No one
before Schoenberg had ever been successful in completely negating the
traditional way of “knowing” when it came to music composition. What musicians most often fail to recognize
that Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic invention was deeply ingrained in philosophy. He intended to defy the philosophy that there
was profundity in harmonic practice. To
him nothing about music was profound. To
Schoenberg nothing mattered in music but the composer’s free will.
To
Schoenberg the only rules or standards of music that mattered were those rules
and standards that the composer imposed upon himself. To him the only thing that mattered about how
a composer arranged the building blocks of music was the composers self
actualized rules of how he wished to arrange the building blocks of music.
The
purpose of all this discussion of progressive despair is to show logically how
20th century musical philosophy prepared the way for the autonomous
philosophical practice of contemporary Christian musicians. It is easy to see how the inordinate quest
for music freedom of the world in the 20th century strongly molded the autonomous
freedom philosophy of contemporary Christian musicians.
The
parallels are astonishing. Both believe
that music aesthetic is totally a matter of personal opinion. Both believe that rhythm and dissonance are
extremely vital to their music. Both
believe that the only artistic standards in music composition are those which
the artist imposes on himself. Both
believe that the composer and the performer are autonomous. The godless worldly composers are not interested
in what God thinks about music and the worldly Christian musicians are not
interested in a philosophical belief that God thinks about the music part of
music.
No comments:
Post a Comment