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table of contents

The following is the table of contents to Fides ex auditu, my recently submitted dissertation.

FIDES EX AUDITU:
DOGMATIC THEOLOGY AND THE ECCLESIAL PRACTICE OF MUSIC

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1. Speech and Song in Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One
   
2. The Quest for Aesthetic and Moral Normativity
   
3. Taste, Normativity and the Ecclesial Practice of Music
   
4. The Kerygmatic Role of the Ecclesial Practice of Music
   
5. The Dogmatic Task and the Normativity of the Word

CHAPTER II: KARL BARTH’S MUSICAL ICONOCLASM

1. A Prelude on Mozart
   
   1. Freedom in Barth’s appreciation of Mozart
      
   2. Barth’s musical aesthetic and natural theology
   
   
2. Defining Dogmatics in Göttingen, 1924
   
   1. Dogmatics and the Word of God
      
   2. The Word of God as Proclamation
      
      1. Proclamation and the revelatory dialectic
         
      2. Proclamation as anaesthetic
   
   
3. A New Dimension of the Auftrag, 1930
   
   1. Critical use of the Auftrag
      
   2. The Auftrag in the Church Dogmatics
   
   
4. Barth’s Dogmatic Reflection as Impractically Concrete

CHAPTER III: POPE BENEDICT XVI AND THE ANCIENT ECCLESIAL PRACTICE OF MUSIC

1. Music and the Catholic Tradition
   
   1. Psalmody in the Ancient Church
      
   2. Philosophy and the Ancient and Early Medieval Church
      
   3. Legislation on the ecclesial practice of music
      
   4. Benedict XVI and the Catholic Tradition
   
   
2. “Theological Problems of Church Music”: an earlier essay
   
   
3. Sacred Music in the Ministry of the Word
   
   1. The primacy of the logos
      
   2. Divine action and ecclesiology
      
   3. The liturgical supplement
      
   4. Music and incarnation

CHAPTER IV: POPE BENEDICT XVI AND THE LATE MODERN ECCLESIAL PRACTICE OF MUSIC

1. Benedict’s Dogmatic Reflection on Music
   
   1. Church and culture
      
   2. Attributes of the logos
      
   3. Apollo contra Dionysus
   
   
2. A Genealogy of Modern Musical Heresy
   
   1. Nietzsche’s Dionysian Pessimism
      
   2. The Kantian Sublime
      
   3. Learning to Count: logic, rhetoric and modulatio
   
   
3. Principles of Particularity
   
   
4. Dogmatic Reflection on Music in Proper Perspective

CHAPTER V: THE DOGMATICS OF MUSIC: A CONCLUSION POINTING FORWARD

1. Fides ex auditu in Review
   
2. The Theologian as Music Critic

REFERENCE LIST

Zen and the Art of Cabin Maintenance

How many things can I work on today? Right now I'm waiting for the caffeine to kick in for that second wind I need to shelve all my books. (The problem is that they need to be put in a sensible order. I won't create my own database with call numbers - like I did in seminary - but some minimal amount of organization is required.)

The day started at 7:30, since the man from the phone company said he'd be here first thing in the morning. So I read from Charles Rosen's The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven while I drank my coffee. The loons were having their own breakfast nearby on the lake, so it appeared to be a good start to the day.

After my wife woke up, I showed her my work from the previous day (running a ground from the circuit breaker to the phone company's box outside - apparently DSL requires a ground, so I ran it myself to save on installation costs). She mentioned that she'd like a DSL line in her workshop, so - still on an electrician's high from the previous day - I began brainstorming on the best way to do this. To make a long story short, I soon found myself in the attic, mapping out the cabin's entire wiring system (well over fifty years old).

The lunch hour came and went, with still no representative of the phone company. So we began to make lunch, the final touches of which (adding parsley to ramen) were interrupted by our long-awaited guest.

He appeared to have a chip on his shoulder. Was he unhappy that I had run the ground wire myself? Or had he perhaps spent the morning learning how to install DSL, since we're apparently the first people in the county to subscribe? Whatever the case, he wasn't happy to be here.

To make another long story short, we argued over whether his company had shipped a modem in advance...and, much to his chagrin, I turned out to be right. They hadn't.

To make yet another long story short, the phone company changed the phone number that they sent to us weeks ago - which we included in postcards to over forty friends and family members. There is nothing we can do about it, though, since the number they gave us is in a completely different locale.

