Musical Reprise
Throughout redemptive history, shepherds entrusted with the care of God’s people have wrestled with the question of how to configure the shape of life in the community of the redeemed in light of the patterns of life in the surrounding society. Before the advent of self-consciously modern culture, when cultural change proceeded at (by comparison to today) a glacial pace, church leaders could take more time to reflect on such questions. When cultural conventions and forms remained constant for generations—even for centuries—their meaning and significance could be examined more carefully.
Two of the many distinct conditions of modern culture have made this project of discernment much more difficult. First, the rate of cultural change has increased significantly with each passing generation for at least a century and a half. Second, during the same period, the Church has lost more and more influence in shaping cultural life, even in shaping the cultural lives of its own members.
These two factors put pressure on church leaders both to neglect the hard work of cultural discernment and to avoid being too culturally prophetic. If clergy once capitulated to the pressure to endorse the status quo of aged traditions, today they are under at least as much pressure to accommodate the status quo of being fashionable, of embracing the latest cultural novelty. For modern clergy, welcoming novelty is the jealously guarded tradition they challenge at their peril, so there is little incentive for taking time to explore the significance of cultural changes.
Music & Cosmic Meaning
A third factor has further attenuated thinking about Church and culture: the dominant contemporary assumption that cultural forms are inherently meaningless, that their meaning is something we impose on them, that all cultural meaning is merely conventional. This axiom is one of the sacred fundamentals of the postmodern spirit, but its origins are really very modern, as it is a corollary of the modern assertion of the sovereignty of the individual and of the cosmology that vindicates that sovereignty: the belief that the universe is just a lot of meaningless stuff.
Philosopher of religion Louis Dupré has summarized the premodern view as a confidence in cosmic meaning: “The entire universe [was] conceived as a gift endowed with a meaning that is man’s task to discover and express. In fulfilling this task man finds at the same time his own meaning, the content of which is given in the two books of nature and revelation.”
It was in the context of this confidence of discernible cosmic meaning that the Western musical tradition took shape, from plainchant to Palestrina, Bach to Brahms and beyond. The modern loss of that confidence in cosmic meaningfulness caused great confusion within that tradition. And in the late twentieth century, confusion about the nature of meaning in music (among other factors) resulted in the significant lowering of prestige for what had come to be called “classical music.”
Consider: in the early 1960s, CBS ran a number of programs featuring Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic’s “Young People’s Concerts,” in which Bernstein introduced young audiences to the work of Beethoven, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Copland, and many other composers; the scripts for many of these programs are available at the Library of Congress website and offer a fascinating glimpse at a very different cultural moment. For three years, CBS ran the shows in prime time because their cultural significance was considered so weighty.
Needless to say, this repertoire and its rich “common grace” blessings are no longer honored so unapologetically in American media, nor in American education, nor (most sadly) in American religious life. Which brings me (somewhat belatedly) to the book I want to commend this time, a book that examines why that musical tradition—in which the Church and its musical servants played such a crucial role—is now held in such low esteem in contemporary Western societies (and, imitatively, in our churches).
From Natural Law to Individual Taste
Ken Myers is the host and producer of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Formerly an arts editor with National Public Radio, he also serves as music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Ivy, Virginia. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
30.2—March/April 2017
The Education of Children Takes Generations of Fidelity by W. Ross Blackburn
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
A Critical Memoir of Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey by Patrick Henry Reardon
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