蜜芽传媒

In five essays Catherine Coldstream sets out to explore the nature of the powerful connection between music and the soul.

Episode 5 - Meaning
In the Sound of Music, the former novice nun Maria, teaches the children the notes of the musical scale, only for one of them, Birgitta, to exclaim 'But it doesn't mean anything!' In this final essay, Catherine Coldstream attempts to understand how meaning is conveyed through music.

Catherine Coldstream is best known for her memoir, Cloistered - an account of her 12 years as a Carmelite nun. But she is also an accomplished amateur musician.
After leaving her silent monastery at the turn of the millennium (fleeing at night with her viola strapped to her back) she studied Theology at Oxford, then Creative Nonfiction and Life Writing at UEA and Goldsmiths. Combining writing about the overlap between theology and the arts with the intense joy she finds in classical music-making, she has developed an approach that makes connections between the subjective experience of music and its theoretical and historical underpinnings. A fascination with the power of music and the spiritual continue to inform her writing. She is an occasional teacher, an associate editor of MONK arts magazine, and is currently working on a book about her painter father, former Slade professor, William Coldstream.

Written and Read by Catherine Coldstream
Commissioned and Produced by Jill Waters
The Waters Company for 蜜芽传媒 Radio 4