Abstract
June Boyce-Tillman begins this book by acknowledging (in the Acknowledgements) that it has ‘taken many years to write’ (p. ix). As such, it draws on her whole lifetime of experience and scholarship. There is a passion running through it that leaps from the page and pulls the reader into the debate. In a book about the releasing of women’s voices, June Boyce-Tillman’s voice can be clearly heard. Her most well-known hymn, ‘We will go out’ contains the stirring lines:
We’ll give a voice to those who have not spoken, We’ll find the words for those whose lips are sealed.
In a study of breathtaking depth and range, this commitment has been met, and the gauntlet thrown down to future generations to engage with the diversity of liturgical musical expression.
The author begins from her own story, as a girl in an Anglican tradition that, then even more than now, permitted only boys and men access to the service of sacred song. This represented, for her, ‘a deep woundedness in my experiencing of music’ (p. 2).
Boyce-Tillman is a musicologist, musical practitioner, writer, composer, compiler and performer, with a lifetime of scholarship in the field. She brings to this a deep spirituality and feminist theology from her own journey of faith. Central to this is her rediscovery of the Wisdom traditions, rooted in a biblical female image of God.
The book sets out a series of ‘lenses’ through which the opening and concluding chapters, and the series of ‘vignettes’ that form the substance of the book, are viewed. These always begin with story, and move through the exploration of the material, process, expression, values and spirituality of the music under discussion.
The first chapter describes the exclusion of women from the Western classical musical canon. This is systematic, in that access to resources and public arenas have been denied to women, so that it has been impossible to develop any tradition of women’s composition, which in turn exacerbates the perception of women’s contributions as valueless and ephemeral. This takes place, of course, in a culture which is governed by the norms of biblical patriarchy and classical dualism.
Boyce-Tillman challenges this stranglehold from the perspectives of feminist thought and ethnomusicology, both of which argue for openness and diversity as values, rather than using a restrictive value system to enforce conformity.
There follows a series of vignettes, tracing the history of women in Christian Liturgical Music from the first 600 years of the Christian era to current and developing practice. Vignette One describes the narrowing of the vision, as the Church developed into a controlling institution, which gradually and systematically excluded women from public liturgy. This leads to a celebration of Hildegard of Bingen in Vignette Two.
June Boyce-Tillman has written extensively about Hildegard, and recorded and performed her compositions. Her admiration for this powerful figure is evident. Hildegard’s writing is radical, not only in its language, which Boyce-Tillman calls ‘ecologising’, but in its free flowing form, very different from the linear compositions of her male contemporaries. In contrast, her music is ‘of an improvisatory nature’, and her works are ‘free form rhapsodic pieces’ (p. 103).
Following vignettes on convents of renaissance Italy and the Shakers of 18th century Britain and America, the book comes up to the present day in the chapter on ‘Hymns or Hers: Hymnody Past and Present’. This is a celebration of a real tradition of women’s writing, at least from the 19th century onwards, though there is still a certain amount of ebb and flow. Contemporary hymn writing explores inclusive language, female language for God, the rediscovery of women’s stories in the Bible and in history, and the location of feminist writing in the wider company of writing about justice and global issues. Though this chapter is still a vignette, it engages with a variety of writers, with great erudition.
The final vignette turns us towards the future, and to an increasing diversity of musical forms and uses, in which women’s music has opportunities to thrive, even if it is still in a certain amount of adversity. Some of this is developing in the mainstream traditions, where there are often intentional projects to increase the visibility or audibility of women as well as men. But Boyce-Tillman still finds scope for innovation in many alternative liturgy groups, where music can be improvisatory and experimental.
In the introduction, Boyce-Tillman spoke of her discovery of the Wisdom traditions, and they have formed an undercurrent throughout the book. She returns to them in a conclusion that recaps the content, from the perspective of what she sees as Wisdom values: spontaneity, wholeness, freedom, dance, openness to the creativity of liminal spaces. She ends with a quoted verse from Hildegard, where encircling Wisdom has three wings, one in heaven, one on earth and one flying everywhere. The book has been a search for the ‘missing third wing’ in a polarized society, that ‘brings the polarities into flow with one another’ (p. 293).
This is a book of enormous importance in the rediscovery and discussion of women’s voices in Christian liturgical music. It does not shy away from controversy and struggle, but describes the flourishing of women’s music in spite of the difficulties, and looks to the future with expectation.