Christian Musicians Who Know Teach More Effectively part 3

Christian Musicians Who Know Teach More Effectively part 3

            Plato also had much to say about correct musical judgment.  “Afterwards, in course of time, an unmusical license set in with the appearance of poets who were men of native genius, but ignorant of what is right and legitimate in the realm of the Muses.  Possessed by a frantic and unhallowed lust for pleasure, they contaminated laments with hymns and paeans with dithyrambs, actually imitated the strains of the flute on the harp, and created a universal confusion of forms.  Thus their folly led them unintentionally to slander their profession by the assumption in music that there is no such thing as right and wrong, the right standard being the pleasure given to the hearer, be he high or low.” Ibid. p.7, quoting Plato’s Laws (part of 700a)

                 So, those who suppose that the concept that there is that which is right and wrong, and that which is legitimate and appropriate in music is only a late twentieth century desperate effort to fight new approaches to music and music performance are sadly misinformed.  As early as the lifetime of Plato ( c.420BC—c.348BC), philosophers were considering the concept of what was right and wrong concerning music and judgments made on this basis.  I am aware that there is much about Platonic thought (and Aristotelean thought) that a Christian does not agree with philosophically and biblically, but I see no reason that a Christian musician should not give serious consideration to the fact that from ancient times until somewhere in the twentieth century, philosophers generally believed that there was such a thing as right and wrong concerning music and music performance.