Aesthetics and the Christian Musician-Part 3

Aesthetics and the Christian-Part 3
The last part of yesterday's post we discussed, very, very briefly, the philosophical meaning of John Cage's  anti-music composition "Four minutes and thirty three seconds".  At this point in the history of music, serious music composition had philosophically destroyed an aesthetic of beauty and profundity in music.  Cage had philosophically proved Stravinsky’s antithesis philosophical statement, “I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all...”1  So the godless antithesis of depraved man in the 20^th century closed the door on a music aesthetic based on beauty and musing with anti-music based on distortion and chance techniques.

These composers opened the door for the lack-luster philosophy that the music part of music is incapable of expressing any effective message or perhaps any message at all.  They also destroyed profundity in music since chance music is just as profound as the most thought out composition by great composers like J.S. Bach.  Now complete musical despair reigns.  To these composers music says nothing is incapable of being profound, and is ultimately incapable of expressing anything at all.

What does all this mean to church musicians in the 21^st century?  Why should we care what “serious academic music” composers do?  The reason we care is that in order for us to know how contemporary Christian music derived its philosophical basis, we must understand the history of music.  With these basic understandings of 20^th century philosophical despair in music philosophy, we are able to know how 21^st century church musicians derive their synthesis music philosophy.

---

1 Philosophical Perspectives on Music, Bowman, p.194.