ON MUSIC

The Christian church from the earliest was steeped in plain song tradition, unisonously-sung, unwritten hymns and “airs,” i.e., melodies (not necessarily “tunes”) unattached to any specific harmony, accompanying words passed on orally from generation to generation.  Plain song and, what is called, folk music were inextricably entwined.  They would have influenced one another.  Folk music is the vernacular secular music mainly of a peasantry, carried on by oral tradition.  There are contemporary writers of “folk” music, but that is another matter.  Folk music and plain song are at the heart of much that has gone by the name of church music.  Folk music is fundamental to most popular music.  I speak mainly of the air, not of the lyric content of a song.  In this respect, virtually all modern pop musics are a kind of fashionably dressed folk music.  

Developments to occur in plain song began to occur under Pope Gregory I (590-604), intelligent, highly educated, and talented, who both authorized and contributed his own composition towards those developments which became known as Gregorian Chant.  Texts came from the Mass, the Bible, and hymns.  Text was also the determining factor of the rhythm.  The tonality of Gregorian chant derives from eight Greek modes.  In the Middle Ages polyphony largely supplanted plain song.  But Gregorian chant, thanks to the Benedictine monks of Solesmes, retained its original form and rhythm.  

20th century technology has made it possible for vernacular music to now become more informed by studied musical disciplines.  The underlying harmony to the usually simple scaletone accompaniment to the air, or melody, of a song is now being affected by way of the broadcast industry.  There is such quid pro quo going on now between what were once distinguishably separate fields of popular musics, the “crossover” effect,” that the recording and broadcast industries are having a time of it trying to figure which popular song fits into what category.  In a sense, there is shaping up a single American - or perhaps even international - form of popular music.  “World Beat” is one name being marketed around in the last few years to this internationalizing trend in popular music.  It is too soon to tell exactly how this is going to develop.  I am sure, though, we will all hear about it.  There is also what I call the N.A.R.A.S. effect.

N.A.R.A.S., the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, presents the Grammy Awards.  As a former voting member of this organization I had opportunity to see inside the process that puts a piece of music into prominence.  The membership is overwhelmingly biased in favor of economically successful industry product - that is, pop music which has gotten the most airplay.  Each member is allowed to vote in a limited number of categories out of the many that are available.  For example, a rock producer is able to vote in not just the rock categories, but also in the classical, the jazz, the Gospel, etc.  

Membership of N.A.R.A.S. is predominantly the rock-pop crowd.  What this does is to make the musics to receive prominence in these other categories be that which is most like what appeals to the rock producer.  It is easy to see how music that is most like itself, as distinct from rock-pop, gets washed out in favor of that which is least like what it means to be.  

Also, since it is not possible for any voting member to hear all the music that is put into the nominating process, the voting member has to rely almost entirely on what he or she has been hearing on the air - for the past few decades, almost exclusively from pop-rock broadcasters.  N.A.R.A.S. is a door closed against musics that are not written or performed or produced for the mass-market.  Further, based on how N.A.R.A.S. postures itself, the public is given a significantly false picture of what is going on in music in America.  

Greek Thought

The Greeks held in Aristotle’s time that art to be taken seriously must qualify in three respects: it must amuse; it must command intellectual attention, and it must tend towards virtue.⁹⁷   The first of these has been met in varying degrees, at least to someone’s satisfaction, by all popular and folk musics, else they would not have been brought to anyone’s attention.  The third, relating to moral education, has often been a matter of subjective analysis, but is lately coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism, but having less to do with music than with words. 

Harmony among people, in nature, and in the universe is Wa in China and Mot in ancient Egypt.  Erigena (815-880) “makes much of the connection between music and cosmic harmony.”⁹⁸ 

“Music, then, occupied a place of high honour in the Church of the earlier Middle Ages.  All the commentators to whom we have attended, and many others of the same kind, devout Christians, regarded music as an important part of man’s religious life.  The integral connection between music and the ‘harmony of the universe’ and between music and human morals, re-established by Boethius [480-524], is held without question through these centuries.”⁹⁹ 

And we have heard references to “music of the spheres.”  Music is playing with sound, the very stuff of existence, that which makes up everything in the universe.  It was God’s utterance that brought existence into being.  Sound literally cannot be ignored.  Even if the ear fails to pick it up, the molecules in the body do.  Continuous automated “background” music, of any sort or quality, can be enough to drive anyone to distraction.  So, there is some historical and Biblical basis towards regarding even “sound” in music with an “ear” - or even physical sensibility - towards its moral position. 

It should be pointed out that the recent Christian flap against irreligious “music” has entirely to do with the words.  They have no idea regarding music per se.  The only “language” considered is the common-tongue.  This treatise deals mostly with the sound and practice of music, apart from the vernacular.  