After that everything else seemed to go wrong. But it's now 3:15 AM. My aforementioned coffee kicked in during the previous paragraph, so I spent about four hours getting about a quarter of my library organized.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to the hardware store for more electrical supplies.

I should just create another blog for cabin maintenance.

So tonight's my last shift at Barnes & Noble. Reflecting upon the many humorous and non-humorous incidences that have occurred during my tenure there, there is one recent story that stands out as a moral lesson.

With Mother's Day coming up on 13 May, the store has been filling its seasonal tables and displays with all kinds of gifts and books related to the blessings of motherhood.

Mind you, a large percentage of customers - particularly during the daytime - are moms with kids in tow. On one particular day last week, a mom strided up to my cashier station as her daughter (perhaps 3, going on 4?) walked behind her at a more relaxed pace.

"Come on, we're going to buy these two books and leave!" the mom called out.

The child seemed distracted by one of our display tables in the "impulse buy" section in front of the cashier stations.

"Come on, I said!"

The little girl then picked up a book and ran around the table to meet her mom, now taking her credit card out of her wallet. She handed the book up to her mom, clearly indicating that they needed to add it to their purchases.

"No! We are NOT buying any more books today! Now put it back!" the mom exclaimed.

The child persisted in pushing this book up toward her mom, so the mom grabbed it and asked me did I know where it was supposed to go.

"Don't worry about it, ma'am. I can put it back for you," I replied.

The mom seemed somewhat relieved, as if one of forty million tasks had just been taken off of her to-do list. "Would you? That'd be so helpful. I'm so sorry for bothering you with this."

"It's not a problem at all. That's what we're here for."

After they left, I then looked at the book in order to see where it needed to go. Looking at the cover, I froze. If only that mother had taken the time to see what it was that her daughter wanted to purchase so badly....



Stuart Hample, My Mom's the Best Mom
(Workman, 2000).

Having recently watched Blood Diamond with my wife, we were struck at how blessed we are. We do not live in fear of attacking mobs, though I can recall such an experience four years ago. I always meant to put my Cambodian experiences into writing; I guess now is as good a time as any….

On 29 January 2003, we were traveling from one side of Phnom Penh to the other. We'd left the United Methodist headquarters during rush hour and had made our way through several of the city's hectic intersections (imagine every kind of transport - from a dump truck to a five-year-old girl carrying her baby sister on her back - competing to cross each other's path). We were about three quarters of the way to the Methodist Bible School, where we would work with the seminarians there to contextualize the Sunday School curriculum we'd prepared in the months preceding this trip.

Phnom Penh was still new to us, so these late afternoon drives through the city were anything but dull. The sights, the sounds, the smells - it was all so…interesting. But this particular drive would present something entirely new. We were going around a wide left turn, when all the vehicles in front slammed on brakes or swerved off the road to the right. Then a wave of oncoming traffic filled the road to our left, taking the entire width of the road.

It was a mob of angry youth, on the backs of pickup trucks and riding scooters , carrying signs written in Khmer (the Cambodian language). I couldn't read a word of it, but anyone could tell those letters were written with conviction…and anger.

Truck after truck, and scooter after scooter, of angry teenagers. Most were yelling at the entire world, completely ignorant of all the cars and scooters that had pulled off of the road to accommodate them. But every once in a while, one of them would look directly at us - and the anger in their face would increase as they yelled…at us!

It took about 3-4 minutes for the mob to pass, so I can only guess at how many hundreds of them there were. But we then pulled back onto the road and continued along our way to the seminary.

The drive home that night was just like any other late evening drive in Phnom Penh. But the next morning held the news of the night before - the television station had been destroyed. The resort hotel on the banks of the Mekong River had been burned down. One of the cell phone companies in town was also destroyed. The similarity between these businesses? They were all owned by Thais.

At one point in the evening, the mob even attacked Thailand's embassy. Thai nationals had to crowd inside, fearing the worst, when the police finally arrived and cleared the crowd. (There were rumors that the police then proceeded to rob the frightened Thais of their valuables, but this was never confirmed.) The next morning there was an airlift of all Thai nationals out of the country.

