.Peter Kivy made a statement about
strict formalist’s musical believes that is worthy of our consideration in this
discussion of musical sounds. “But isn’t
that exactly what the formalists is saying that absolute music is? Isn’t she saying that the symphonies of
Beethoven, the string quartets of Haydn, the organ fugues of Bach are
‘meaningless noise’? And what greater
condemnation could there be of a human enterprise? You spent your life making meaningless
noises.” Introduction To A Philosophy of Music by Peter Kivy, p.137.
Surely the Christian musician should understand that if religious music
is to be considered amoral because it is part of a “closed benign system” that
is incapable of communicating meaning, then that Christian musician is spending
his or her life producing meaningless noises.
To me, the “music sounds are amoral”
theory just doesn’t make any logical sense philosophically. Musical sounds do matter because they
communicate meaning to everyone who hears them.
Furthermore, I cannot find a shred of evidence either in or out of the
Bible that would support the theory that musical sounds are a part of a “closed
system”. If this was true the musician
could, contrary to the teaching of the Bible, “live and die to himself” when it
comes to the task of producing musical sounds.
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