Digging in Part V - Final Post: All Chops and No Soul

In Part IV, we tread the forbidden topic of religion – specifically how the modern view that religion belongs only to the realm of “opinion” and not to the realm of “fact” has produced a fractured view of life. The deepest and most important questions in life – the existence of God, the meaning of life, eternity – are merely viewed as points of view without any real answer, similar to your choice of toppings on a pizza. This leaves most people confused and empty, without any concrete, robust belief system to see the world and our place in it.

This also leaves us classical musicians with a view of music that likewise has no connection these deeper questions. Our understanding of music becomes merely surface-level without any consideration of how these deeper issues of life dictate our approach to music. We also saw in part IV that the art-religion of the Romantic era had a huge impact on music, changing everything from music’s broader purpose right down to musical nomenclature and concert practices. We saw how this had a debilitating affect on music leading to a misplaced allegiance to dead composers and abstract works of art rather than the human beings who enjoy those works. But as we move into the 20^th century, we underwent another crippling change.

All Chops and No Soul

Although the Romantic Movement idolized art, they at least affirmed the reality of the spiritual realm. This enabled them, at a minimum, to retain the holistic view that people are both physical and spiritual. But as the Romantic Movement came to a close at the turn of the 20^th century, Enlightenment philosophy (Naturalism, Rationalism, and Empiricism) came to dominate modern thinking. As Nancy Pearcey writes in Saving Leonardo, “By the end of the Nineteenth century… Romanticism had degenerated into a faded, moralistic, sugar-and-spice Victorian sentimentalism…It proved an easy target for naturalists...”

Of course the leader of the Naturalists, Charles Darwin and his famous Origin of the Species in 1859, was a significant catalyst to this philosophy. In 1901 Jack London wrote a novel, The Law of Life in which he plays the Naturalist philosophy fictionally. As his main character Koskoosh contemplates his death he remarks, “What did it matter after all? Was it not the law of life?” In other words, humans essentially have no purpose beyond biological existence. As la Mettrie said as far back as 1749 (a French, Enlightenment Era physician and philosopher), “man is a machine.”

This Naturalist philosophy continues today. In 2005 the London Zoo featured an exhibit of humans in order to teach “members of the public that the human is just another primate”, said London Zoo spokeswoman Polly Wills. In an interview, Scarlet Johansson said, in reference to her alleged promiscuity, “I do think on some basic level we are animals and by instinct we kind of breed accordingly.” And if man is just another animal, then the soul, something the Bible claims is distinctive to humans, simply doesn’t exist. A writer for Nature wrote that we “are verging on drawing the ultimate materialist picture of human nature… all machine and no ghost.” Philosopher Adrian Woolfson writes in An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Genetics that we have…

…genes that make us believe in concepts like the soul [but] one day such irrational tendencies might be removed by adjusting the relevant brain circuitry. We will have to resign ourselves to the unpalatable fact that we are nothing more than machine.

What was the effect on classical music? If there is no “ghost” and man is merely a biological “machine”, the logical consequence is mechanical, soulless music-making. The Muse was stripped of her Romantic, spiritual garb and became mechanical and dehumanized. The goddess Muse clothed in Enlightenment era philosophies became far deadlier than before. She retained her status as goddess but lost her spirit.

And then, as though on cue, came the Second Viennese School with their invention of 12-tone serialism – a way of composing that uses mathematical formulas to construct non-tonal melodies and harmonies. In this system, neither the performer nor even the composer is creative. The music is purely mathematical, de-spiritualized. Pearcey puts it perfectly:

Boulez said the goal of his mathematical approach was to write music in a way that "eliminates personal invention." The use of mathematical calculation to predetermine the entire musical process left no room for personal creativity. Knowingly or not, he was expressing the logical consequences of a rationalist worldview that begins with blind, material forces. Logically, a cause must be adequate to account for its effect. Any worldview that posits a non-personal starting point does not have the intellectual resources to account for personal agents, like human beings. And therefore it inevitably ends by denigrating the person and squashing personal creativity.

But this mindset isn’t limited to 12-tone serialism. It has infiltrated even the performing approach in the classical music world. A Juilliard student remarked that, in her experience, modern orchestral auditions demand a playing style that is:

…precise, mechanical, robotic.  In orchestra auditions it is more important to do nothing wrong than to do anything particularly well.  They are basically looking for a reason to eliminate you, and “bad intonation” is a lot more convincing than “plays like an automaton.”

