Lieke Wijnia (1985) is a PhD candidate at Tilburg University. Her project examines the notion of sacrality in contemporary culture, for which she conducts fieldwork at the arts festival Musica Sacra Maastricht. Furthermore she works on a research project on the positioning of the Vatican in the contemporary art world. She gained a MA in Cultural Heritage from Utrecht University and a MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute, London.

“Doing It for the Right Reasons”: The Ritual Dimensions of the Music Festival

“To have a festival that is concerned about how people live their lives and the meaning of people’s lives is so much better than having just another contemporary music festival. (…) There is a reasoning behind it, and people believe it. They are doing it for the right reasons and that communicates.” With these words, British composer Michael Finnissy (1946) described the festival Musica Sacra Maastricht. In 2014 it was the third time he had a composition performed at the annual Dutch arts festival, which he commended for being concerned not only with the quality of the programmed music, but also with how this music resonates for its listeners. This paper will explore the duality of this concern by means of a ritual studies approach. Ritual is regarded as a fundament of human behavior, through which people make sense of their lives (Rappaport 1999; Lynch 2012; Grimes 2014). In this paper, two approaches to the relationship between ritual and music are discussed. First, religious rituals presented as festival performances, and second, the ritualization of musical performances. By means of these two approaches, applied to performances during Musica Sacra Maastricht, the ritual dimensions of the festival and their consequential meaning-making processes are explored. Ultimately, this paper tries to contribute to the understanding of the ritual function of musical performances and festivals at large in contemporary culture.