Sacred and Profane Sounds—part 3

Sacred and Profane Sounds—part 3

            Music is sometimes defined as the result of the organization of sounds and silences into meaningful patterns.  If this definition is even partially adequate to identify music, then this “meaningful” organization has, without doubt, meaning—at least to those who understand its organization. Roger Scruton once wrote, “If music has meaning, then that meaning must be understood by the one who understands the music.” Understanding Music, p. 34.  So, perhaps the real import of such a discussion is not musics meaning per se but the understanding of music’s meaning.

            Since the pursuit of understanding a piece of music’s meaning is such a complex task, many Christians have capitulated in the battle for whether or not music has meaning.  This has made the quest to understand a particular music’s meaning a superfluous task.  If the music part of music does not have any meaning then one certainly does not have to search for the understanding of this meaningless art.  This reductionist theory (a theory that deduces complex the musical phenomena into simple terms). It seems to me to be somewhat analogous to reducing drug crime by legalizing marijuana.  What Christian musicians have done is eliminate the need to have an understanding of music’s meaning and what that meaning has the potential to do to the whole-life of the auditor and performer.