Audience of One

Art for art's sake

My plan had been to write a few more entries before heading to New Word Alive, but time has probably got away from me. I’ve been researching an essay on music in the sixties and so have been much occupied by listening to The Beatles. I’ve also been reading a lot of history and philosophy of music to go along with it, so my brain is reasonably frazzled. Modernist (not “modern”) music (the stuff the academics were writing) was getting weirder and weirder post-WWII. First, though, a bit of context.

The nineteenth century was when an idea that we now take for granted hit the world of music: art for art’s sake. This philosophy says that the inherent worth of a piece of art (be it music, painting, poem etc.) is separate from any utilitarian (related to usefulness) or didactic (related to teaching) function. Composers such as Bach (who was writing in the mid eighteenth century) would have found this concept alien. To Bach, he wrote a chorale because his employer wanted a chorale and it helped the congregation take on the words. He wrote his inventions as exercises in composition and as keyboard practice.

Beethoven, on the other hand, wrote symphonies for their own sake – not to teach anyone anything, nor to bring about moral improvement, but so the public could enjoy them as art. They had inherent worth that could be appreciated.

In post-war modernist music, this idea was taken to its logical conclusion. If art is for its own sake, and pure art is that which is unsullied by utilitarianism or anything else, then true art must therefore be something separate even from entertaining or pleasing an audience. Composers pursued “progress” in music, trying to withdraw any human bias from the compositional process, aiming in so doing to create a music entirely separate from human decision. It was a quest for “true art”, or “pure music”.

There were two major schools of thought. One school sought the eradication of human interference by stricter and stricter rules governing what notes must come next in a composition. This became known as “total serialism” and generally sounds not dissimilar to a three year old child playing the piano, only with fewer and some quieter notes. The second school went to the other extreme, composing by chance. The most famous of these composers, John Cage, was responsible for 4’ 33”. Funnily enough, music determined by chance sounds not dissimilar to the above mentioned three year old also.

Into this vacuum of “serious” music that was listenable came popular music that tried also to be art (The Beatles’ later songs and albums for example). The difference was that they were more like Beethoven – the logical conclusion of “art for art’s sake” hadn’t hit yet. They aimed to entertain and be artistically appreciable.

As a Christian my aim is to “do all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The art I create doesn’t exist for its own sake; it should exist to bring glory to God. It can do that whether or not I consider it art (where its innate qualities give God glory as evidence of his gift of creativity to me, and his gift of beauty to the world), or not as art (where it’s my aim to serve and give others enjoyment that gives God glory). Both of those things applied to Bach. He didn’t think of his music as “art”, but he wrote it to give God glory, and today we can appreciate its beauty, its detail, its genius as signs to the creativity and grace of our God. (As an aside, each manuscript of Bach’s we have ends with the letters S.D.G. – “soli Deo gloria”, or “to God alone be the glory”.)

With God in the picture, aesthetic philosophy isn’t bankrupt, nor does it lead to elitism, where only the educated can understand art. It leads us to thank our God and creator for his great gifts of beauty, taste, texture, colour, rhyme, rhythm, maths and music. When I write music, I’m not trying to create something with an innate worth completely separate from what I or others enjoy listening to. I’m trying to create something that reflects just a little of the beauty and the majesty of the God who gave me the creativity and skill to do it. Art doesn’t exist for its own sake; it exists for God’s glory and our joy.

Matthew @ 15:30, April 5, 2008 to Discussions | Comments (0)