Music in Uncommon Time

Written for people who are deeply moved by certain pieces of music and wonder whether they may have something to do with their spiritual life, this book digs deep into ten well-known and much-loved works--Handel's Messiah, Bach's B-minor Mass, Beethoven's Ninth, Mahler's Third, and more. It lifts up the way they lift up uncommon time--the temporal processes in which the human spirit encounters the divine spirit. It shows how they miraculously hold together opposites such as secular with spiritual temporality, predictability with uncertainty, peace with movement, not-yet with already, linearity with all-at-onceness, fulfillment with continued growth, light with darkness, despair with hope, and, above all, uncommon time with common time.

David B. Greene received an AB from Harvard, the BD degree from Princeton Seminary, and the PhD from the Yale Department of Religious Studies. For twenty-two years he taught courses in religion and the arts, aesthetics, and music theory at Wabash College. In 1988 he became the founding Director of the Arts Studies Program at North Carolina State University. He has published fifteen books and thirty-six articles dealing mostly with religion and the arts.