A distorted understanding of music

       The reason many Christian musicians have a distorted understanding of music's beauty is that they often do not have an understanding of great music. They only understand "consumer" music. Many times consumer music is shallow, and sometimes inartistic. In some cases it is not well composed and or arranged. It is produced by what is called a musical "hack". Someone brings an arranger a poem or a poem plus a melody line. This arranger sets this music to a simple chord progression in the desired style with little thought of any intricate development of the formal properties of the music.  The result is often a piece of music that will sell to the music consumer but is not very unique or great. Such music stays on the market for a while then virtually disappears.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with such music.  It is simply not great music.
       Since many Christian musicians only know, like, listen too, and perform consumer music, they have little or no understanding or appreciation of more profound styles of sacred or secular music. These musicians lack an understanding of music with well placed, organized and well developed internal formal properties which make it truly great music.
       I have heard that some banks teach new tellers to identify counterfeit currency by handling real bills. I contend that the quickest way to enable the next generation of Christian musicians to understand quality worship music is to get them involved with quality musicing at an early age.  Churches, Christian schools, and Christian colleges need to provide quality instrumental and choral organizations that make possible enriched performance experiences for our children and youth.
       Shinichi Suzuki the great violinist and pedagogue believed that children should learn by listening and playing great music, i.e. the classics. A major tenet of his music praxis was having every child learn to music by what he called the "mother tongue" technique. He believed that music, like language, is best learned by hearing it from the child's mother and father. I contend that the same thing is true of church music. If our children hear and perform truly great music in church, home, and in the Christian school they will very naturally learn to love to sing, play and perform the more profound styles of music.