After the dismantling of Becket’s shrine during the Protestant Reformation, the holiness associated with the saint has been diffused in and through material and aural culture. Drawing on the vernacular devotional use of Becket’s relics from the Middle Ages onwards, including ‘Canterbury water’, I argue that songs associated with the saint have similarly been perceived to have healing, protective and apotropaic capacities. The primary case study is the interreligious, musical and ritual practices engaged today along the ‘Old Way’ pilgrimage to Canterbury and at the cathedral itself, as imagined, mapped and facilitated by the British Pilgrimage Trust, founded in 2014 by Guy Hayward and Will Parsons. An interdisciplinary art historical and ethnographic approach using participant observation is employed to highlight the integral role of music and object-based ritual praxis in translating perceived pilgrimages of the past into the present. Music, I argue, can be understood as ‘Canterbury water’ for the 21st century.

在新教改革期间拆除贝克特神社后，与圣人有关的圣洁在物质文化和听觉文化中得以传播。我借鉴了中世纪以来贝克特的遗迹，包括“坎特伯雷水”，对白话的虔诚使用，我认为与圣人有关的歌曲也同样被认为具有治愈，保护和两栖的能力。主要案例研究是今天沿着“老路”朝坎特伯雷朝圣，并在大教堂本身进行的宗教，音乐和仪式实践，这是由盖伊·海沃德和威尔·帕森斯于2014年成立的英国朝圣信托所想象，绘制和协助的。采用跨学科的艺术历史和人种学方法，使用参与者观察来突出音乐和基于对象的仪式实践在将过去的朝圣感转化为现在的过程中所起的不可或缺的作用。我认为，音乐可以理解为21世纪的“坎特伯雷水”。