Music, Spirituality and Well-Being
Autoethnographies Volume I
Summary
By engaging with both deeply personal and collective experiences across musical contexts, the chapters showcase innovative forms of autoethnography—individual, duo, trio, and collaborative—that illuminate how music shapes meaning, belonging, transformation, and healing. Rich with narrative, theory, and creative expression, this collection brings forward multiple dimensions of spirituality—metaphysical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergaian, and extrapersonal—while offering fresh insights into vulnerability, compassion, and the search for wholeness.
Spanning contexts as diverse as professional performance, education, care centres, grief journeys, and everyday listening, the contributions reveal music’s enduring role in connecting body, spirit, community, and environment.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction (June Boyce-Tillman)
- Bibliography
- Part I Performing
- 1 On Sacred Ground: A Trioethnography of Performing Chamber Music Barefoot (Liesl van der Merwe, Laetitia Orlandi and Johan Ferreira)
- Procedures
- Participants
- Research Approach: Trioethnography
- First Round of Data Collection: Individual Reflections
- Second Round of Data Collection: Focus Group Dialogical Data
- Data Analysis
- Ethics
- Findings
- Childhood Stories of What It Means To Be Barefoot
- Cultural Expectations and Implications of Being Barefoot
- What Happens When We Dare to Perform Chamber Music Barefoot?
- Challenging Norms and Making Aesthetic Statements
- Authentic Expression and Emotional Liberation
- Enhanced Sensory and Physical Connection
- Spiritual Experiences When Performing Chamber Music Barefoot
- Mindfulness and Grounding
- Relationality to Self, Instruments, Fellow Musicians and the Audience
- Sacredness and Spiritual Transcendence – Changing Energy
- Discussion
- Childhood Stories
- Cultural Expectations
- Sensory, Physical and Consequent Authentic Expressiveness
- The Sacred Power of Presence
- Sacred Relations
- Sacred Energy
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- 2 Understanding How Dalcroze Activities Facilitate Spiritual Experiences During Collective Learning in a Trio: A Collaborative Autoethnography (André Oosthuizen, Catrien Wentink and Liesl van der Merwe)
- Introduction
- Social Learning in a Trio as a Community of Practice
- Procedures
- Research Approach: Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE)
- Participants
- Data Collection
- Data Analysis
- Trustworthiness
- Positionality
- Music, Movement, and Spirituality in Individual Cultural Histories
- The Trio’s Emergent Culture Within Classical Music
- Ethics
- Findings
- Theme 1 – Community: Learning as Belonging Through Playfulness
- Theme 2 – Practice: Learning as Doing Through Awareness
- Theme 3 – Identity: Learning as Becoming Through Self-Compassion
- Theme 4 – Meaning: Learning as Experiencing Improved Musicianship
- Discussion
- Embodied Practice as a Site of Learning and Spiritual Experience
- Belonging and Relational Spirituality
- Identity and Musical Becoming
- Meaning and Aesthetic-Spiritual Experience
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- 3 The Influence of Emotional Experiences on a Professional Pianist’s Performance Preparation (Carla Lewis)
- Memories of Various Emotional Experiences When I Prepare for Performances
- Relief
- Gratitude
- Serenity
- Interest
- Hope
- Pride
- Amusement
- Inspiration
- Awe
- Love
- Anger
- Shame
- Contempt
- Disgust
- Embarrassment
- Guilt
- Sadness
- Feeling Scared
- Feeling Stressed
- Meaning-Making: Explaining How My Emotional Experiences Influence My Performance Preparation
- How My Experiences Relate to the Scholarly Literature
- Final Reflections
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- 4 Connecting With the Divine: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Spiritual Music-Making Experiences (Laetitia Orlandi)
- Procedures
- Data Collection
- Data Analysis
- Ethics
- Findings
- Snapshots
- Snapshot 1: My First Piano Concert With Dangling Feet
- Snapshot 2: Posing With a Trophy Almost a Third of My Size
- Snapshot 3: Next to a Music Icon After Winning His Award
- Snapshot 4: A Relaxed Pose With Table Mountain in the Background
- Snapshot 5: Matric Farewell Photos at the Piano
- Snapshot 6: Playing the Violin at a Wedding With My Eyes Closed
- Snapshot 7: Graduation
- Snapshot 8: My First Professional Headshot
- Snapshot 9: Pregnant at the Piano
- Snapshot 10: Performing Motherhood (snapshot with my toddler at a birthday performance)
- Artefacts
- Artefact(s) 1: A Collection of Medals and Certificates
- Artefact 2: Certificate of Another Form
- Artefact 3: My Own Compositions
- Artefact 4: Handbook for Energetic Healing
