Emotion and Meaning in the Musical Experience-part 4

           Emotion and Meaning in the Musical Experience-part 4

            We always experience music in relationship to community.  Exactly how a fellowship of believers will respond to a musical performance is partially caused by what that community believes theologically, socially, and spiritually among many other things.  Therefore, it is problematic to state rigidly exactly what a congregation’s emotional reaction will be to a given musical performance.  Therefore, it is not a completely false notion that “religious music can be guilty by association”.

             Those who know a particular genre of music will have the greatest understanding of its power and meaning.  These very knowledgeable people will also receive the greatest understanding from its performance.  This does not mean that a listener or performer who has much less knowledge of the genre and ipso facto will receive less meaning and understanding will not receive any meaning and understanding.  If the music and the emotional states that it arouses is the cause of spiritual harm to the neophyte, then this person has received meaning from his or her experience with the music performance or listening experience.

            Why should a Christian musician be concerned about whether or not music is capable of expressing and or arousing emotions and ipso facto imparting meaning and understanding (or misunderstanding) to the performer and or listener?  If what music expresses is not concerned or related in any way to real life, then it probably would have been a benign art form. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, many philosophers have believed that the emotions surrounding music sounds had a moral effect upon the hearer.  Now, in this century it is purported by some music philosophers that music’s meaning has is its own esoteric meaning, or worse yet, that music’s meaning is not understandable meaning—at least as meaning relates to real life.