The flaps going on for years now,
about tax-funded grants being given to support supposedly innovative art which could reasonably
be viewed as obscene, even blasphemous, brings certain questions into focus:
If the modern arts world is offensive and morally objectionable to Christians,
whose fault is that? Societies will have their arts. What intelligent
choices in innovative art and music does the Christian community offer the
greater society from which to choose? Where can the artist of serious
intent, who is also Christian, go to find financial support? Or even
to be heard? When the Christian community backs out, what can it expect
from the arts world, or have any ground on which to complain? Expecting
the non-Christian to adhere to Christian behavior in his or her artistic
expression is unrealistic.
Artist can be divided into two categories - interpretive and innovative.
The interpretive artist performs what has already been created - the classical
musician in an orchestra; musicians in a big band playing popular music;
actors in a play; dancers choreographed - performers who bring to life what
has already been scribed and designed for them - often by an innovator.
It is said that less than ten percent of anything in a body of work is original,
and everything else in it copy. Each new direction taken results from
innovation. The innovator does the research and development, makes
the new paradigms, the prototypes, is the inventor, is often to be found among
the avant garde.
On occasion, when speaking about new music, people tend to think
I am talking about the “latest” coming from popular media. The term
“innovative” means “new.” So does the word “novelty.” I would
apply the latter to define that stemming from the popular industry - as
much, if not more, for the eye than for the ear. “Innovative” I reserve
for music informed by musical developments occurring in harmony in the 20th
century.
Music consciously written for popularity does not do the sort
of research and development consistent with innovation. Commerce panders
and plays down to people, always striving for success (popularity); art
serves and plays up, always striving for perfection (completion).
It is the innovator in musics of extended chromaticism of which
I speak and argue most on behalf of: i.e., those in mainstream and
neo-mainstream jazz and that described as 20th century composition extending
from European classical, [see relevant definitions under 20TH CENTURY MUSIC
and JAZZ in subsequent installments], i.e., the two major disciplines of
fine 20th century music - that of the composer’s and that of the improvisator’s.
Without innovators, the arts die, there becomes nothing left to
play. Without art the people become Spartan - warlike, mute, without
historical legacy. It is sport fans, not art lovers, going wild on
the streets. When things get tough in America, it is the arts, not
sports, that first get cut. It is difficult at such times to agree
that it is a fallacy that “Providence had been prompted
‘to send to our shores, out of all the millions who inhabited
Europe, just those few thousand beings who had no music in their souls.’”
1
Subsequent history has shown that great music has indeed been
forthcoming from American citizens. But, unfortunately, experience
reveals that it is not always the best music possible that has been made
available.
All generations living today are born into a civilization of disposable
cultures. Tossed out with them are the creative artists who build
upon and extend from past achievement. What matters in America is
the survival of commercial corporate entities, controlled by men and women
with no sense of history or social responsibility.
NOTE: There has been such syncretism between the Christian church
and the “American Way” that it is cumbersome, when characterizing, to distinguish
between them. There is a difference between Christianity and what
it is to be a Christian. In this presentation I will necessarily be
using the terms Christian, Christianity, and America - Christendom - in
order to give contextual scope to my thesis without delving too deeply into
these distinctions in order to get on with the points of this paper.
After all, members of Christendom, whether Christian or not, still respond,
for the most part, to the Judeo-Christian ethic, ethic to mean the immaterial
reason for doing or not doing a thing. There are persons exceptional
to what I write. This paper means to attach to the wider society of
American Christendom.
Historically, Protestant Christians have not supported the innovative
or creative fine arts, most certainly in continuance of a long-standing,
though nearly forgotten, over-reaction, begun in Europe, against the Catholic
Church’s over-indulgence in them. To be precise, this is not true of
every Protestant church just as it is no longer true of the Catholic church,
in their respective directions; and has never been true of the American Catholic
Church. But it is a fair representation of the picture overall in America.
Research into the history of religious objections to music will
reveal that what the arguments boil down to is less to do with music than
with abuses attendant to its practice. And that, from the Patristic
age on, most leaders praised music. There were, of course, music haters
who could stand no music whatever. But they were a small minority,
and were easily offset by the number of “cultured voluptuaries”2 to be found among their opponents. Even the outrage against
theater was not usually against theater, per se, nor dramatic art, but with
immoral activity among actors and blasphemous plays,3 what we are accustomed to hearing about television and films
in our own time. Even Catholics battled the theater.4
“The French Church in the eighteenth century ‘refused to all players
the marriage blessing; when actors or actresses wished to marry, they were
obliged to renounce the stage, and the Archbishop of Paris diligently resisted
evasion or subterfuge. The atrocities connected with the refusal of
burial, as well in the case of players as of philosophers, are known to
all readers in a dozen illustrious instances, from Moliere and Adrenne Lecouvreur
downwards.
There was never a moment from the fourth century downwards when
some or other of the leaders of the Church were not fulminating against
the stage, and there was nothing the seventeenth-century Independents, Presbyterians,
or Baptists could say on that subject which had not been said over and over
again, with full Puritan emphasis, by the early fathers and the dignitaries of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches.”
5
As to that against elaborate music in church that tended to “obscure”
the words:
“They chant nowadays in our churches in what is an unknown tongue
and nothing else, while you will not hear a sermon once in six months telling
people to amend their lives. Modern church music is so constructed
that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word.6
Written in the mid-16th century, one point is about not having
proper sermons or having music serve in place of the sermon. Whose
fault is that? They should have been having pithy sermons too.
As to the other point, I can only say that it is not the business of music
to preach, although music may offer a form in which language can instruct.
Preaching is a separate function. Music, even instrumental music alone,
is a form of praise, and its practice is supported in scripture [see MUSIC
IN SCRIPTURE {Segment 6}].
But, as will be seen, my argument is not just about music in
the church service, which, aside from the Offering perhaps, needs to be
easy enough for most participants (though could stand some upgrading in
its harmony and line), but for providing a location within the broader Christian
community, that will house a secular environment for musical innovation
to take place within the Christian ethos. [see JOB’S PIANO - A
PERFORMING ARTS CENTER]
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