INNOVATION

When too much stress is given to a particular part of a whole over too lengthy a time, boredom and reaction set in, arguments ensue and breakaways occur.  Roughly ninety percent of musical product are products of convention.  It is the ten percent that sets the pace and direction, and everything else becomes copy.  One observer has given the ratio at nine-nine percent to one.  This is where innovation comes in.  Artistic innovation is to bring into use a possibility inherent but latent within the whole of the form that comes down to us.  The development in the 20th century of extended chromaticism is not to deny the earlier discipline but to move along the breadth and depth of music’s possibilities. 

Successful innovation is the means to incorporate all the parts, or move readily from part to part within the whole, without causing a break to occur.  For instance, much of the strength of the Catholic Church was in allowing groups with certain, though unconventional, spiritual understanding, unless clearly heretical, become a new holy order.  In the political arena, this same sort of thing can be said of such as the American system, allowing parties to form, and the like, because the whole is sufficient but too large for any one man or woman or party to comprehend or realize on their own.  Each sees a part or several parts, but cannot see it entirely and all at once. 

Saying that “Art is against something” is mainly to mean the ten percent (we estimate) of that bias which established the singularity of an art in the first place - i.e., the innovation - was against something.  Robert Penn Warren puts it, 

“Deep art implies a destruction of order for the sake of reordering.  There is something incorrigible and anarchic lurking in art.  The devout and the conventional are right.  It is dangerous.” ¹⁴⁶

Innovation is not unlike establishing a “Point of View.”  Innovation sees or implies that how things have been is not enough - not the entire.  Innovation is change - sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.  Not all innovation is necessarily good or beneficial.  A disturbance to something or someone is in the offing.  Innovation cannot, by its nature, be conservative, since conservative, by its nature, resists change.  But, by each giving in a little, the likelihood is greater of a safe transition for the better.  It avoids division and unnecessary revolution - destruction. 

In religion for instance, the Bible authorizes both works and grace, but when too much stress is given to works, then reaction automatically sets in and too much stress is given to grace out of context with works.  Heresies become likely, such as that of the Quaker “Inner Light” occurring in reaction to an abusive system basing its authority on an extremity of works interpreted hierarchically.  There is a down side to everything: with grace, the heresy of “Inner Light”; with works, the heresy of earning one’s way to heaven; with democracy, its extremes; with improvisation, the excesses of popular or formless musics; with classical music prior to 20th Century developments, overkill; and with 20th Century, the likes of Philip Glass. 

Musical innovation in the secular world that ultimately enters the church is often done so at the cost of great internal conflict, leading to dissensions that cause, or threaten to cause, schism.  Near the end of the Dark Ages, music long developing in the secular world, came “suddenly” to the church’s attention.  Around the year 1240,  a popular rota, or “round” as it was later to be termed - a canon where voices singing the same melody come in successively after one another (Row, Row, Row Your Boat, for example), called Sumer is icumen in - suddenly appeared.  Or so it seemed to the church.  It brought with it the use of thirds and sixths, a practice already common among the Welsh.  Up to then church music was limited to singing generally in parallel fourths and fifths, called organum, itself an innovation of the late 9th and 10th centuries, ¹⁴⁷ and which can be heard in such as Bluegrass. 

Of course, this was to change music in and out of the church.  Putting the two disciplines together, after some lengthy furor, along with the use of “passing” tones, that is independent movement of one voice from the other, as practiced in free organum, brought a greatly more developed polyphony into the music world, to peak eventually among Church composers of the 16th century. ¹⁴⁸   As Routley puts it:

“These two streams . . . converge to produce polyphony, and when the church itself was emerging from the stagnation of the Dark Ages it found itself having to deal with a music that had been transformed by a process comparable with the discovery of a new dimension.” ¹⁴⁹

The point I wish to make is that if the Christian church and community does not wish to remain musically anachronistic, it needs to support an establishment where innovations in music can take place on a regular basis.  Christian men and women, boys and girls, should not have to leave the Christian environ entirely to go into the secular world, now dangerously antagonistic to Christian faith, in order to learn of, practice, or otherwise involve themselves in, innovative musics. 

The Netherlands and Freeform - Anti-Jazz

There is a so-called jazz movement begun in the 1960s called Freeform which utilizes some of the techniques of jazz improvisating minus the time discipline.  It is, essentially, nearer in practice to the looser classical impromptu tradition than to jazz.  It was also a reaction against the perceived limitations of the ternary form and well-trod chord patterns being relentlessly repeated.  The cry went up for "Freedom," but, unfortunately, it came at a cost.  Form gives music its force, as it does for a couplet or a painting or for water squeezed through a hose.  Freeform resulted in absence of form - formlessness.  And among the first things to go was harmony.  Tone-manipulation and aleatoric improvisating, that is, music by chance, notwithstanding.  There is a connection between Freeform and Jackson Pollock’s paintings by chance, as well John Cage’s attempts with 20th century music to express noise, for instance, by being noisy. 

