Introduction and Translation

Theology should concern itself more seriously with music. Music contains signs of life that nihilism was not able to cancel. From the end of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, in the age of the secularization of art, all of the great musicians confronted the themes and works of the religious tradition in their major works (from Wagner to Henze, from Schonberg to Andriessen, from Strawinskj to Messiaen, from Skriabjn to Gubaidulina). This essay presents the passage of music from the Romantic ‘‘religion of art’’ to the contemporary ‘‘ethics of dissonance.’’ With W.T. Adorno’s thesis in mind, a vision of music as the capacity to redeem the signifier from nihilism is proposed. Music restores power and beauty to the divine gift of the human capacity to signify. In this way, it gives new hope to words, to gestures, to the representation of reality.