Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026)
Articles

Teologia e musica nel contesto britannico contemporaneo. Tra storia delle idee e teologia della musica | Theology and Music in the Contemporary British Context: Between the History of Ideas and the Theology of Music

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  • Ferdinando Abbri
Ferdinando Abbri
Professor Emeritus, Università di Siena, Italy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/an-17219

Published 2026-03-26

Keywords

  • British musical context,
  • sacred music,
  • contemporary classical music,
  • theomusicology

Copyright (c) 2026 Ferdinando Abbri

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The musical context of the United Kingdom had long been considered largely insignificant in the general landscape of the development of classical music in the Western world. England was generally defined as ‘the Land without music’. A up-to-date history of ideas is able to modify this widespread and unfounded picture of the British musical scene. Focusing on the relationships between music and religion, the paper tries to enlighten the main role played by the Church of England in a continuous production of music, to focus on some British famous, Christian composers, and to consider the present development of theomusicology, as a product of the interactions among theology, aesthetics, and music. A particular attention is devoted to Jeremy Sutherland Begbie. The paper aims at confirming that the British musical context is historically relevant, and cannot be disregarded.

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