Have You Ever Experienced Radical Changes in Your Musical Taste?

[Florestan]

In fact, one could make the argument technical analysis means nothing in itself. I could claim that Beethoven is greater than Britney Spears becuase his music involve far more complex and difficult techniques, to which i'm sure someone could just reply "and what makes complex and difficult techniques superior?".

Beethoven's music involves far more complex and difficult techniques than the Old Roman Chant you posted above (which I greatly liked, btw). By your token, the former is superior to the later. Or is it not?

[Florestan]

This thread remains way off-topic...

As long as the OP doesn't mind I think it's all right. 

[AnotherSpin]

In that particular issue (discussion of music/poetry in the "Republic") this was not really Plato's point. He doesn't fret about the corrupt youth but fantasizes about an ideal state that is quite openly totalitarian, including restricting poetry and music lest it weakens the warrior's resolve. This makes it of course even more unpleasant than mere fretting.

While I dislike most of the current (popular) culture I think the real problem today is not some poor art/music. It's that anything is turned into entertainment compatible with modern mass media, and the electronic media led to minuscule attention spans that makes older art/music very hard to access for people (not their own fault because by now the 3rd generation has been growing up with TV etc).

In Plato's ideal state, society influences music by setting acceptable parameters. This seems totalitarian to you, but I think it needs to be proved. On the other hand, would we say that in our age the process of creating and delivering music to the listener is completely independent from influence or conditioning of any kind? And if so (though not), is it good or bad?

[AnotherSpin]

Yeah, right.

...

Germany after the first world war (Weimar republic) and Third Reich are not the same thing. I know you know this. But still, you post an anti-Semitic picture that refers to 1938. For what purpose?

[steve ridgway]

Technically, Black Sabbath was a "christian" band. They were accused of being satanists when they come out (for good reason to be honest, since they made tritonal music popular), so Tony Iommi made the band wear those big crosses in their chests which had the opposite effect of what he intended.

Tony Iommi is still a Christian to this day and even paid homage to the cathedral in his town of origin: 

Yes, I recall Ozzy being asked whether he was into Black Magic and replying that actually he preferred Milk Tray .

[Florestan]

Germany after the first world war (Weimar republic) and Third Reich are not the same thing. I know you know this. But still, you post an anti-Semitic picture that refers to 1938. For what purpose?

If you were at all familiar with the concept of entartete Musik, you'd know that its basic tenets were precisely yours, namely that music in Germany after WWI, ie during the Weimar Republic, had a corrupting influence on the German people, an influence which the National-Socialist Party, coming to power in 1933, vowed to eradicate once and for all by banning such music which included, but was not limited to, jazz, cabaret music, Schoenberg, Berg, Hindemith and Stravinsky. The 1938 exhibition covered precisely the period of the Weimar Republic. Do yourself a favor and stop posting about things you have no clue about.

[Opus131]

The view that a particular musical style is not capable of being religious is nothing more than prejudice. It is words that convey that kind of meaning, not choices as to how to make notes. G sharp is not secular.

I disagree. Style makes all the difference. That is why traditional civilizations guarded their sacred arts from change or corruption. When Plato was lamenting the corruption of the arts of his time, he wasn't just some old man yelling at the wind. He was talking about something that was concrete and objective. 

Even changes in languages can make a difference. Have you tried to read the Bible devotionally on a modern translation, as opposed to a traditional one like the King James translation, or the Latin Vulgate? Some religions even go so far as to make it mandatory to learn the original language of their particular tradition, like in Islam were learning Arabic is not negotiable.

Forms matter. A Renaissance mass has more devotional power than a mass from the 18th century, despite the fact the "words" are the same in either case. The same applies to the traditional Latin mass compared to what goes on in churches today.

In tradition like those of India it is well known that certain ragas can induce particular states of being. The Greeks had a similar understanding for their modes.

As an experiment, imagine changing the lyrics for this songs to make it about Christ and tell me if this music can actually inspire devotional states of being:

There is a reason "dark" or horror imagery follows heavy metal around. It's because the musical form itself conjures those feelings.

[Opus131]

Beethoven's music involves far more complex and difficult techniques than the Old Roman Chant you posted above (which I greatly liked, btw). By your token, the former is superior to the later. Or is it not?

No, that would be the complete opposite of what i'm saying.

You cannot rely on "tangible" qualities like technical analysis as "evidence" a given composition is superior or inferior to another (composers like Sorabji have written music that is excruciatingly difficult and complex but i would rank him far below either Bach or Beethoven). There are "invisible" elements that cannot be examined by rational means such as a technical analysis would provide. Those elements are not "subjective", but are concrete, objective realities which however can only be accessed through the mind by virtue of an intellectual or contemplative realization. Thus, they are entirely inward and cannot really be "shown" to others. You can only, at best, point to them and hope they make the same realization themselves.

