Aesthetics and the Christian Musician- part 3

 

Aesthetics and the Christian Musician- part 3

 

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 (b.1912) became interested in anti-musical techniques like prepared piano and chance operations.  Cage called his chance music indeterminacy.  Other composers began to use chance operations which have been termed aleatoric i.e. like the throwing of dice.  In 1952, Cage composed his ultimate anti-musical composition, 4 minutes and 33 seconds.  This piece became the ultimate composition of anti-music since his purpose was to compose music that said absolutely NOTHING!  The performer simply sat at the piano for the designated period of time making absolutely no sounds.

          At this point in the history of music, serious music composition had philosophically destroyed an aesthetic of beauty and profundity in music.  Cage had philosophically proved Stravinsky’s antithesis philosophical statement, “I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all...”  Philosophical Perspectives on Music, Bowman, p.194.   So the godless antithesis of depraved man in the 20^th century closed the door on a music aesthetic based on beauty and musing with anti-music based on distortion and chance techniques.

These composers opened the door for the lack-luster philosophy that the music part of music is incapable of expressing any effective message or perhaps any message at all.  They also denied profundity in music since chance music was just as profound as the most thought out composition by great composers like J. S. Bach.  Now complete musical despair reigned.  To these composers music says nothing and is incapable of being profound; and furthermore, it is ultimately incapable of expressing anything at all.