Aesthetics and the Christian Musician—part 2

Aesthetics and the Christian Musician—part 2

          Any philosophical view of aesthetics that admits the grotesque or ugly is faulty.  We know that crude, ugly unmusical compositions do exist, but they are the result of a misarrangement of the building blocks of music.  Never blame God with ugly grotesque unmusical compositions.  The anti-music compositions of the 20th century were not produced by God-fearing Christian composers and arrangers.

          Musique concrète is an example of anti-music music composition.  Pierre Schaeffer (1910--1995) composed music directly on tapes or discs from natural sources.  However, these “natural sounds” were seriously distorted by playing them backward, changing the speed of the sound of by other editing abnormalities.  In 1948, Schaeffer composed his Concert des bruites (Concert of Noises) and other original compositions.  Pierre Schaeffer’s music can be identified with the philosophy of surrealist painters with its juxtaposition and chance techniques.  He often took perfectly natural sounds and scrambled them in an indeterminable manner.  (Surrealism will be considered later in this discussion.) 

          Schaeffer, Henry, Baronnett and Boulez were the early “inventors” of this anti-music distortion.  These compositions included religious pieces like Mass for Liverpool and The Apocalypse of John.  So this distortion found its way into religious genres making subtle mockery of the awesomeness and solemnity of sacred symbols.  One shocking aspect of this distorted religious music is that the narration of the Bible text is clearly understandable.  John Cage (1912--1992) became interested in anti-musical techniques like prepared piano and chance operations.  Cage called his chance music indeterminacy. 

Thought for the Day

Not everything that God created was visually beautiful but it was all very good.