2009 ITIA Conference: Reversed Thunder: The Art of the Psalms
31 August-3 September 2009
Few texts can have had a more decisive impact on Western culture across the centuries than the Psalter.
Central to the scriptures that have shaped both Jewish and Christian faith, the Psalms have always enjoyed a prominent place in Western religious life. Their importance is reflected in a wide variety of modes of reception reaching beyond the specifically religious domain and maintaining a strong public presence even in the milieux of modernity and post-modernity. Alongside sermons, works of theology, translations and texts designed specifically for liturgical and devotional use, the Psalms have also been widely appropriated and ‘sampled’ in the visual arts, music, literature, and various other cultural forms.
Unlike many biblical texts, the Psalms lend their polyphonic voice naturally to acts of human appropriation and adaptation. Indeed, they present themselves quite unashamedly as works of the human spirit as well as God’s Spirit, and encourage us in our turn to speak through them to God, rather than simply hearing them as a word spoken to us from above. And the range of concerns, experiences and dispositions towards God that the Psalms invite us to indwell is uninhibited in its breadth and often brutal in its honesty.
This conference brought together artists, biblical scholars, historians, literary critics and theologians to explore ways in which the ‘reversed thunder’ of the Psalter has shaped the identity not only of the Jewish and Christian traditions, but also of the wider Western culture.
Speakers
Peter Bannister
'Mend its fractures, for it is quaking': Modern Musical Settings of the Psalms'
The London-born composer, performer and musicologist Peter Bannister studied at King's College, Cambridge and subsequently in Paris where he has lived since 1994. He has been the recipient of awards including the Prix André Caplet for composition from the Institut de France as well as prizes at international organ and composition competitions in Chartres, Nuremberg and San Sebastian. He has worked extensively as a solo organist and pianist, also collaborating as a vocal coach with the Opéra National de Paris and the Aix-en-Provence International Opera Festival.
As a scholar his work focuses particularly on the relationship between music and theology. He is a member of the board of directors of Soli Deo Gloria, Inc., a Chicago-based organization devoted to the furthering of sacred music in the Biblical tradition, among whose current initiatives is the commissioning of a collection of new Psalm-settings from leading international composers.
Bernard Beatty
'Praise in Sequences: The Psalmist's Art of Prayer'
Bernard Beatty is Senior Fellow in the School of English at Liverpool University and Associate Fellow in the School of Divinity at St Andrews.
From 1988-2005 he was Editor of the Byron Journal. He is the author of Byron's 'Don Juan', Byron and the Limits of Fiction (with Vincent Newey), Liberty and Poetic Licence: New Essays on Byron (with Charles Robinson), and The Plays of Lord Byron, (with Robert Gleckner). His other published essays are on the Bible, poetry and the Bible, literary theory and theology, Bunyan, Dryden, Rochester, Dickens, and most of the Romantics. He plays the organ and lives in Chester, UK.
Ian Bradley
‘Compared with these, Italian trills are tame' - the place of the Psalms in Scottish devotion and imagination'
Ian Bradley is Reader in Church History and Practical Theology in the School of Divinity, St Andrews University. He is also a Church of Scotland minister, serving as associate minister of Holy Trinity Church, St Andrews and honorary Church of Scotland chaplain at the University. The author of over 30 books, he teaches, writes and broadcasts extensively on hymnody and on Scottish spirituality. His most recent book is Pilgrimage: A Spiritual and Cultural Journey (Lion Hudson, 2009).
Michelle Brown
TBA
Michelle Brown is Professor of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London and is Tutor to the History of the Book MA. She was for many years the Curator of Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library, where she remains as a part-time project officer. She was until recently a Lay Canon and member of Chapter at St Paul's Cathedral. She has lectured, published and broadcast widely on medieval manuscripts, history and Christian culture. Her books include: The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage and Power in Ninth-Century England; The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe; The Luttrell Psalter; Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts; and The Lion Companion to Christian Art.
Ellen Davis
‘The Poetry of Care'
Ellen F. Davis is Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School . The author of many books and articles, her research interests focus on how biblical interpretation bears on the life of faith communities and their response to urgent public issues, particularly the environmental crisis and interreligious (mis)understanding. She is a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Building Bridges seminar, an international group of Muslim and Christian theologians. Professor Davis held the Hulsean Lectureship at the University of Cambridge in 2005/06; the Lectures have been published in her most recent book, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (Cambridge University Press, Fall 2009). She is now working with the Episcopal Church of Sudan to advance theological education and community health in Southern Suda.
Susan Gillingham
'The Later Reception History of Psalm 1'
Sue Gillingham is Fellow and Tutor in Theology at Worcester College, Oxford, and Reader in Old Testament at the University of Oxford. She has published several books on using and interpreting the psalms, including The Poems and Psalms of the Hebrew Bible (OUP, 1994), One Bible, Many Voices (SPCK, 1998), The Image, the Depths and the Surface (Consortium, 2002) and The Psalms through the Centuries (Blackwell, 2007), the latter being the first application of reception history to the entire Psalter. A second volume, a reception-history commentary on all one hundred and fifty psalms, is due to appear three years’ time. In this interim period she intends to offer several ’work-in-progress’ papers in order to invite critical comment on her method and its application.
Ellen Davis
Drysalter
Michael was born in 1963 in Preston, Lancashire, UK. His poetry has won the Whitbread Poetry Award,and been shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Forward Prize, and twice for the T.S. Eliot Prize. He has received major awards from the Arts Council and the Society of Authors. His continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and an opera for the Welsh National Opera – ‘The Sacrifice’ – which won the RPS Award for opera. His broadcast work includes ‘A Fearful Symmetry’ - for Radio 4 - which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, and ‘Last Words’ commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. He has published two novels, and teaches at the Writing School of Manchester Metropolitan University.
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