Why were the Thais in such danger? Because of a false rumor. (The Cambodian temperament is often guided by rumors, perhaps the most disgusting one being that their Prime Minister, Hun Sen, can monitor every conversation in every household by means of a spy satellite.) This time, the rumor was that an actress from a Thai soap opera (which had aired on the previously existent television station) claimed that Angkor Wat had actually been built by the Thais, not the ancient Khmer Empire. In the week that followed, this actress stated publicly that she had never said this…but the damage had already been done. Homes and businesses had been destroyed and, more importantly, racial tensions between Khmers and Thais had finally exploded into violence.

Let me back up by stating that my family was not happy about me traveling to Cambodia in the first place. It's not that they're against foreign mission projects…but they prefer mission work in Costa Rica, a peaceful country whose constitution expressly prohibits any form of military. When I made plans to travel to Liberia with the United Methodist Church in 1995, the family promptly ended my plans. They'd read the report of a local minister who'd gone to Liberia; they'd read how he was held up by drunk teenagers at gunpoint. I'd read his memoirs as well, but my reaction was the exact opposite - it made me want to go there and try to do some kind of good work.

Perhaps that was just a longing for adventure. Was I the kind of "action junkie" that Leo DiCaprio's character accuses Jen Connelly's character of being in Blood Diamond? Whether that was the case or not, I clearly remember that I did want "to make some kind of difference." Which is what, eleven years later, led me to Cambodia. The family wasn't happy about my plans, but a 26-year-old is much harder to forbid than a 19-year-old. But back to my story….

The next day, as plumes of smoke are rising from all over the city, I found an internet café, so I could email all my family and friends back home to let them know that I'm okay. Surely such an event would have made it into the news, proving my family correct about how dangerous it was for me to go there. I was certain that they were beside themselves with fear, wondering where I was in all this mess.

On the second day after the riot, I returned to that internet café to read and answer any replies I may have gotten. There were a few, but they all consisted of the same general question: "What are you talking about? Nothing has been in the news about Cambodia." So I checked every major news source I could think of: NY Times, Washington Post, BBC, ABC, CNN…and nothing. Not a single mention of any event in Cambodia. No Reuters or Associated Press bulletins, either.

Now I knew what it was like to be ignored by the West.

If you'd like to read about these riots, your best bet is this State Department report.

LWF President Mark Hanson interviewed on Vatican Radio today.

Listen to the streaming audio here or download an mp3 here. (See also my blogs yesterday and the day before that.)

Hanson briefly discusses how then-Cardinal Ratzinger “intervened as a theologian coming out of the German context who knows Lutherans well,” thus saving the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification when it looked like it might fall apart back in 1998-99.

Most notably (for my interests), Hanson discussed the upcoming Methodist affirmation.

We are also looking ahead to Seoul, Korea this summer when the United Methodist Church will add their commentary and their affirmation to the document, which means that now [it] also has ecumenical significance.

Although it should be noted that it is NOT the “United Methodist Church” but the World Methodist Council that will be meeting this summer and affirming the document. The WMC consists of (by my count) 103 different church bodies around the world – one of which is the UMC – that trace their roots to Wesleyan or Methodist origin. So, despite this slip of the tongue, many thanks to Mark Hanson for giving the Methodists props on-air!

Methodist to preach at inauguration of Church of England's General Synod

On 15 November, Frances Young, recently retired Cadbury Professor of Theology at Univ. of Birmingham, will deliver the eucharistic sermon just before HM the Queen inaugurates the Eighth General Synod, which will last for the next five years.

• C of E news bulletin is here.
  
• Gary Hopkins' article for Ekklesia is here.
  
• Maria Mackay's article for Christian Today is here.
  

Vatican Radio has a report today on Monday's celebration of the Joint Declaration on Justification.

I blogged on this yesterday.

Tomorrow's Vatican Radio will feature an interview with LWF President Mark Hanson, in which he will describe then-Cardinal Ratzinger's role in securing the Joint Declaration.

Tim Kaine just won the Virginia Gubernatorial Election

I met him when he was mayor of Richmond. Good guy, as far as I could tell. Committed to racial reconciliation. And hard on Chesterfield County's resistance to public transportation. Hopefully he can keep - and extend - the progressive policies of Mark Warner. (And maybe now Warner can run for president? One can only hope!)

