Amanda DeSalme-Music as "Demolishing"

When I first read Van der Leeuw's last chapter of "Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art," I was baffled by his description of how music fit into theology. Where dance is associated with rhythm, the word with speaking, and the image with forming, music is associated (according to Van der Leeuw) with demolishing. Music is the eschatology branch of theology, or the doctrine concerning ultimate or final things such as the 2nd coming or the Last Judgement, or all that craziness you read about in Revelations. I was so confused because I always felt music was healing, not demolishing. But when I think about the "Last Judgement," I don't consider it to be all fire and brimstone. Of course, I don't really ascribe to any religion in particular, but I do believe there is some kind of powerful being or spirit of sorts. But this isn't supposed to be about my personal beliefs. His description makes sense as he goes on to explain it, but I still would not have chosen the word "demolishing." In class Mr. Redick mentioned something about how music is the most abstract of the art forms, since it goes beyond language to express something words cannot. In this sense it can come the closest to portraying that absolute truth, or so it seems. And I guess we would experience this revelation of absolute truth in the end of days, at the final judgement, at death, whatever you would like to call it. So Music, if it is associated with death, could be said to be "demolishing" of life, but I would rather see it as the pathway to a new start, because who knows what happens after death? No one can say for sure. Yes, some people have incredible faith about afterlives, and these people might be thinking that music should have a more hopeful word associated with it as well. I suppose it demolishes our ignorance, our facade that we are accustomed to, so the truth can be revealed to us at last. Yes, that is how I will think of it. I had no aim originally to this post but to try to come to understand this association of music with the word "demolishing" and it seems that through my incoherent babbling I have come to something that works for me. I still feel that the best word to describe music is "healing" because it has that affect on my soul, but I can see how this word "demolishing" can be associated with it as well. Music demolishes boundaries. Music breaks through into unknown realms.