Aesthetics and the Christian Musician-Part 2

Aesthetics and the Christian Musician-Part 2

Yesterday we introduced the philosophical discussion of aesthetics and the Christian musician.  Today we are going to discuss very briefly some directions in twentieth century music that, in my opinion, were instrumental in the development of the philosophical notion that there are no absolutes in music.  Musique concrète is an example of anti-music music composition.  Pierre Schaeffer (b.1910) composed music directly on tapes or discs from natural sources.  However, these “natural sounds” were seriously distorted by playing them backward, changing the speed of the sound of by other editing abnormalities.  In 1948, Schaeffer composed his Concert des bruites (Concert of Noises) and other original compositions.  Pierre Schaeffer’s music can be identified with the philosophy of surrealist painters with its juxtaposition and chance techniques.  He often took perfectly natural sounds and scrambled them in an indeterminable manner.  (Surrealism will be considered later in this discussion.)  Schaeffer, Henry, Baronnett and Boulez were the early “inventors” of this anti-music distortion.  These compositions included religious pieces like Mass for Liverpool and The Apocalypse of John.

 So this distortion found its way into religious genres making subtle mockery of the awesomeness and solemnity of sacred symbols.  One shocking aspect of this distorted religious music is that the narration of the Bible text is clearly understandable.  John Cage (b.1912) became interested in anti-musical techniques like prepared piano and chance operations.  Cage called his chance music indeterminacy.  Other composers began to use chance operations which have been termed 4 minutes and 33 seconds.  This piece became the ultimate composition of anti-music since his purpose was to compose music that said absolutely NOTHING!  The performer simply sat at the piano for the designated period of time making absolutely no sounds.