Leiturgía – Site of musiké: Pleading for Church Music as Cross-Modal Action

The meaning of music exceeds the mere acoustic noise. Liturgy clarifies that fact. Focusing aesthetic modes music is considered as defined by the ancient Greek term musiké, back then the union of movement/dance, sound, poetry. As performance musiké correlates with liturgy (performance as well) in a special way. The bodily and transcendent dimensions of musiké arise in liturgy – something performative, i.e. evolving from doing. Liturgy and music are connected with bodily presence (incarnation) and movement – the fundament of life. Both corporal actions and expressive dance in liturgy exist as a form of musiké. Using the example of resonance, listening, polyaisthesis, time/space it becomes apparent that musiké is movens, confronting us with the alien, carrying us to foreign spaces. Leiturgía is a specific aesthetic site where church music opens peculiar the human dimension of musiké. Our society is in need of such places.