Fall 2009 | Volume 68, No. 1

A refreshing sound - Anna Knight

by Southwestern News Staff

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Bachelor of Arts in Music
Current Student

With an international certification in harp as well as studio time under professional harpists in several states, Anna Knight is seeing how her art and her world interact through pursuing the Bachelor of Arts in Music with a concentration in performance from the College at Southwestern (CSW).

The interplay between her classes and her musical instruction is why the B.A. in Music appeals to her.

“In having this linear look at history and philosophy,” Knight says,” you can see how ideas compound upon each other and change and affect what’s happening in our world today.”

Students like Knight who are pursuing the CSW bachelor’s programs not only examine the work of artists, authors, and musicians, but also the philosophical makeup of the surrounding world and how it got that way—ideologically, politically, and spiritually.

Knight loves the combination of the classes and the reading seminars in her degree program, where she reads major historical primary sources and discusses them with other students.

“[This gives me] a broad liberal arts education that helps me understand the different worldviews of the people I come in contact with, whether or not they’re musicians,” she says. “This will impact my life wherever God takes me.”

This connection between music and worldview is important to her. “Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” says Knight. “To look at one piece, or one composer, and not consider everything else that was happening in the world at that time, you just won’t have the broader ability to understand and appreciate the music.”

Knight’s calling to music has been renewed while at Southwestern. “Music can be used by God to refresh the heart, and that’s one of my desires,” she says. “Through the gifts He has given me, I could encourage people to worship Jesus Christ and be a winsome witness to the lost, and refresh the hearts of believers.”

She is also convinced of the importance of music in spurring her on to fulfill the Great Commission. Music that is com-posed from an attitude of meaninglessness and despair she can still find “achingly beautiful,” because it expresses the art-ist’s need for meaning that is found only in Christ.

“It should be an impetus to share the good news of Christ to a world lost and in despair,” she says. “For the believer, such music should make us realize once again the incredible longing for something beyond ourselves and that Jesus Christ is the one for whom we long, the only true hope of the world.”

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