Because of this, i actually consider every opinion to be valuable. Even when i disagree with someone i often think about whether their position is actually reflecting an higher understanding of my own. I'm not in the habit of dismissing every opinion on account of the fact everything is "subjective" anyway or anything along those lines. This means i'm also quite intransigent against opinions i'm absolutely certain are wrong. I would defend the idea Beethoven is far, FAR greater than Taylor Swift to the death. I don't care how many 13 year old girls happen to "enjoy" her music more, or if her albums sell more than the entire recorded corpus of the music of Beethoven combined.

[AnotherSpin]

If you were at all familiar with the concept of entartete Musik, you'd know that its basic tenets were precisely yours, namely that music in Germany after WWI, ie during the Weimar Republic, had a corrupting influence on the German people, an influence which the National-Socialist Party, coming to power in 1933, vowed to eradicate once and for all by banning such music which included, but was not limited to, jazz, cabaret music, Schoenberg, Berg, Hindemith and Stravinsky. The 1938 exhibition covered precisely the period of the Weimar Republic. Do yourself a favor and stop posting about things you have no clue about.

Do yourself a favour and stop passing one thing off as another. The situation in the Weimar Republic and in Nazi Germany was different, including the treatment of Jews.

Of course, the roots of the Nazis' attitude to new-fangled music, as well as to cabaret, drugs, sexual perversion and other pleasures, can be traced back to earlier times. In a sense, Schoenberg gave birth to Hitler.

Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus comes to mind. If you have read it, you may remember the image of the protagonist, whom Mann modelled after Schoenberg. The hero deliberately contracts syphilis in order to achieve unprecedented artistic inspiration through madness. In the end, the madness leads the hero into a state of total retardation. I believe Thomas Mann knew very well what he was writing about.

[Madiel]

Even changes in languages can make a difference. Have you tried to read the Bible devotionally on a modern translation, as opposed to a traditional one like the King James translation, or the Latin Vulgate?

The Bible was not written in Latin. Fetishing the Latin text is exactly that, a fetish. The Bible was written in the vernacular language of the audience at the time. Everyday Greek for the New Testament. The King James was written in the English of the day.

I have nothing else to say to you because with this comment, you've revealed your mindset thoroughly extends beyond music. I work with language for a living, plus as a gay man I've had to battle with people who claim "the Bible says" things that are rooted in a refusal to genuinely understand the text. And so for both reasons, I simply don't wish to expend energy on someone who thinks that being arcane is a feature rather than a problem.

I also assume you didn't bother to go listen to the song based on Isaiah 6. After all, it was in modern English.

[steve ridgway]

The only art form i consider to be incorrupt is sacred art.

This is an interesting point, it's making me think about what might be "sacred" for me. In general the rest of the universe and those parts of nature on this planet as yet unspoilt by the human race.

[Opus131]

This is an interesting point, it's making me think about what might be "sacred" for me. In general the rest of the universe and those parts of nature on this planet as yet unspoilt by the human race.

There is some merit to that as virgin nature has something sacred about it and in some cases it is actually included in some religious systems. For instance, for the Northen Native Americans, nature was a kind of scripture and they couldn't understand why the industrial modern Europeans had no reguard for it.

This is not a unique trait of "primitive" (i prefer to use the term "primordial" myself) cultures either. Ancient Japan for instance provides another example.

But if we are talking about art that is made by humans specifically, generally such art is "sacred" when it draws inspiration from the divine and where its forms are intended to open a window to celestial images or ideas. The criterias for what constitutes sacred art are basically content first of all but also mode of expression up to including its technique and style. 

Renaissance religious paintings for instance fall short of being considered sacred art because their naturalism is too strictly bound to "this" world. A naturalistic painting of Christ is a depiction of a mere human figure, where as a traditional Christian icon opens the window to a more trascedent or celestial conception.

Sacred art is usually relatively functional as well. It's purpose is to serve actual religious aims. One such aim is to make the "inner" aspect of the religion visible and tangible for the sake of those who require such guidance (Christian saints were often quite critical of art though they understood its necessity. For them of course art was meaningless because they already had full access to the Kingdom of God that is "within"). Because of this, sacred art tends to eschew individualistic elements because its aims are cosmological, so to speak. The purpose of sacred art is basically to make heaven visible or tangible here on earth, according to the specific mode of expression of a given religion. Without such art, it is incredibly difficult to prevent a majority of people from becoming too "wordly" and profane, which is very easy for them to do given the world is the only thing the senses can actually percieve.

Generally speaking, ancient man had access to both. A medieval peasant experienced the sacred in a more impersonal way by virtue of his proximity to nature, and then had a direct vision of celestial archetypes and essences every time he stepped into a church. Despite the harsher conditions of his physical environment, he was "happy" in a way that might be a bit difficult to concieve for modern people given the distorted view we have of what life was actually like in the middle ages.

