Unison: Inner Space and the Collective Body in Gregorian Chant

“Something happens in the body.” These were the words of a monk who struggled to articulate how Gregorian chant has a visceral power to transform people. For centuries, monastic practitioners of silence and formalized, intentional sound have cultivated a capacity to expand the sensorial boundaries of the individual self to encompass others, both human and divine. With the musical assistance of the accomplished choir of Christ Church Cathedral under the direction of Rupert Lang, this talk will draw from five years of anthropological fieldwork in the silent environments of monasteries and non-monastic retreat houses to explore the role of chant, breath, and synchronous movement in manifesting an experiential collective body that transcends the limits of self and other in a state called “unitive being.”

This Event is co-sponsored by the Green College Series, Transforming Sounds / Altered Selves: How Music Changes in Time, Changes Us, and Changes Our Worlds.