My Blog on Rev. Ed Johnson

I know I’m late in my attention to this matter, but I can at least offer up the more recent action by the Council of Bishops. My attention is on two theological issues, both of which were raised by Rev. Thomas (the advocate for Rev. Johnson) and answered by Bsp. Timothy Whitaker (Florida Annual Conference): the authority of bishops, and the nature of repentance. But first, a quick summary (with appropriate links).

In a rare case, the Judicial Council heard oral arguments before making its decision.

Bishop Kammerer’s Statement, from 27 October, is here.

Rev. Jeff Mickle’s Statement (advocating for the Annual Conference’s position) is here.

The Virginia Conference and Bishop Kammerer basically argued that since the church – as representative of God’s grace - is inclusive, Rev. Johnson failed in his pastoral duties. Thus those duties were taken away from him.

Rev. Tom Thomas, Jr.’s Statement (advocating for Rev. Ed Johnson) is here.

He argued that the ordained elder in charge of a local church has the sole authority to discern who is granted membership, and therefore Bsp. Kammerer overstepped her bounds.

A district superintendent and bishop are not judicially authorized to take charge of or dictate absolutely an action relative to membership to the administrative officer who has been put in charge….

In addition, he accuses Bsp. Kammerer and Rev. Mickle of having faulty doctrines of justification:

Bishop Kammerer and Rev. Mickle’s arguments assume place repentance after justification by faith. This is neither Wesleyan nor United Methodist. John Wesley argues in the standard sermon ‘The Way to the Kingdom’…repentance precedes justifying faith.

Judicial Council Decisions 1031 and 1032 were handed down on 29 October 2005. The first fully reinstated Rev. Ed Johnson to his ministerial duties, stating that the Virginia Conference had not granted him due process. The second ruled that the ordained elder does indeed have the power to refuse membership. Neill Caldwell’s UMNS article is here.

On 2 November, the Council of Bishops issued a Pastoral Letter in response to the Judicial Council decision, which states:

While pastors have the responsibility to discern readiness for membership, homosexuality is not a barrier.

Furthermore, the bishops uphold the authority of episcopal oversight, in opposition to Rev. Thomas’ statement above.

We also affirm our Wesleyan practice that pastors are accountable to the bishop, superintendent, and the clergy on matters of ministry and membership.

Bishop Timothy Whitaker has written a Commentary on the Council of Bishop’s Pastoral Letter, in which he states that

The Council of Bishops also reminds the Church that all ordained persons exercise their ministry in covenant with all who share their ordination and accept the supervision of their district superintendent and bishop.

The statement of the Council of Bishops emphasizes the covenant of mutual accountability that exists among all ordained persons….

Whereas the Pastoral Letter appears to simply argue in favor of high episcopal authority, Bsp. Whitaker places this authority back into the context of a “covenant of mutual accountability.” Thus interpreted, the Pastoral Letter appears to be not so much a matter of centralizing power as it is of returning church discipline to “where two or three are gathered.” I think Bsp. Whitaker adequately balances between high and low ecclesiologies here.
In addition, Bsp. Whitaker clarifies the nature of repentance:

Repentance is not a single event, but a continuous process as we grow in our knowledge of God and ourselves.

This corrects Rev. Thomas’ assertion (quoted above) that “repentance precedes justifying faith.” Thank you, Bsp. Whitaker, for your attention to this matter. In my opinion, the actual theological issues reflected in Rev. Johnson’s actions were, in many respects, ignored by the entire administrative/judicial process.

Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue mentions Methodist ecumenical involvement

Yesterday the LWF (Lutheran World Federation) met with Pope Benedict XVI, thanking him for his leadership in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.

Pope Benedict's address appears to be a bit more cautious, stating in a few places that many differences remain and that patience is required to deal with such differences in a responsible manner.

LWF President Mark Hanson's address is more optimistic. I'm particularly pleased that he mentions the participation of the World Methodist Council in affirming the Joint Declaration:

Various processes of follow-up to the Joint Declaration have been set in motion. At the present time, the World Methodist Council is preparing to formally affirm its support of this declaration by an official action planned to take place next summer in Seoul, South Korea, in which our General Secretary, the Reverend Dr Ishmael Noko, is scheduled to take part together with Cardinal Walter Kasper. This development gives us great joy and shows to all that the biblical doctrine of justification is not seen as belonging to Catholics and Lutherans alone, but belongs to the whole church.