“Harmonia expresses in a word the Greek pre-disposition of mind which lay behind the activity of theoria. . . . It is the principle of integration. . . . Harmonia is the characteristics property of this monistic universe.  It is what scientists now call the ‘principle of economy’, and its literal translation is ‘the quality of fittingness’.  (A moral theory superimposed on this by Christians of the Greek school identified movement and contrariety with the state of sin brought about by the Fall.)”¹⁰⁰ 

 “Aristotle’s criticism of the views expressed by Plato raises another issue. . . . Aristotle prefers, for example in the Nicomachean Ethics, to examine accepted standards of conduct and see how they are related to the universal Goodness.  His celebrated doctrine of the ‘mean’ is not a doctrine of compromise but one of practical harmonia,  Speaking of courage, for example, he has two things to say - first that courage in general is the resultant of two forces, discretion and boldness, whose excess leads to pusillanimity and bravado respectively; and second, that courage on a particular occasion is the right admixture of these elements with reference to that occasion.  Right conduct, therefore, has to be considered not abstractly but always in a particular context.  A right act is the proper balance, or harmony, between two forces which work from opposite directions.  The importance of this outlook for musical criticism will be immediately clear.”¹⁰¹ 

By this definition, most vernacular musics in church - both traditional and contemporary pop - are not right because of their insistence on taking the path of least resistance, simple inclusiveness.  Fastidiously avoiding anything that speaks of “culture,” it is nearly an obsession on the part of pop songwriters, and has been for traditional directors of Protestant church policy, to make or incorporate music that goes in one direction, towards the lowest imagined intellectual common denominator.  There is some change occurring among some Protestant churchmen, but it has been a very long time in coming.  The Greeks understood the necessity of making connections, and to include all the parts of the whole, even the apparently conflicting. 

Where is it written, by pre-determining what is “common,” that only men and women who are common are to be served?  Each human is to be served, reached relative to his or her situation in life.  That is one of the strengths and beauties of Christianity, how it can reach everywhere and anyone specifically.  It has been abused, but only in its misapplication.  Some have held that the aria was degenerating to the Catholic liturgy.  But, there are those who can be transported into a spiritually receptive state, and thankful to God, when hearing a voice capable of soaring with great range on a beautiful hymn. 

Around the time of Aristotle composers of music were held to be philosophers, in that how to pick the right notes was a moral decision.¹⁰²   Obviously, attitudes in our brave, new world have changed considerably - reflected in the excessive honor extended to musical trivia. 

As to that first qualification according to the Greeks, the amusement category, another name for which is pleasure, Aristotle,

“. . . aware that the chief danger is that the pleasure-content of art may become an end in itself, . . . [writes] 

‘Pleasure perfects the activity, not as the fixed disposition does by being already present in the agent, but as a supervening perfection, like the bloom of health on the young and vigorous.’”¹⁰³ 

Roman Practice

Along came the Roman Empire, originally landowners and farmers who were to never give up their peasant worship of household gods, to take over from Greece, the nation of philosophers.  Stoicism, a quasi-religious practice begun in Greece during its decline, was adopted by Rome to replace philosophy, philosophy being hardly practical for a martial empire; and contemplative thought was replaced by duty on the scale of values. 

Under the Roman Eagle music increased considerably in its amusement factor, and decreased in the intellect and virtue departments.  Seem familiar?  Music ceased “carrying with it any exalted connotation whatever, and without manifesting or demanding any of the discipline which in the older view was music’s first need.”¹⁰⁴   “Stoicism according to the Romans could not allow art a high place in its moral hierarchy.”¹⁰⁵   Whether or not it was intended in the Roman mind, “it is that the Stoic ideal of ‘self-Sufficiency’ is fatal to the artist.”¹⁰⁶   It is also contrary to Christian doctrine. 

“It was natural, therefore, that even poets and philosophers often enjoyed only the status of ‘freedmen’ in the Roman empire, and that a fortiori the musicians, whose art was at best only ancillary to drama or sport, and at worst a mere idle amusement, should be consigned to the lower regions of serfdom.

 “[I]t is vital . . . to see Christian thought in the light of Greek thought and Christian action in the context of Roman society.”¹⁰⁷  [my emphasis]

This is root, referred to at the beginning of this treatise, to the double-sided attitude to be found among Americans towards musicians.  Plato might have been a cultural fascist, but he, along with other thinkers in a contemplative nation, did understand the moral values possible in music.  It was Rome, a martial nation, that set the standard for the eventual dominance of utility musics, limiting music to its functional service, as background, and for its entertainment value and earning power. 

A beneficiary of Greek and Roman cultures, and having successfully rebelled against old traditions, and thinking itself to be an inheritor of Greek enlightenment as well, America admires most the martial spirit, prefers it to the thoughtful.  It explains the national schizophrenia.  They love music, they say, but the music maker only on condition.  Upon reaching their majority, musicians who are not earning sufficient money in music are held to be among the lowest, a drag on society - or, as the Brits say, a redundant person. 