Notice how the modern view of man and this student’s sense of performing standards are virtually identical, even in their terminology – mechanical, robotic, automaton. If there is no God and no spiritual realm, man is indeed an “automaton.” Or remember Robert Levin’s remark earlier, that performers are concerned “with the outline of compositions but not their inner content.” If man himself has no soul, then naturally performers will neglect the “inner content” or soul of compositions.

Recall Greg Sandow’s remark when looking at pictures of orchestra, how disengaged and joyless they look. No wonder. They are humans with souls but not performing as such. The constant report I hear from musicians taking orchestra auditions is how note perfection and technique far outweigh emotion and personality in the panel’s assessment of a candidate. Certainly no orchestra would admit that they would accept member that played with no emotion, but what they would have a much harder time admitting is that emotion is given preference over correctness. Typically, a couple missed notes means you will not advance even to the second round.

To recap, we began by discussing the effects of the Werktreue approach in musical terms. We saw how the implications of this approach, which classical musicians naturally assume are normal, is neither shared by our musical cousins of the jazz, rock, and folk world, nor by our musical ancestors before 1800. We then saw how the underlying theme in the Werktreue approach is the idea that the performer is a transparent vessel for the musical “work” and their creative contribution should be minimal. This approach has a direct connection to the often correct but lifeless classical performances today. But this explanation didn’t go far enough. The true problem is what led to Werktreue - the idolizing of art in the Romantic era. Then, when the Enlightenment idea of Naturalism returned to mainstream thinking, along with other de-spiritualized philosophies, this dehumanized view of man led to music and performing that was likewise dehumanized.

To put it another way, both the Werktrue approach (which seeks to serve the music) and the “humanist” approach (which seeks to serve the performer) go wrong because their motivation is misguided. The logical conclusion of a performer-centered approach is showmanship, and the conclusion of Werktrue is oppression. No approach is going to fit neatly into one of those two categories, of course. Many musicians might be a combination of the two. But no combination of serving either the music or the performer will result in music-making as it ought to be. The Gospel offers a view of music making that creates performing with both humility and depth while affirming the humanity and creativity of the performer.

Before we go on, I must clarify two things. First, I am in no way asserting that a performer must be a Christian or even a theist to be an exciting performer. There are plenty of exciting performers who are great opponents of the Gospel and of theism. The principle of “common grace” in Christianity is that all gifts come from God, whether the individuals realize it or not, and there are many general blessings that are common to everyone. Thus, many performers regardless of personal beliefs play with great expressivity, humanness, risk, and excitement. Though they don’t verbally ascent to the Gospel, their lively, creative, human approach to music-making reflects a Biblical worldview to some degree.

Second, I am also not asserting that every classical musician consciously affirms the secular philosophies we examined in the last few posts. Many musicians might have a vague concept of the soul or a spiritual realm. My primary point is that, whether musicians presently accept the Romantic art-religion or the Empiricist, Naturalist philosophy of the Enlightenment era, we have inherited a musical tradition that was heavily influenced by both. There is a tendency to disregard history in the belief that it has little, if any, lingering effect on the present. But these two basic philosophies are embedded in nearly every aspect of classical music, whether one consciously or unconsciously affirms the philosophical traditions that formed that music.

Time to Wake Up

Most musicians are unaware of the baggage we have inherited these secular worldviews and also generally unaware that philosophy can have an impact on classical music at all. We have not critically examined our musical training which we inherited from the secular world and realized its crippling effect. The prevailing idea is that religion has nothing to do with classical music. The concept that even our idea of performance should be, or even can be, fashioned by Biblical principles is rarely considered. Pearcey remarks that:

Truth is a unified whole. Today Christians have largely lost that conviction. When they read verses like “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10) they interpret it to mean only spiritual wisdom… True wisdom consists in seeing every field of knowledge through the lens of God’s truth – government, economics, science, business, and the arts. (pg. 26)

Although Peacey is addressing Christians, there is a sense in which this is true of everyone. Since we have lost the understanding that our beliefs will inevitably affect every aspect of our lives, the “spiritual crisis of the age” that Harnoncourt references is hardly considered in connection to classical music. If we follow music as a religion, like the “art-religion” of the 19^th century, we must not be surprised when it eventually becomes restrictive and oppressive. If we claim that man is nothing but a collection of cells with no soul, then we can expect to loose a spiritual element in classical music. 

