A Distorted Music Aesthetic
The reason many Christian musicians have a distorted
understanding of music’s beauty is that they often do not have an understanding
of great music. They only understand “consumer” music. Many times consumer
music is shallow and sometimes inartistic. In some cases it is not well
composed or arranged. It is produced by what is called a musical hack. Someone
brings a poem, perhaps with a melody line, to an arranger. This arranger sets
this music to a simple chord progression in the desired style with little
thought of any intricate development of the formal properties of the music. The
result is often a very predictable piece of music that will sell to the music
consumer but is not very unique or great. Such music stays on the market for a
while then virtually disappears. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with such
music. It is simply not great music.
Since many Christian musicians only know, like, listen to,
and perform consumer music, they have little or no understanding or
appreciation of more profound styles of sacred or secular music. These
musicians lack an understanding of music with well placed, organized and developed
internal formal properties which make it truly great music.
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