397 - Nicholas Reeves - What Is Music?

The Symbolic World

Jonathan Pageau

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this conversation, I sit down with composer and church musician Nicholas Reeves to explore one of the great mysteries: music. Why does music move us so deeply? How does it reflect symbolic patterns in reality? We discuss the ancient and modern roles of music—from sacred liturgies to EDM dance floors—and ask whether the liturgy might be the ultimate artwork. We also dive into the contrasts between order and chaos in sound, the compression of human experience, and the sacred role of communal participation in worship. This discussion really opened new paths for me—I hope it does the same for you.
Nicholas’s work can be found at: https://www.nicholasreevesmusic.com
YouTube version: https://youtu.be/26ORdueGcIo

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Timestamps:
00:00 - Coming up
01:29 - Intro music
01:55 - Introduction
02:50 - Understanding ourselves through music
10:22 - The human voice
18:56 - Rhythm
21:11 - Dance and what music is
24:40 - Variety and sameness
32:08 - Reinventing yourself
35:21 - Church music
43:57 - Continuity
46:56 - Moments in liturgy
49:30 - Music in America
54:54 - The complete work of art
59:14 - Making pop culture more participative

💻 Website and blog: http://www.thesymbolicworld.com
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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/

Transcript

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0:00.0	music is the most abstract of the of the arts especially just music like when you hear a choir
0:05.8	like when you hear choral music it's not as abstract because it definitely connects to uh it definitely
0:11.2	connects to meaning and to you know the way that we experience uh storytelling or but when you have
0:17.9	just uh music that is only sounds that are playing against each other, why do you think we care?
0:24.2	Like, what is it about what's happening that makes us pay attention?
0:28.6	Looking at music as a experience of acoustics, you could start with the understanding of music having its own internal balance of order.
0:41.3	Some would say this is the overtone series where certain pitches are arranged naturally without any manipulation with certain intervals and colors.
0:46.3	And based on that raw experience of science, we can extract from that different melodies and or rhythms.
0:56.3	And it's something that's just there.
0:57.8	It's just exists.
1:03.8	And this is what has fascinated the, what fascinated the ancients when it came to music. And I think a lot of it has to do with the order it brings to us internally.
1:11.1	It's an ordering experience.
1:12.8	And that's why when they're, let's look at film score,
1:16.0	when you see a thriller and something's about to happen,
1:19.7	there's more cacophony, there's more dissonance.
1:23.2	And then when something comes to order,
1:26.5	you feel more resolution in those moments.
1:29.3	This is Jonathan Pajot. Welcome to the symbolic world.
1:45.0	So hello everyone. I am here with Nicholas Reeves.
1:59.0	Nicholas Reeves is a musician.
2:01.3	He's a church musician.
2:03.2	He has taught at St.
	...

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