As many philosophers and theologians have observed, music is close to “spirit”—a non-material medium of receiving and conveying a sense of the world. In our deepest attentiveness and encounters with certain forms of music, we are opened to a depth of awareness; a feeling about life that words alone cannot give.

This is why we must pay attention to what the music on its own elicits, conveys, and evokes about being alive. This is in part to call attention to how music is able to encode how life “feels” as we live through time.

Paying attention to what music elicits and evokes also opens up two interrelated powers: music without words and music forms to carry us beyond what the words alone signify. Both of these “powers” of music are related human experiences of time and space.”

from Music and Theology