As socialism became the norm in Europe so did the popularity of Freeform so-called jazz - especially in The Netherlands.  The Netherlands supported and sponsored Freeform at the state level - a state-funded wildness among socialists - expressions of total freedom within an over-structured, limiting political-economic system.  A balance of opposites. 

Francis Schaeffer put his finger on the source: humanistic existentialism - wherein each person is the only standard by which value is to be measured.  It is to say that any opinion is the equal of any other opinion.  Who is to say otherwise?  It is equalitarianism at its extreme.  Its root is envy. 

As for Pollock and Cage, Schaeffer poses the question: “Is this art really art?”  Rational, socialist humanists in The Netherlands, for instance, would argue that no one can answer that question. 

“The question is hastily put by this body-politic - ‘Who is to determine what is excellent?’.  If the question was really being asked there would at least be the possibility of dialogue . .But, the question is never put forward in a sincere manner.  It is asked, rather, rhetorically, as a way of precluding argument by implicitly harboring the questioner’s presumptive answer that ‘No one can determine excellence.’

 “If some person were to dare answer the question with ‘I can determine what is excellent,’ the questioner would only scoff at what he would regard as egotistical arrogance, because implicit in these egalitarian politics is the premise that no one can know more, nor be any better at something than anyone else; and that, even if they were, in music for instance, they would still have no more right to be presented on stage than anyone else.” ¹⁵⁰

Embedded in this culture of envy is the rejection of humility.  As with rock and roll, it is a culture of self-assertion.  It is promulgated among school-age children by teachers telling them to think most highly of themselves - “I’m the best,” “I’m prettiest,” or in group identity, “We’re number one,” etc. - on the pretext that it is to bolster self-image and to overcome any presumed sense of personal inferiority.  It echoes Pilate’s rhetorical posturing, “What is truth.”  With relativism, truth is what anyone says it is.  It is significant that the performances of Cage’s music “has had to become increasingly spectacular to keep interest.” ¹⁵¹  This is precisely the case for rock and roll, a popular music Schaeffer points to as being especially influenced by Cage’s work.  The “philosophy,” if you will, behind these curious attempts is belief in the thing, not in the process.  Result rather than discipline. 

Jackson Pollock’s and John Cage’s were primarily intellectual attempts.  Schaeffer writes that “The more [such] tends to be only an intellectual statement, rather than a work of art, the more it becomes anti-art.”  Cage, rock, Freeform, and the like, are essentially trying to make music outside of music, or without music.  We have seen how rock and roll, and what it has engendered, has virtually eliminated values in music.  It honors getting up there and doing your thing.  Which comes from an educational process that pushes all children into “expressing” themselves, as though all children had something extraordinary to express, and that it is the job of all children to do so - which implies that there is something wrong in normal, reticent, self-checking, humble behavior.  And it minimizes talent. 

It follows that where there are no certainties as to moral values, then how can there be any for art.  Contrasting that is the belief that God’s reason is shown in given-talent.  Humanistic reason says talent is anything you say it is, and anything is art.  Which naturally leads to what the kids have been saying - that noise is only music someone doesn’t like.  It results in kids growing up to remain kids, scrambling to get past one another to get up on stage, to show off.  Which is why the music is simplistic - anyone can do it.  It is really the show -  for eyes only - the being up there doing it, that matters.  Take away that, along with the electronically gadgetized style, and then listen.  Where exactly is the music? 

“Music, like many other things, was robbed of its final cause; it had, in the hands of the commercial and the unscrupulous, no end of its own; it was to be used for the adornment of man’s life and the glorification of his prowess.  In as much as it was thus subjected it lost its individuality and its integrity and became a tool.  To deal in this way with one’s neighbour is commonly called an act of pride; but ‘pride’ or superbia in medieval Christian spiritual teaching is not confined to the sphere of personal relationships.  It is the cardinal (or in modern jargon we should say ‘pivotal’) sin.  Thus Augustine expounded the cause of bad music as superbia.  And in fact experience shows that careless writing, shoddy performance, wrong use, and lack of rational integrity in music or any other art is to be traced to this one source at last.  The anxiety to have a completed piece of work is the temptation which draws aside all but the greatest composers and performers from their duty of attending to every finest detail; the temptation to glorify himself in a finished creation distracts the maker from his duty of courtesy towards his material.” ¹⁵²

The modern socialist humanist would like to be seen, in his levelling of differences, as encouraging “selflessness.”  That his is an act of humility.  One outstanding characteristic of Judeo-Christian faith is the importance of self.  Not as in self-centrism, but the lasting fact of self.  Eastern non-Christian religions stress losing the self in the power of the great unknown; and nature religion in merging the self with the earth spirit.  These are very much the spirit of liberal humanism. 

