The Lyre of Orpheus: Popular Music, the Sacred, and the Profane

by Christopher Partridge

The myth of Orpheus articulates what social theorists have known since Plato: music matters. It is uniquely able to move us, to guide the imagination, to evoke memories, and to create spaces within which meaning is made. Popular music occupies a place of particular social and cultural significance. Christopher Partridge explores this significance, analyzing its complex relationships with the values and norms, texts and discourses, rituals and symbols, and codes and narratives of modern Western cultures. He shows how popular music's power to move, to agitate, to control listeners, to shape their identities, and to structure their everyday lives is central to constructions of the sacred and the profane. In particular, he argues that popular music can be important 'edgework, ' challenging dominant constructions of the sacred in modern societies. Drawing on a wide range of musicians and musical genres, as well as a number of theoretical approaches from critical musicology, cultural theory, sociology, theology, and the study of religion, The Lyre of Orpheus reveals the significance and the progressive potential of popular music

Contents:
Part One
1. Society and Culture
2. Emotion and Meaning
Part Two
3. Transgression
4. Romanticism
5. Religion

Genres: Music, Religion

369 pages, ebook

First published December 5, 2013

About the author

Dr Christopher Hugh Partridge is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster, Lancashire, England.

Partridge (born 1961) is an author, editor, professor, and founding Co-director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Popular Culture. According to Gordon Lynch, Partridge is a leading scholar of topics in popular culture.

Reviews

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 5 out of 5]

If u are interested in cultural studies, popular music and even sacred phenomenology this is your book.
Deep, clear and with a very interesting bibliography and discography which provides not only insight but musical amusement too.