Ideologies Affecting Music and Musicing-Part 5

Ideologies Affecting Music and Musicing-Part 5   

            Postmodernists actually remove any distinction between art and non-art.  Ordinary objects—such as coke bottles, sleds, or toilets—are displayed as if they were art.  Instead of making art that is beautiful and pleasing, some artists experiment with art that is purposefully ugly and frustrating.  By removing any boundary or distinction between art and non-art, the postmodernist has removed all hints of “absolutes” in the arts. What has been stated here about art may also be said of postmodern musical composition.  Beauty is no longer created by the composer.  Meaning is no longer projected by the artist since there is no meaning in the musical composition except that meaning superimposed on the music by the listener.

            This postmodernist philosophical praxis has been accepted by multitudes of contemporary Christian musicians.  The responsibility for meaning in religious music is no longer placed on the shoulders of the performer.  It is only the response and evaluation of the audience that matters.  In postmodernism in music, musicing doesn’t matter only the audience’s opinion matters.  Religious music is now under the firm dictatorship of the audience.  Since it is only seeker sensitive to consider the will of the audience, no formal or informal judgement of religious music is legal.  The ministering body does not have the right to prescribe what is right or wrong (since they do not exist) in church music.  To the postmodernist thinker, every music minister who does not bow at the wishes of the congregation is not seeker sensitive.