The World of Sound as a Prison: Ideal and Actual Concepts of Music in the Writings of Huldrych Zwingli.

Huldrich Zwingli held a highly censorious view of music in private and public worship. It has often been noted that his stance was almost the polar opposite of that of Martin Luther. A more specific disagreement between Zwingli and Luther, however, seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the vast modern literature on music and theology in sixteenth-century reformation movements, namely that of the ontology of music as sounding, sensory object vis-à-vis music as a silently imagined and grasped (ideal) entity. A number of passages from Zwingli's writings suggest a rather peculiar version of the distinction between body and spirit as regards aural perception in general, and music in particular. The present study scrutinizes what seems to be Zwingli's arguments against sound and music as sensory elements in conflict with the ideal realm of the highest order of music theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]