Click here to get the answers to the most commonly asked RBL questions.
Review of Biblical Literature Blog
Love, Lust, and Lunacy: The Stories of Saul and David in Music
Leneman, Helen
Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2010 pp. xii + 399. $95.00
Bible in the Modern World, 29
Buy this book now from SBL
Description: This is Leneman�s second foray into the interdisciplinary study of the Bible and music, following her The Performed Bible: The Story of Ruth in Opera and Oratorio (2007). In Love, Lust, and Lunacy she shows how these themes have captured the imagination of librettists and composers of many eras to set the narratives of the books of Samuel to music. Leneman convincingly illustrates music�s ability to suggest emotions and character traits that can only be read between the lines of a text, through an in-depth discussion of 16 operas and oratorios from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century�including works of Handel, Nielsen, Parry, Honegger, Milhaud and lesser-known composers. The musical analyses can be understood on different levels by both specialists and non-specialists, providing a new perspective for biblical scholars along with a new appreciation of the biblical texts for musicians and music lovers. Librettists and composers working with the Saul and David stories were alert to the complexity and ambivalence of the biblical portraits, and filled in the blanks left by the biblical writer in stirring and compelling ways. Their gap-filling may sometimes contradict traditional versions or interpretations of the biblical text, but their musical creativity often makes the words and actions of the biblical characters more convincing and compelling. In the musical works reviewed here there are portrayed three-dimensional figures�not only David and Saul, but also Samuel, Michal, Bathsheba, the Woman of Endor and others, personages barely glimpsed between the lines of the biblical text but imagined in different ways by readers in every generation.
Subjects: Bible, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Books, 1-2 Samuel, Literature, Methods, Historical Approaches, History, History of Interpretation
Login to Read the Review(s)
You must be a member of SBL to read the review(s). Enter your SBL Member ID and click the "Log in" button. Your use of this site indicates your acceptance of RBL�s Terms of Use.
I don�t remember my SBL Member ID.
Join SBL or renew your membership to read the review(s).
SBL Membership Id:
Review by Christina Landman
Citation: Christina Landman, review of Helen Leneman, Love, Lust, and Lunacy: The Stories of Saul and David in Music, Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.bookreviews.org] (2011).
All RBL reviews are published in PDF format. To view these reviews, you must have downloaded and installed the FREE version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have the Reader or you have an older version of the Reader, you can download the most recent version now.
Copyright ©2015 Society of Biblical Literature ISSN: 1099-0321
Privacy Policy • Terms of Use • Contact Us