PHIL'S MUSIC BLOG: 'THE NATURE OF FINE ART'
(St.Arbucks Coffee Shop Chats)
(St.Arbucks Coffee Shop Chats)
A coffee shop friend takes another sip of her Vente Soy Latte, smiles coyly, leans closer and asks me, "Really now...is there such a thing as bad music...?
My non sequitur reply gets me a sell-deserved blank stare, "Were there ancient, pagan peoples called The Philistines..?"
People often ask me...."What is...Good Music...?" My reply this past week, "Have you heard The New 'Three Tenors'...?"
Good Music--aside from having the vital properties of Harmony, Melody, and Rhythm-- is like any other representation and performance of the Fine Arts.
Fine Art is, of course, never Vulgar--but always Beautiful. It is never Profane but always Sacred. Never Trivial and Shallow--but always Profound.
Popular Music can offer quite pleasing aspects of Fine Art. Some of the Beatles music was Fine Art ('Yesterday', 'Blackbird' and others)--this was proved by its beauty in melody, harmony, and rhythm--and that it could be performed by symphony orchestras and/or Jazz musicians (most Jazz Music qualifies as Fine Art). Willie Nelson often segues into Fine Art with his rich re-interpretations of standards such as Stardust.--and other pieces from The Great American Songbook.
Musical Fine Art, thus, could never be Ghetto or Gangsta Rap. Musical Fine Art could never be most Punk Rock, Grunge, Alternative Rock Headbanger Rock, Acid Rock, or Heavy Metal. Perhaps a researcher might acknowledge all that as tribal or cultural expression (even worthy of cultural and social anthropology textbooks)--in the way that a National Geographic or History Channel special might present some study of Third World tribalism...but this would never exemplify or illustrate authentic Fine Art. (Cultural Relativism is a lie of Secularism.)
The Middle East, rightly called The Seat of Satan, bears the devil's curse even in its music. Nowhere will you hear more boring, repetitive, torturous aggression against Fine Art than in Middle Eastern or Indo-European music--except where there are symphony orchestras playing European classical works, or skilled jazz composers, instrumentalists, and vocalists--from the operatic to show tunes or jazz. Any primitive, Third World cultural/tribal expressions must be regarded as just that--but definitely not Fine Art, of course.
Tribalism (cultural entropy) infects any part of Society-at-large to which it is exposed in a subtle-but-pandemic manner, and plants itself center stage with pseudo-esthetic fads like Hip Hop and the hypnotic, tribalized chanting of pseudo-music like Reggae, in American Culture. Musical Fine Art, say, including the works of Gershwin, Lerner & Lowe, Rogers & Hammerstein, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin et al--classic music, mainstream jazz standards, Urban Gospel (Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, Christ Church, Nashville et al) always glorifies God, always--even by default in its beauty--exalting Jesus Christ, the Lord of Creation & of all Creativity.
Musical Fine Art has no limitations of Time--it can never become Old--or outdated: that is another Big Lie of Secularism--to try to kick Musical Art--or other of the Fine Arts--to Society's curb. (Most public radio and college stations--keep musical fine art alive with their Classical and Jazz programming.)
But Bad Music, with its entropic tribalism is a reflection of confused thinking and a confused mind--perhaps in some ways as genetically-predisposed mental illness is degenerative (see the film, A Beautiful Mind).
Propaganda-driven, Headbanger Rock, or Grunge, for example, revolts against the scholarly demands of higher-level Fine Art. This is the essential purpose of most industrial junkyard 'Hard Rock'--a rebellious, propaganda-driven, collectivist movement populated by misfits and the spiritually unfit--you can find some of these (among other 'Good Musicians') on YouTube. Anti-esthetic, beauty-despising Rockers represent a general uprising of angry malcontents--whose god is its belly--in the sense of gut-level lust, greed, pride, self-absorption, indulgent selfishness, substance-abusing, anger toward parents, profaning the sacred, revenge-seeking, vulgarizing that which is beautiful, trivializing the profound, power-seeking, ego-mania, and hostile aggression. It presents one cultural manifestation of mental and spiritual illness--leading its disenchanted, disillusioned, debauched followers into blind rage--eventually to off themselves like Kurt Cobain or gonzo journalist, Hunter Thompson.
(Headbanging isn't what Youth Culture does. Headbanging is what crazy, chemically-abusing sinners do--who are in the proverbial handbasket--and know quite well where they're headed..!.)
Study the personas, images, affect, and album covers beginning, say, with Mettalica, Megadeth, and Black Sabbath--through the Grunge, Punk era, to the current 'it all be soundin' like da same ting' (monkey-throwing-its-offal) Berlin Techno-Rock and spirit-grinding 'wall of sound' pop noise.
This is class warfare--the esthetic hoi polloi ('spiritual Christ-rejecting underlclass'), ticketless, outside the symphony hall of the Holy Spirit--angrily throwing rocks through the stained glass windows of the Holy of Holies. This is a power encounter between the prophets of Baal and Elijah--the magicians in Pharaoh's Court and Moses--between the devil and the redeemed community in Christ--the forces of darkness and God Himself.
Sadly, Contemporary Worship and Praise Music reflects Fine Art and less, and more and more permits melody-less and anti-harmonic syncretism--corruption by degenerative pagan culture.
By militantly aggressing against Fine Art, philistine music jolts the Ark of the Covenant (shaking its fist in the face and presence of God), rocking 'n rolling the god-box, profaning a celebration which was supposed to be sacred--carelessly bouncing the Profound in a pagan cart (see 2 Samuel 6:1).
Many 'worship leaders'--especially in the Emergent and/or Mega Churches--behave like Uzzah (2 Samuel 6:1ff)--and may share his ignominious fate. The barbarians have breached the wall--have broken through the gates. Under the Trojan Horse guise of seeker-sensitive-pop-culture music--the enemy has come in not only to trash Fine Art, but to steal, kill, and destroy--that which is beautiful, that which is profound--and, tragically, that which is sacred.
(excerpt:WIP)
What Is Good Music..?
Singing the Song of the Lord In a Strange Land
Copyright © 2010 by Philip C. Brewer
All Rights Reserved
Hope you'll enjoy Exhibit A as an example of what Good Music sounds like.... The New Three Tenors....
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