'Gottes Ursprache'. Hugo Ball's Theology of Sound

Debbie Lewer, Senior Researcher in History of Art at the University of Glasglow, is the author of Hugo Ball, Iconoclasm and the Origins of Dada in Zurich, published by Oxford Art Journal in 2009. This article explores the religious and academic journey of Hugo Ball, a founder of Zurich Dada, as he studied the life of the defeated 16th century religious revolutionary Thomas Müntzer and applied concepts from his study to the development of, and importance of, Dada. The discussion of Ball’s religious preoccupations centers upon the term “iconoclasm,” which linguistically and conceptually links certain threads of iconoclastic 16th century religious thought with the Dadaists’ own interest in purging and destroying art forms. Ultimately, Lewer follows Ball’s trajectory as he disengages from his iconoclastic beliefs and from Dada, abandoning any hope he might have had in the “dream of a spiritual revolution” through Dada or any other means. Lewer’s premise would indicate that Zurich Dada, through Ball’s undisputed influence upon its formative institutions, was not a secular movement but one with traceable, if loosely connected, antecedents in the Christian theology of the Reformation. Whether she succeeds depends partially on the question of framing that is touched upon in her introduction: Is Dada “a brief episode in Ball’s history” or is Hugo Ball “a brief episode in Dada’s history”?

Jacob Böhme (1575-1624), a German cobbler turned visionary author and spiritual dissident, is an important figure who connects the histories of early modern mysticism to Continental philosophy and later countercultural movements; yet he remains understudied and frequently misunderstood. Challenging prevalent views that Böhme’s writings are either exercises in irrationality, "primitive" religious speculation, or failed attempts at metaphysics, I argue that his work provides a performative mesophysics: a theory and a practice aimed at relocating religious authority in the body and fostering an experience of the world that rejected contemporaneous theological and scientific cosmologies in favor of an ontology of human/world co-constitution. In short, Böhme's works are meant to catalyze existential transformation rather than convey purely conceptual content. In the upcoming workshop I will discuss the unique aural dimensions of Böhme's apocalypticism by exploring his application of a mystical hermeneutic—referred to as "the language of nature" (die Natursprache)—to the opening lines of Luther's translation of Genesis. Mounting a radical critique of both religious orthodoxy and early modern cartography, Böhme envisioned a vibratory and resonantly interdependent cosmos, wherein divinity and humanity continuously produce one another in polyphonic collaboration. The imaginary of sound—a force at once material and invisible—provided him with a vocabulary capable of mapping the world as a chaos of energy and emergence, rather than an object of theological or scientific inquiry; it allowed him to forge a poetics and politics of mystical participation that sounded in counterpoint to the rigidity of social and religious hierarchies. Furthermore, I will argue that this aural ontology was undergirded by a corporeal-linguistic practice that allowed him and his followers to dissolve the semantic content of scripture into a mechanism for generating a sonic body capable of aural apotheosis.

2019

A Synopsis of Stephen Webb's Theology of Sound. Webb's book engages with the role audio stimulus plays in Christian Proclamation. This Synopsis was the result of an assigned paper at Eastern University's Palmer Theological Seminary. The author of this paper challenges many of Webb's conclusions but found a hidden gem of "accommodation" within the pages of Webb's book that should not be overlooked.

