Music & religion, the sacred and spirituality

Not a day goes by without conflicts and tensions of religious identity hitting the headlines: fundamentalism, blasphemy, posturing, the values of civilisation and more.

When the French writer and statesman André Malraux prophesied that if the third millennium were not religious it would not be, did he think that this dimension would become a battleground between the values of secularism and those held aloft by the apostles of a return to the religious in the public sphere and public debate?

This year’s festival tackles the sensitive relationship that different forms of music have with the sacred beliefs, religions and spiritual sensibilities to which they refer.

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