So I'm now contributing to another blog. Every week I post a summary of the next week's articles in Lectionary Homiletics (the journal I edit). Check it out.

I've been rather busy with the dissertation lately (and with play rehearsal...and the bluegrass combo!), so I haven't posted. But I was just reminded of a most excellent hymn of Charles Wesley's: O the depth of love divine (from Hymns on the Lord's Supper [1745], no. 57).

O the depth of love divine,
th’unfathomable grace!
Who shall say how bread and wine
God into us conveys!
How the bread His flesh imparts,
how the wine transmits His blood,
Fills His faithful people’s hearts
with all the life of God!

Let the wisest mortals show
how we the grace receive;
Feeble elements bestow
a power not theirs to give.
Who explains the wondrous way,
how through these the virtue came?
These the virtue did convey,
yet still remain the same.

How can spirits heavenward rise,
by earthly matter fed,
Drink herewith divine supplies
and eat immortal bread?
Ask the Father’s wisdom how:
Christ Who did the means ordain;
Angels round our altars bow
to search it out, in vain.

Sure and real is the grace,
the manner be unknown;
Only meet us in thy ways
and perfect us in one.
Let us taste the heavenly powers,
Lord, we ask for nothing more.
Thine to bless,’ tis only ours
to wonder and adore.

This ties in perfectly with a series of conversations I had last week regarding respecting divine mystery in theology. While I learned in seminary that mystery was like a relief pitcher in baseball (only to be brought in once some effort has already been made at solving the problem), I have since modified my position considerably.

Mystery must rather be a presupposition, a starting point. Only after granting the mystery of God's work/activity/speech/incarnation, may one begin talking about God's work/activity/speech/incarnation.

And Charles Wesley appreciated this. Whatever physical and/or metaphysical and/or phenomenological and/or ontological changes occur in the sacramental elements, we must acknowledge first the mystery of their efficacy.

We may describe the sacramental effects in any number of ways: (according to the hymn) God is conveyed, His flesh is imparted, His blood is transmitted, people's hearts are filled, power is bestowed, virtue is conveyed, spirits rise heavenward, and/or we are perfected.

The point is that however one describes these effects, something happens, and it happens in a way that confounds.

Here's some of what I'm reading these days... 

Here's another photo I took in Cambodia, February 2003. Makes a good desktop for Windows. 

Well, things have been quite busy, and this blog has been about the last thing on my mind. I was reminded by it, however, when I learned that a friend of mine has started his own on Blogspot. It's on "the Methodist tradition and its history, present state and the future." Check it out here.

While I'm thinking about it, congratulations to Hans Vaxby on his recent election as bishop of the Eurasia Area of the United Methodist Church. (This is the pastor of the above-mentioned blogger friend.)

And while I'm thinking of pastors-turned-bishops, Tim Whitaker--my former pastor at Mt. Pisgah UMC, and presently bishop of the Florida Annual Conference--has just written an excellent commentary on the impoverished nature of today's polarized moral thinking:

By thinking theologically, i.e. in accordance with Scripture and the living Christian tradition, rather than ideologically, one will arrive at positions that are "liberal," "conservative" or neither. That's why counseling people to seek the "middle" is misleading: the truth of God may not be in the middle, but in the different extremes. More accurately, the truth may be similar to the extremes, but it will also be different from them because it is framed according to the categories of language in Scripture and tradition rather than according to ideological slogans.

Read more at the Florida Conference's Commentary Page.

I am increasingly convinced that just such impoverishment of ideas is continually realized in America's two-party system. Republican vs. Democrat 'party politics' both reflects and informs the pathetic nature of moral discourse in America. I like to use the analogy of a sports rivalry. On any issue, the average voter simply sides with the group with whom s/he has always sided. If you're an Eagles fan, you probably didn't cheer for the Patriots during the Super Bowl. If you're a Republican, you're generally not going to vote Democratic. Nor will you share any opinions with a Democrat, because the issues don't really matter so much as the 'team' that dictates the platform. Are there really only two approaches to moral issues? Those of the left or those of the right? Me genoito! By no means!

Here is the most recent promotional piece for my new bluegrass band, No Strings Attached. Don "Six-Gun" Collett on guitar (left) and Mark "Smiles" Wallace on banjo (right). That's me in the middle (on bass). Photo credit: Matt Jenson. Setting: St. Mary's Quad. The thorn bush in the foreground was planted by Mary Queen of Scots in the early sixteenth century. For real. I'm not kidding. 

