Is All Music Created Equal? Part 1

Is All Music Created Equal? Part 1

             Writers like Greg Scheer claim that they are not interested in the musical style debate, but every musician whom I have had the privilege or knowing or reading their books or articles about music who mention music styles have taken a position on styles of music. Even the writers who have decided not to decide have in reality taken a position on musical style because they have come to the faulty pluralistic conclusion that everyone’s music is equal.  So, when Scheer made the statement, “I take the position that ‘all musics are created equal’” The Art of Worship, by Greg Scheer, pp. 11-12 it stands to reason that he definitely, by that statement, chose to enter the style debate.  As a musician, surely he does not really believe that all creative music efforts are equal.  If one were to ask him if the music of J.S. Bach was equal to my compositions that I wrote for my undergraduate music theory class, I am sure that he would vote for Bach.  What he was doubtlessly meaning at the time he wrote his book was that when one is referring to religious music, the music part of the music does not matter.  

             I am well aware that if a writer does not take a cosmopolitan view that is a liberal pluralistic view of music style, he or she runs the risk of being considered to be “out of touch”, “musically bigoted”, or at least to have been “hiding under a rock” philosophically.  It seems a bit strange that at the same time a writer may believe in a prescriptive approach to secular music without receiving the same labels and accusations. Various writers who have addressed secular music in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries have devoted much of their writings to the belief that the music part of all music matters without being accused of stifling creative efforts