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How is song an example of sacred communication?

This discussion on music as sacred communication stems from excerpts of “Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture” by Stephen A. Marini. The introduction evaluates two contrasting schools of thought regarding the power of music to evoke spiritual and emotional response.
The transcendence of music can be explained by psychological effects on the brain, musical patterns and music theory, which informed musicians use intentionally in their composition.
My aim is to present examples of songs that represent this means of sacred communication, and also how they can portray and embody sacred place.
Robert Jourdain describes the crucial element of transcendence, which explains the sacredness of song.
 “Our brains are able to piece together larger understandings than they can in the workaday external world, perceiving all-encompassing relations that go much deeper than those we find in ordinary experience… It is for this reason that music can be transcendent.
For a few minutes it makes us larger than we really are, and the world more orderly than it really is. We respond not just to the beauty of the sustained deep relations that are revealed, but also to the fact of our perceiving them. As our brains are thrown into overdrive, we feel our very existence expand and realize that we can be more than we normally are, and that the world is more than it seems.” (p.2)

Leonard Meyer “musical patterns of tonal and rhythmic tension and relaxation trigger patterns of psychological frustration and release that the listener experiences as the emotive and aesthetic meaning of the music” (2)


Deryck Cooke’s explains the effects of particular musical vocabulary from The Language of Music (2009) a rise in pitch creates “outgoing emotion” while downward pitch sequences produce “incoming emotion” and that major key expresses joy while minor key renders sorrow. (2)

In these terms, the sacred power of music is explained in musical theory.

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