Please excuse the absence
I realise (US spelling: realize) that I have not posted in several weeks, and for that I apologise (US: apologize) to my r4 or 5 regular readers.

I've moved back to St Andrews and things have been a whirlwind. I finally have study space in the Roundel! Extracurricularly, I've joined a bluegrass combo (No Strings Attached), rejoined the Psalmody Choir (for the Mitre article on our choir, see page three of this PDF), and tomorrow I hope to join the Renaissance Group.

I hope to include musings of greater depths by the weekend, but for the moment, I will simply post some pictures from here at St Mary's College, St Andrews.


The Entrance Gate



View of college from the entrance gate



The Roundel Postgraduate Study Centre
photo credits: St. Mary's College website

Non-Canonical Music Criticism

Earlier this week I read Gary Tomlinson’s essay, "Cultural Dialogics and Jazz: A White Historian Signifies." (pp. 64-94 of Disciplining Music: Musicology and its Canons, which I mentioned in an earlier blog).

Tomlinson explicates the practice of 'dialogical knowledge', cohering with Derrida's admirable imperative to 'speak the other's language without renouncing [our] own'. Dialogical knowledge is decentered, arising from the recognition that all points of view have something to share, and that no point of view should be privileged above another. Tomlinson criticizes the 'monologic knowledge' that results from canonical thinking, namely, the kind of jazz criticism that assumes a particular 'canon' of what constitutes jazz.

Applying this critique to a concrete situation, Tomlinson turns to the reception of Miles Davis' 1969 album, In A Silent Way. This was the album that anticipated the major changes of the 1970 watershed, Bitches Brew. It is arguable which of these albums was the first jazz-fusion album, but the honor would certainly go to one of them and not to anyone else.


Miles Davis, In A Silent Way (Columbia: February 18, 1969)

The author quotes four harsh critiques of In A Silent Way's contribution to jazz, then condemns them for the "stark inability to hear Davis's fusion music except against the background of what jazz was before it.... Instead they hear only a departure from the canonized jazz tradition of their own making."

Tomlinson then puts forward his own assessment of Davis' fusion of 1969-74: as "a compelling expressive force created by his unflinching facing of the dialogical extremes of his background and environment." Davis's fusion music is dialogical knowledge in action, bringing together disparate elements into a cohesive whole. In A Silent Way bridges difference without alleviating it: jazz music and rock music; art music and popular music; acoustic music and electric music; black musicians and white musicians.

Making this theological, albeit in a very quick way, one could relate fusion to the postmodern Christian project of Milbank et al. Particularly the idea that a Trinitarian Christianity presents the best way to affirm difference without destroying it. Thus the Christian worldview becomes not just a metanarrative, but a meta-metanarrative. I've yet to determine whether I buy that claim, but I must say it's attractive. And chique, at the moment. (See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Blackwell, 1990; pp. 278-379), The Word Made Strange (Blackwell, 1997; pp. 171-93), as well as his essay in The Postmodern God, "Postmodern Critical Augustinianism" (Blackwell, 1997; pp. 265-78).

But getting back to Tomlinson's essay, I agree with his assessment of fusion. It is something I have thought about for quite some time, ever since experiencing the powerful relational dynamics of fusion music. My time in both BlueBeat Revue and A Lo Hecho Pecho taught me about the ethics of performance: how to hold back and support someone else when they are soloing; how to accent particular rhythms or melodic phrases; how to have meaningful and successful 'conversation' on stage or in the practice room; and, most fundamentally, how to listen. And I’m not just talking about a passive listening, but the kind of listening that actively engages the voice of the other. The kind of listening that allows the other to be more itself as it speaks in a distinctive relation to you.

As I make a mix CD to introduce fusion to a friend of mine, these are my reflections.

Postscript: Tomlinson’s essay lends a curious interpretation of my current musical collaboration in St Andrews: ‘The Canonical Approach’. Although our name comes more from the biblical hermeneutics of Brevard Childs than musicology.

BlueBeat Revue at Alley Katz in Richmond, VA, 1998 (or 1999?). Left to right: Rich Stine, myself, Nick Panos, Gordy Haab.