In Tune with Heaven or not: Women in Christian Liturgical Music

This book examines how the values associated with Wisdom theology can be used to examine women’s contribution to Christian liturgical music, concentrating on the English speaking world and Europe. It starts with a chapter bringing together Wisdom theology with feminist musicology. It uses this to analyse vignettes of women in liturgical music in mainstream Christian history of Europe. The analysis concentrates on such values as community-building, nurturing, musical processes comparing orality and literacy, embodiment, intuition, and public and private spaces. This enables the development of a Wisdom theology of liturgical music, linking it with women’s liturgy and lives. This book is an attempt to tell the untold stories of women in the musical history of the church history and I hope that for readers it will be a source of strategies of resistance, inspiration and hope.