Not only Beautiful but also Suitable—part 1

Not only Beautiful but also Suitable—part 1

            Although I do not agree with the French philosopher Blaise Pascal’s theology or much of what he wrote, I do agree with a statement he made in his Pensées when it is applied to sacred music.  He wrote, “It is not enough that a thing be beautiful.  It must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect.”  Many Christian musicians seem to have forgotten, or never learned about the fact that a musical composition has the propensity to be either congruent or incongruent with the purposes of sacred musicing.

            The consideration of what is or is not beautiful in a musical composition is most often very difficult to establish with much of a degree of certainty.  Certainly there are cultural, musical and personal considerations that come into play in any such decision making process.  The musical neophyte will not have the historical and musical or experiential knowledge to make a purely empirical decision of what the beautiful in music consists of when speaking of the arrangement of the formal properties of the music.