In Judeo-Christian teaching, however, there is meant to be no denial of self, only subservience of creature self to creator Self.  Self includes the particulars that distinguish one from another.  New science notes that each living entity, even in the microcosm, is unique.  Microbes make mistakes and bump into each other.  The principle of life is uniqueness, not sameness.  Self implies dignity, that man is noble with God. 

Art is not so because someone says it is.  Neither is one an artist by making the assertion.  Measurement, as any scientist understands, requires an objective standard - such as that the Greeks gave for music.  [see Greek Thought]  But even science, as Schaeffer notes, is losing that one, in that the subjective, as mathematician Albert Einstein and others have pointed out, is always involved in the process of scientific observation.  That what comes to us reaches us through our senses. ¹⁵³  And, regarding scientific conclusion, “without the Christian base, what assurance do people have that what reaches them through the senses corresponds to what is “out there”? ¹⁵⁴  This accords with Greek thought and a moral position with respect to music. 

A pastor thought the problem for qualified musicians whose music is not popular is because such artists fail to sell themselves like rock musicians do, failing because they refuse to project attitude.  He recommended that they should strive to be the show, the life of the party.  It was strange advice coming from a pastor.  But, such are the acceptable cultural values of our time.  Pride jumps around and says “look at me.”  It might even be hinged to an act of achievement, but it draws attention to the actor instead.  Along the south bank of Ballona Creek, a spillway for the Los Angeles River to the ocean, “Pride” is one of the words printed boldly on the cement wall for the rowing crew of nearby Loyola Marymount, a Catholic university.  The subtle evil of pride in the goodness of achievement.  Humility is equated with weakness. 

A great musician follows along a dotted line on an internal search for artistic completion, and makes no impatient leaps.  It is the way one achieves that matters.  That is what discipline is.  It is without ulterior motive.  That is concern for virtue.  It is patient.  It waits on God. 

Francis Schaeffer equates, what he calls, “fragmentation” in the arts to “pessimism.”  I am not entirely sure what he means by fragmentation.  But, if he is referring to broken lines, shifting tonal centers, atonality, sudden rhythmic changes, then I cannot agree with his purport.  This is a way of music.  Mournful music, for example, has legitimate place in our human experience.  It echoes and provides scope for the saddened man and woman in their sense of isolation.  It is a place for grief to rest.  It is a gift from God given through the composer.  One could say that mournful music is pessimistic, having a minor resolve. 

Music is a mystery, even to the composer and performer.  How it can be is beyond understanding.  Music, as noted earlier, is not communication.  Perhaps in that way it is most unlike all the other arts.  It does not cause, or mean to cause, which is the job of propaganda.  Music is the result of reflection. 

There is a notion among some Christians that atonality is the musical equivalent of atheism, while tonal music is Godly - and only certain tonalities at that, mainly those centered upon and resolving to the major.  Schaeffer quotes Leonard Bernstein talking about Gustav Mahler: 

“‘Ours is the century of death and Mahler is its musical prophet . . . .  If Mahler knew this [personal death, death of tonality, and the death of culture as it had been {Schaeffer’s brackets}] and his message is so clear, how do we, knowing it too, manage to survive?  Why are we still here, struggling to go on?  We are now face to face with the truly ultimate ambiguity, which is the human spirit - the most fascinating ambiguity of all . . . . We learn to accept our mortality; yet we persist in our search for immortality. . . . All this ultimate ambiguity is to be heard in the finale of Mahler’s Ninth.’. . .  This is modern man’s position.  He has come to a position of the death of man in his own mind, but he cannot live with it, for it does not describe what he is.” ¹⁵⁵

My first response is to disagree with Bernstein that music has a message.  The second is that Schaeffer gives Bernstein’s encomiums too much credit.  Getting any kind of message from music is purely subjective.  Schaeffer accepting Bernstein’s “interpretation” of Mahler is to lend credence to the “philosophy” of positivism - that “The data which reaches you through your senses enables you to know the object in a straightforward and uncomplicated way.” - which Schaeffer himself calls “a naive philosophy.” ¹⁵⁶ There is discrepancy in Schaeffer’s tack.  And Christians attaching specific meanings to music are acting in a positivistic manner.  The Greeks held that certain modes were conducive to certain emotions.  That is about as far as it can go. 

But, I do understand and agree with Bernstein equating the music’s “ambiguity” with man’s “ambiguity,” and Schaeffer calling it “modern man’s position,” which can be heard in the struggle to resolve within the music itself.  This is to say that music reflects but is not cause, and cannot be held to be cause - in its wordless way.  When it is true it is the effect of God’s grace.