Contemporary Musics

Virtually all contemporary popular music enters the world as mating music for juveniles.  Societies, comprised of sexual beings, of course, have necessary, ritualistic ways of positioning persons of the opposite sex together in ostensibly proper relationships.  Social dancing is certainly one of them.  Put more simply, sex sells, especially when cleverly crafted for emerging adolescents.  Even if the lyric may appear otherwise - romantic or message-bearing - the success of a song relies entirely upon attracting sufficiently large groups of adolescents together into a buying bloc.  Juveniles want to be together.  And anything that serves that purpose has a good chance of succeeding in the marketplace.  This has been the goal of, and advantage take by, the music industry from its beginnings. .Even pop song stylists had their Medieval counterparts: 

“Sometimes thou mayest see a man with open mouth, not to sing, but as it were to breathe out his last gasp, by shutting in his breath and by a certain ridiculous interception of his voice to threaten silence, and now again to imitate the agonies of a dying man, or the ecstasies of such as suffer.”¹⁰⁸ 

There is also a commercial stylistic form of music called “Contemporary.”  It is a synthesis of “soft rock” and Top 40, the latter referring to the most popular songs of previous decades, performed in response to anticipated requests, called “covers.”  It also has elements of “Fusion,” that is jazz-tinged, mainly electronically produced sounds.  Inoffensive, middle-brow pop music generally performed for social dancing.  It is finding its way into churches everywhere. 

Commercial music (not to be confused with music for commercials - yet alike philosophically) is usually social dance music, and usually shaped around words.  Aside from the advent of 50s Rock, leading to the overshadowing of every other kind of music, one of the things that caused jazz to lose its popular base was when it no longer served as social dance music.  Instead, leaving behind words as the restraining discipline - which occurred with Bebop, for instance - it moved off into more musically adventurous directions. 

Virtually all musics can serve a moral purpose - more or less.  But not all musics are conducive to it.  That the Christian community elects to include popular musics in its liturgy is not necessarily a problem, depending on other considerations.  What should trouble is where they come in virtually unchanged from the values of the commercial marketplace, and remain uninformed by study.  If anything should cause pause among churches considering featuring pop type musical performers regularly in church it should be that they do not study music.  How are they to be an example to follow?  They are idiosyncratic performers with a passion to be seen, even in church. 

“What Augustine calls the ‘love of action’ is the direct opposite of that contemplation which to his philosophic predecessors is respect for the thing in itself.  ‘Love of action’ is the characteristic of the person who will tolerate nothing that he has not himself invented, thought of, modified, or experienced; who [sees] everything as given to him for his own use, not as demanding from him the courtesy of an unselfconscious attention.  And this, says Augustine is at the root of bad art and failure to appreciate the good.  The rebellious will can neither seek nor make good music.”¹⁰⁹ 

“‘It is the love of action (sc. as opposed to “contemplation”) that distracts the soul from the Truth, . . .’”¹¹⁰ 

Augustine equates this “love of action” with pride: 

“Pride, to Augustine, is a violation of the symmetry of the universe, that ‘order’ which God has made.  It is pride which makes men want for themselves powers that belong to God, of which the symbolic disobedience of Adam is one example, and the arbitrary meddling with the supernatural rules of numerositas [the proper order of harmonia, i.e., all the characteristics of creation] is another."¹¹¹ 

Pleasure taken only in being the performer.  The passion to perform is impatient for the music to begin.  So, the more simplistic the quicker the music, the better.  Consider the following:

“And here lies the root of all the danger in bad music.  For this pleasure is now part of the normal make-up of man, and he knows the pleasure but not its origin.  What occurs, then, when the symmetry which gives a man pleasure is not true symmetry, but only approximate, or what Augustine calls “imitated” symmetry?¹¹²   Blunted critical faculties will not detect the error, and being pleased by a counterfeit symmetry they will become less and less able to appreciate the difference between the counterfeit and the true.  Lack of aequalitas [symmetry] is the cause of metaphysical badness in music; aequalitas is perfection.  And then [Augustine] adds this:

“‘Our advice, therefore, is to divert our approval from counterfeit symmetries, where we are unable to discern whether it is counterfeit or true.  And yet - in as  much as they do imitate the true we cannot deny that in their kind and in their own order they are things of beauty.’

“Note this most carefully.  Augustine has spent half of his book [the sixth] in establishing the principles of perfection, and then he seems to destroy his whole case by saying that the imperfect is after all not to be condemned.  That is because he is writing as a Christian theologian and not as a pure philosopher; it is also because he is writing for ordinary men and not for experts.  It is the distinguishing genius of the Christian ethic (as it is expounded at its purest in the Great Sermon in St. Matthew v-vii) that it demands men to be concerned entirely with the struggle for goodness and not at all with the judgment of evil (St. Matthew vii I).  It does not say that evil is not to be recognized as evil, but that the concern of the individual believer in his daily life is to attend to goodness and not to attend to evil.”¹¹³   “Music,” [to Augustine] “means something more fundamental and generic than the term means in ordinary modern speech.  Its connotation throughout [his] work is the art of significantly using sounds as opposed to words, and what he says applies equally to poetry and to music in the normal sense.”¹¹⁴   And, “Above all, Augustine regards music as an activity of the reason, not a matter of feeling and ‘self-expression’.”¹¹⁵  [my emphasis]

This treatise is most in defense of “that art which uses sounds absolutely and which dispenses with words.”¹¹⁶  But, also included is adventurous music which uses words as its restraining discipline.