- Artefact 5: A Page from My Performance Journal
- Artefact 6: Doctoral Recital Programme
- Artefact 7: Academic Excellence Awards Programme
- Metaphor: An Unfinished Tapestry
- Journey
- Discussion
- Identity and Meaning
- Flow and Connection
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Part II Listening
- 5 Sounding the Depths: Reflections on Playlist as Pilgrimage Through Collaborative Autoethnographic Musicking (Hannah Kerr Buckley and Stephen B Roberts)
- Introduction: Music for the Journey
- Methodology: Collaborative Autoethnographic Musicking as Spiritual Practice
- Playlist as Pilgrimage: El Camino de la Música
- Sounding the Unfathomable Depths of Otherness
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- 6 In the Sunshine of Your Love (Eduard C Heyning)
- Pepper
- Atom
- Larks
- Lamb
- Afterwards
- Bibliography
- Part III Caring
- 7 Performing Self-Compassion: An Autoethnography (André Oosthuizen)
- Overwhelmed by Self-Doubt and Fear of Exposure
- Structure
- Imposter Phenomenon
- Consumed by Perfection and Shame
- Impostor Phenomenon and Perfectionism
- Avoidance, Isolation and the Inner Critic
- Self-Compassion
- How I Performed the Study
- Ethical Implications
- Cracks in the Mask: Moments of Ambivalence
- Music Education and the Cultivation of Perfectionism
- Emerging Trust and Self-Observation
- Self-Compassion: A Spiritual Act
- Owning Worth and Finding Joy
- Bibliography
- 8 I See Me When I See You: Artistic Collaboration, Friendship, and Mirrors in the Presence of the Woman Hugging Self Archetype (Laura Montanari and Lucia Guarino)
- The Initial Encounter
- The Encounter With: The Painting
- Solo Response: The Music
- The Encounter Between: Music and Dance
- Shall We Dialogue?
- Method
- Data Collection
- Data Analysis, Interpretation and Writing
- Lucia
- Lucia’s Found Poem
- Laura
- Laura’s Found Poem
- The Inter/View Encounter: Two-Voiced Found Poems
- Theme #1. Currere, or Taking Step after Step with the Other
- Theme #2. Trustworthiness, or Bodies Don’t Lie
- Theme #3. Differences Initiate Movement and Lead to Research
- Theme #4. The Privilege of Time: Curriculum Sediments
- Theme #5. Collaboration as Movement Toward
- Theme #6. Collaboration as Transformation
- Theme #7. Women Need Each Other To Hug Themselves
- The Encounter and Transformation Within: Data of the Mirror
- Movement and Transformation Within and Without: Body Is Soul
- Bibliography
- 9 My Journey of Personal Transformation: An Autoethnographic Perspective on the Meaning I Ascribe to My Lived Experiences of Music and Imagery (MI) Training During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Petra Jerling)
- Introduction
- Procedures
- My Journey
- Background: Photographs and Their Story
- Fracturing and Connecting: Personal Notes During MI Training
- Day 1
- Day 2
- Day 3
- Day 4
- Day 5
- Zooming in and Zooming out
- Insight, Intuition, and Impressions
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- 10 Facilitating Musicking in a Care Centre for Adults With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: A Duoethnography (Mignon van Vreden and Wilhelm Meyer)
- Facilitating Musicking With Adults With IDD
- Well-Being
- Spiritual Music Education
- Cultural Identity
- Strengthening a Sense of Community and Belonging
- Compassionate Music Teaching (CMT)
- Procedures
- Findings
- Nurturing Relationships: ‘I Saw How Relationships are Built and Strengthened Through Music’
- Acknowledging Emotions: ‘Despite Fears, I Discovered Profound Joy in the Sessions … ’
- Promoting the Residents’ Sense of Ownership: ‘Their Input in Shaping the Music Sessions’
- Reflecting on our Development as Facilitators: ‘Facilitating Music Sessions has Been Eye-Opening and Transformative’
- Utilising Familiar Songs as Foundation for Musicking: ‘Music not Only Reinforces Cultural Ties but Also Shapes the Emotional and Spiritual Landscape of the Sessions’
- Cultural Ties
- Spiritual Ties
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Part IV Composing
- 11 Composing Grief, Composing Comfort, Composing Hope (Fiona Evison)
- Culture and Ethics
- The Shattering of a Summer Day
- Memories of Mourning
- Curated Creativity Amid Calamity
- Broader Perspectives and Practices
- Trauma and Healing
- Considering Dreams
- Musical Remembrances of Life and Loss
- Future Directions
- Bibliography
- 12 Reflecting on Dying – Composing as Palimpsest (June Boyce-Tillman)
- Introduction
- Methodology
- Emily Dickinson
- Composing
- Folk Material
- Church Material
- The Requiem
- Musical and Poetic Themes
- The Nature of Palimpsest
- Palimpsest as Resurrection
- Palimpsest as Ensoulment
- Palimpsest as Re-Membering
- Palimpsest as Sapiential (Wisdom) Theology
- The Composition
- Conclusions
- Summary
- Bibliography
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