While most critics have focused on the semantic, aural and textual effects of Dada sound poetry few have given more than cursory treatment to the fact that these works also exist as carefully-typeset texts and as highly-scripted performances. Far from employing mere creative chaos or nonsense, Dada sound poems are intricately structured and meticulously staged. A key question is why. if Dada sound poems aim simply at evoking strong emotion, why would these poets not simply trust their own ability to improvise? Why fix so securely the specific sounds and performative components of their works? In this essay, I attempt to answer these questions in regard to two seminal works of Dada sound poetry, Hugo Ball's "gadji beri bimba" sequence and Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate. I argue that these works, while aiming at the experience of primeval language, also make deliberate use of technology, or what Huyssen has termed the technological imagination. Specifically, in their sound poetry, Ball and Schwitters seek precise control in their shared project of remaking the listeners' relationship to language and the moribund notions that accompany it. In doing so, they are informed by the trope of the automaton, a common figure in the works of Grosz and other Dada artists. Mindless, maimed, and deprived of independent agency, the automaton is a human whose individuality has been subsumed by the forces of mass production. In contrast to this eviscerated, half-mechanized figure, Ball and Schwitters offer an alternative model of the animal-human hybrid. This inverse automaton forcefully asserts meaningfulness of interior experience. However, Ball and Schwitters both also employ structures of mechanization in their works and offer the possibility of reproducibility as a form of protest against the pressures of modernity. The sound poetics of Ball and Schwitters are, in effect, plans for a machine that is meant to shred and reassemble meaning, to rend and tear the listener in order to reframe her relationship to language and to the modern world.

Aisthema, 2018

In this paper I set out to explore some aspects of Luther's thought concerning music, as well as to unpack their theological and philosophical implications. To this effect, apart from reading Luther's work itself, I will establish a dialogue between him and the orthodox theologian Pavel Florensky. Questo testo si propone di esplorare alcuni aspetti della teoria della musica di Martin Lutero e di svilupparne le implicazioni teologiche e filosofiche. A que-sto fine, oltre che approciare il lavoro di Lutero stesso pongo in dialogo Lutero con il teologo ortodosso Pavel Florensky. El siguiente texto se propone la exploración de algunos aspectos de la teoria musical de Martin Lutero y el desarrollo de sus implicaciones teológicas y filosóficas. Con este propósito, además de enforcarme en el trabajo de Lutero mismo, pongo en diálogo Lutero con el teologo ortodoxo Pavel Florensky. Quest'opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione-Non commerciale-Non opere derivate 4.0 Internazionale.

Theology and music have always been in conversation. Most often music is used analogically, as grist for the theological mill, providing ready examples and illustrations to help elucidate theological concepts. But what if music itself theologizes? This paper provides a brief case for music operating as theology. It begins by engaging with the philosophy of music to establish that music can and does bear extra-musical meaning (contra absolute music theorists). The way in which music intersects with theology is then explored, drawing heavily from the work of Jeremy Begbie. Finally, examples of musical theology are analyzed in the work of J.S. Bach, contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan, and a collaborative effort between N. T. Wright and composer Paul Spicer.

Informazione Filosofica, 2022

The purpose of this research is to sketch a lesser known face of Ball’s personality, barely compatible with the most iconic image from his Cabaret Voltaire period. His thinking reaches more complex areas than the Dada sequence, and his critique of modernity is not only an anarchist rebellion or a cult of the nonsense. Generally speaking, Ball is against the destruction of the moral and religious traditions for the sake of modern values (Reason, Progress, Ego, Subject), accepted by suspending the critical thinking or by applying it only towards the past. As a result, his critique was set against the excessive nominalism of the modern spirit whose direct consequences were the processes of alienation and objectification; the moral indifferentism; the obsessive affirmation of the Ego, exhibiting one’s passions and interests; the imposing of the natural against the supernatural, and the confusion between material and real which has led to imposing the material as the only ontological category.

Sound Figures: Between Physics and Aesthetics, 2018

This paper examines the representation of music (esp. church music), its origin and use during the early modern period in the Czech lands within two main literary testimonies. Both focus on the role of music in religion – as one can see, this has to do not only with ritual and liturgical music, but as well with music or song as a device to lift the soul up to God. As this paper focuses more on musical culture or the role of music in religion than on music theory, sources in the vernacular, more precisely for the Czech-speaking population, were primarily analysed. In Kačic, Ladislav. Musikalische und literarische Kontexte des Barocks in Mitteleuropa / in der Slowakei. Bratislava: Slavistický ústav Jana Stanislava SAV, 2015. s. 93-98