So with all this said, i consider to have been a grave error for the Catholic Church to relinquish sacred art in favor of the more "virtuosic" naturalism and formalism of Renaissance art. It's not so much that Renaissance art is "bad", far from it, but even the most pious of Renaissance artists cannot reach the same celestial heights as even the least talented of medieval artist. The form itself of the art precludes it.

[Opus131]

The Bible was not written in Latin.

Christianity is not like Judaism or Islam (or Hinduism) where the religion "begins" with a scripture (point in fact, Christianity already existed fully formed before a single line of the New Testament was ever written down, which seems like a direct refutation of "sola scriptura" but i don't want to go there right now), so mine was an impartial analogy, but i was trying to get a particular point across.

Let me explain my position more fully on this then. In religion, language is as important as the styles and techniques of art. Now if a religion begins with a scripture, the original language used can be said to be "sacred" by virtue of the fact God spoke directly through it. Such sacred languages include Hebrew, Arabic and Sanskrit.

Now certain religions do not begin with a scripture, but a founder, Christianity and Buddhism being such religions. In this case, what the Torah is for the Jews or the Quran is for the Muslims, Christ himself (his entire being, not just what he said) is for the Christians. This means that when it comes to writing a scripture the authors of the New Testament were "free" to pick a language of their choosing, but that does not mean the nature of the language didn't matter.

This is because second to a sacred language, there is such a thing we traditionalists like to refer as "liturgical" languages. In this sense, there is a misconception about the use of "common" or "vulgar" languages, such as the Koine greek or the Latin used in the Vulgate. Those are languages that had retained an element that was more "archaic" or "primordial" than languages such as those of classical Greece or ancient Rome, which had become too "precise" and too rational to be of use for liturgical purposes. If those were the "common" languages of their day it's because the "common" people still spoke in archaic ways compared to the "learned" of their time (and let's not forget the influence of Christianity as well as contact with the "primordial" Germanic tribes must have had for instance to the development of Latin at the time of St. Jerome).

Notice that even in literature the quality of the language itself makes a difference. The language used by Shakespeare in a way actually makes Shakespeare.

Ancient languages in general have something "noble" or even "aristocratic" about them. They have those caracteristics by their very nature. When the Church adopted certain languages, and "consecrated" them for liturgical use (koine Greek and the Vulgate Latin first of all, but also Armenian and Slavonic), it still required them to posses this nobility, and to eschew any element that one might consider to be trivial, individualistic, or worldly, characteristics which are found pretty much in all modern languages. Modern languages also tend to be too analitical and even too "chatty" to be of use for liturgical purposes. A Liturgical language requires a more synthetic and impersonal idiom among other things (notice how Latin also became the language of "science").

The irony with trying to update the ancient liturgical languages for "modern" use is that it actually does a disservice to the people to whom this is supposed to be a benefit. We are told that it was a form of "tyranny" to impose the Latin liturgy on so many far flung cultures. But Latin as a language had all the right qualifications for liturgical practice and expression, while none of the modern languages used today qualify, so what is the real tyranny exactly?

[Madiel]

Ancient languages in general have something "noble" or even "aristocratic" about them.

This is complete rubbish. The walls of Pompeii are covered in crude jokes.

[Opus131]

This is complete rubbish. The walls of Pompeii are covered in crude jokes.

And yet when a modern English speaking person wants to sound lofty he reverts to "ye oldie" English. Funny how that works.

The walls of Pompeii are covered in crude jokes.

I question statements like this since certain modern revitionists are too eager to try to paint remote civilizations in their image, but it bears point out that ancient Rome was hardly a "traditional" civilization, which explains the speed by which it was overtaken by Christianity.

I also pointed out that classical Latin was unsuited for liturgical purposes. The language of Cicero was too analytical for that, though i wouldn't go so far as claim his Latin was already "modern". It certainly wasn't trivial at the very least.

[Florestan]

Schoenberg gave birth to Hitler.

Right. And Rachmaninoff gave birth to Lenin.

[Florestan]

if we are talking about art that is made by humans specifically

Do you know any other kind of art?

[Florestan]

A Renaissance mass has more devotional power than a mass from the 18th century, despite the fact the "words" are the same in either case.

How do you know?

[Madiel]

And yet when a modern English speaking person wants to sound lofty he reverts to "ye oldie" English. Funny how that works.

The problem is, you don't actually understand how or why that works. It's got nothing to do with old language being inherently more lofty.

Low-class characters in Shakespeare talk in low-class language. High-class characters in Shakespeare talk in high-class language. And you can't tell the difference because to you it all sounds fancy.

I mean, the word "thou" is not fancy, it's the exact opposite. The more formal and polite word was "you", and eventually everybody habitually used the more polite word. That modern people get this wrong is a reflection on modern people, not on the English of the time.

EDIT: And of course, the great majority of modern people pronounce the word "ye" in a way it was never, ever pronounced at the time.

[Opus131]

How do you know?

Just listen: