vries, Klaas de 88, 249 Vrijthof 58, 81, 108, 214 Wagner, Richard 5, 147 Warhol, Andy 1 f., 52 f. Washington DC. 215 Weber, Max 15 White, Craig 1, 86 f., 158, 162, 180, 194, 213

Wiche, Maurice 113 f., 126, 161, 246 Wilde, Mark 87, 148 f., 186 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 5, 30, 155 Wolfs, Rein 1, 4 World music 26, 77, 96, 128, 138 World War I 125 Worship 1, 14, 64 f., 73, 153, 230 Wouters van den Oudeweijer, Lars 163, 188 Writing Culture 252 Zimmerman, Bernd Alois Zusters onder de Bogen

208, 249 76, 248 – 250