List of Figures
Figure 2.1: Collective learning through Dalcroze Eurhythmics
Figure 8.1: Woman Hugging Self, painting by James Antonson
Figure 8.2: QR Code to access the song ‘Sottovoce’ YouTube link (Larthia Music, 2020a)
Figure 8.3: QR Code to access the song ‘Solida (Woman Hugging Self)’ YouTube link (Larthia Music, 2020b)
Figure 8.4: QR Code to access the video of ‘Solida (Close-up Edit)’ (Larthia Music, 2020c)
Figure 8.5: QR Code to access the video of ‘Sottovoce (Parafrasi)’ (Larthia Music, 2020d)
Figure 8.6: QR Code to access the video of ‘Soffio’ (Larthia Music, 2020e)
Figure 9.1: My siblings and I
Figure 9.2: Henry’s wedding day
Figure 9.3: I am holding Henry’s son
Figure 9.4: One of Henry’s paintings
Figure 9.5: Deep in conversation
Figure 9.6: Henry’s book and my degree certificate
Figure 9.7: Visiting Henry in hospital after surgery
Figure 9.8: My inscribed bracelet
Figure 9.9: Henry playing the organ
Figure 9.10: A shared moment at Henry’s 70th birthday
Figure 9.11: Paying my last respects
Figure 9.12: Praying hands supported by many other hands
Figure 9.13: Sostenuto
Figure 9.14: Comfortable with the uncomfortable
Figure 9.15: Alone in the snow
Figure 9.16: Left up in the air
Figure 9.17: Pain burning like fire
Figure 9.18: Labyrinth
Figure 9.19: Beauty in grief
Figure 9.20: Transformation
Figure 12.1: Vaughan Williams’s manuscript
Figure 12.2: The phenomenology of the musical experience (Boyce-Tillman, 2023)
List of Tables
Table 12.1: Analysis of the section Because I Could not Stop for Death
Table 12.2: The interface between the Emily Dickinson poems and June Boyce-Tillman’s composition
Acknowledgements
We dedicate this book to our fathers, who have been supportive, gentle, unconditional, compassionate, and caring. My own father passed away in the midst of the review process. I am very grateful to Dr Debra Joubert, who stepped in to take my place while I was paralysed with grief. I am also profoundly grateful to my father, who always put people – his family and his community – first. He taught us to see the good in everything and to appreciate the beauty of nature. As a geographer and environmental educationalist, he showed me that everything functions together in an ecology or a system. This principle is reflected in the very nature of this book: it was truly a team effort.
The co-editors are both dear friends and formidable academics: Rev Prof June Boyce-Tillman, Dr Petra Jerling, Dr Laetitia Orlandi, and Dr Debra Joubert. The African proverb comes to mind: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together’. My deepest and sincerest gratitude goes to my co-editors for their support and understanding during this difficult time.
We also want to thank the authors who shared their personal stories – for their vulnerability, their honesty, and for trusting us with their narratives. Your meaningful contributions will shed light on the experiences of others.
Our thanks extend to the reviewers, who offered their expertise and knowledge with care, sensitivity, and in a timely manner: Lasya Botes, Johan Cilliers, Mary Cohen, Jordan Cox, Diane Daly, Amira Ehrlich, Johan Ferreira, John Habron-James, Brian Inglis, Evan Kent, Carla Lewis, Koji Matsunobu, Jaco Meyer, Susan Quindag, Wendy Sims, Philip van der Merwe, Chris van Rhyn, Catrien Wentink and Waldo Weyer.
We are especially grateful to the series editor, Rev Prof June Boyce-Tillman, who planted the seeds of autoethnography as an ethical research approach, encouraging us to tell our own stories rather than simply collecting those of others. We thank you for the opportunities you have created, and for your wisdom, love, encouragement, and support. Thank you also for the beautiful introduction where you masterfully weaved all our stories together.
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from the Faculty of Humanities at North-West University. Thank you to MASARA’s research director, Prof Chris van Rhyn, and to our deputy dean of research, Prof Mirna Nel, for your unwavering support.
Two angels in this project were Prof Edwin Hees and Dr Debra Joubert. Prof Edwin undertook the language editing and asked tactful questions about the argumentation. Dr Debra Joubert, apart from being a co-editor, also checked and corrected all the references in every chapter. This copy-editing was a mammoth task, and we are eternally grateful.
We are also indebted to the steering committee and the scientific committee of the Music, Spirituality, and Wellbeing International Network, who supported and encouraged us throughout this project.
Finally, we would like to thank Anthony Mason at Peter Lang for his kindness, patience, and valuable guidance and support. And to our readers, thank you for taking an interest in our stories.
Liesl van der Merwe
Introduction
Towards the end of the twentieth century, a general interest in spirituality grew substantially, often uncoupled from religion. Higher education was at first reluctant to engage with this development, perhaps because it would not lend itself to study by the more established methodologies in use at the time. As Courtney Bender (2010) wrote: ‘studying spirituality appears akin to shovelling fog’ (p. 182). The embracing of a variety of narrative methodologies, including autoethnography, enabled exploration in this area to begin and to develop. This volume illustrates the varieties of autoethnographic methodologies in use today. There are various forms of joint ethnographies (including trio, duo and collaborative) and a variety of analytical techniques of the data. This includes a variety of types of data in line with crystallisation:
Crystallization combines multiple forms of analysis and multiple genres of representation into a coherent text or series of related texts, building a rich and openly partial account of a phenomenon that problematises its own construction, highlights researchers’ vulnerabilities and positionality, makes claims about socially constructed meanings, and reveals the indeterminacy of knowledge claims even as it makes them. (Ellingson, 2009, p. 4)
One chapter makes a strong claim that words cannot encapsulate the spiritual experience and several contain pictures, stories and music examples. This volume is the product from an international conference in 2024 entitled Ecologies of Practice in Music, Spirituality, and Well-Being organised by Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing International through North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. The case studies considered in the chapters include a considerable range of contexts such as a home for disadvantaged adults, a shared Spotify playlist, a professional trio and dealing with grief, giving various perspectives on spirituality and well-being.
In Experiencing Music (Boyce-Tillman, 2016, pp. 75–76) I set out several strands in people’s concepts of spirituality – Metaphysical, Narrative (codifying the Metaphysical and situating it in a particular faith tradition), Tradition, Intrapersonal/Expressive (within the person), Interpersonal (relational), InterGaian (relationship with the natural world) and Extrapersonal/Ethical. These are overlapping concepts and function rather like a smorgasbord from which people take a variety of elements. The Metaphysical strand includes the notion of a power beyond ourselves, which may or may not be named. There is a sense of encounter which can be with mystery. This links with the experience of what Heidegger called ‘contemplative thinking’ (Lancaster, 2004). There is a sense of the beyond – a sense of connection to a life-force, God, higher power or purpose (Tisdell, 2007). The Narrative strand ‘refers to the fund of the religious story in which an individual is or has been situated and that constitutes the primary reference for religious identity’ (Pratt, 2012, p. 4). This is usually seen as relating the person to a particular faith and enables them to define their religious identity in terms of Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and so on. People using this strand will often call themselves spiritual and religious. The Tradition strand involves the use of various techniques – such as rosaries, meditative techniques – from a faith without necessarily subscribing to the beliefs of the faith. The Intrapersonal strand involves questions of meaning and purpose within the self. It often includes moments of transformation, empowerment, of being at peace and at one with oneself, of release and freeing up of new areas within the self. The Interpersonal strand involves the significance of empathetic relationships with others and a profound sense of belonging. The InterGaian strand concerns a prioritisation of relationships with the natural and other-than-human world. The ExtraPersonal strand includes issues of justice and right relationship with the wider world, including the efficacy of the space and structures around one at any given time, as well as the global issues and a concern for unity with other beings, people and the wider cosmos – a sense of wholeness, healing, and the interconnectedness of everything.
The nature of the spiritual experience itself includes a way of knowing that is different from every day (propositional) knowing (Clarke, 2005). Time functions differently from everyday knowing. Things appear connected in a new way with a both/and logic, which may appear as a way of not knowing, as it contains paradox. It is a liminal transitional space described by Turner (1969/1974) as having communitas. Mary Warnock (1999) describes how it connects ‘the momentary and ephemeral with the permanent, the particular with the universal’ (p. 2). It includes a unitive element that resembles that of the ecstasy of religious mystics which often takes the form of a feeling of being united with the universe, other beings and the natural world. Alterities within the self open up and are accepted and celebrated. The musickers – be they composers, performers or listeners – enter a different time/space dimension, leaving everyday reality for another world. Here, the ‘beyond’ is present as the whole person or community experiences the reintegration of themselves.
Art uproots us into virtual reality….Time in the standard sense of khronos [italics added] is suspended, and space is irrelevant because the viewer/listener/reader is encapsulated in the art, the virtual space provided by the artists. (Galtung, 2008, p. 54)
Details
- Pages
- XIV, 292
- Publication Year
- 2026
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781803749815
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781803749822
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781803749808
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22805
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2026 (May)
- Keywords
- Music spirituality well-being autoethnography musicking interdisciplinarity narrative collaboration embodiment death Dalcroze transformation belonging healing caring listening composing performing community grief compassion
- Published
- Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2026. xiv, 292 pp., 30 fig. b/w, 9 tables.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