I hope this journey through classical music has been helpful and enlightening. My hope is that musicians will consider the claim that Christianity offers answers to some fundamental problems in the classical music world.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

A seemingly innocent and well-intentioned question that every little boy and girl is asked. It sparks a multitude of thoughts and emotions. What excites me? In what areas am I gifted? Where is my niche? Where is that special place in this world where I will fit just right? These questions grow and change throughout our lives, particularly as we enter our college years. Now, our quest to find our identity, which began as that simple question from our childhood, becomes more pressing. What school will I go to? What will I major in? How many degrees should I get? These are often thrilling years as they are filled with the beginnings of the vision for our lives.

The aftermath of our college years, however, may not be so full of hope and vision. After dozens, or even hundreds, of job applications many realize that their bachelor’s degree simply wasn't enough. Or for those fortunate enough to find a job, after three years in a cubicle writing software or analyzing mortgage applications, somehow the shiny prospect of that dream job doesn't seem so shiny anymore. Especially for those who are working “temporarily” in an industry that they would rather not be working (e.g. the starving artist waiting tables) this is particularly true. Of course many people do find jobs that they enjoy. But even then, that age old question still comes back, “Where do I belong in this world?”

While the question “What do you want to be in when you grow up?” is indeed innocent, it is misleading because it ties our career to our identity. Just take a moment to analyze the question. First, it implies that identity is synonymous with vocation. You are your career. “What do you want to be?” “I want to be a scientist” not, “I want to be a human being, who is creative, kind and self-sacrificing and I want to work as a scientist.” And second, you will not find this identity until you “grow up.” Until then, you’ll have to wait to become someone until you finally get that phone call that says, “You’re hired!” you’ll be unable to assume a real identity.

This presents a number of problems. If my career gives me my identity, what happens if I am forced to work a job that doesn't fit with my own perceived identity? If I work as a secretary when I have a bachelor’s degree in biology, who am I? My gifts and education say one thing but my job says another. My sense of identity is mixed and unsettled. I certainly wouldn't tell people I am a biologist because that assumes I am working as a biologist. But I wouldn’t want to tell people I am a secretary either because none of my training and desires are for secretarial work. My identity is ambiguous. Also, if I have to wait until adulthood to assume this identity, who am I right now? Do I have to wait until I am a certain age to have an identity? Have I not grown up yet? (As an aside, one of my favorite little responses to this question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was given by a delightful little girl, Amber Brier who said, “I want to be an Amber!” Yes, Amber – don’t lose that.)

A bus driver in Lexington Kentucky once joked with me, a man probably in his 60's, “Well Jesse, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.” Here is a man, who most likely was asked that same question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This set him up to believe that he had never become anyone because he was just a bus driver. He may have felt, after beginning his work as a bus driver, that this was temporary. He is just working this job in the meantime until he finds a “real” job. 20 to 30 years later, he realizes that he is still a bus driver. And because of the expectation that his personhood is dependent on finding a “real” job, he feels he never has become a “real” person.

I can relate. All through my adult life I have worked as a server. It makes the best money for the hours and has always been my backup job to help me pay the bills. It’s not my real job of course. I would never tell people, “I am a server.” That makes me feel pretty lame. No. I tell people, “I am a conductor.” Oooo… ahhh… That always gets an impressive reaction. What is not so impressive is the follow up question, “So, where do you conduct?” to which I usually have to say, “Well, nowhere. I am looking for work as a conductor.” Then, I feel as though my true identity as a conductor is just a façade.

So from whence does our true identity come? Will we ever find that special place here in this world where we fit just perfectly? Certainly we all have natural gifts and we will generally be more satisfied as we are engaged in work that fits with those gifts. But the deep questions of identity and belonging go far deeper than work. These questions are a deep well which career can never fathom. A career is a temporary activity that we are engaged with in this world but can never satisfy the deepest longings to have an identity and a place to call home. C.S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

To the question we put in the beginning, “Where do we belong in this world?” The answer is, “We don’t.” We are not made for this world of disappointment and suffering. We are made for a perfect world with no discouragement, anger, frustration, cynicism, or hopelessness. We are made for the kingdom of light in which there will be nothing to harm or destroy us, but only boundless light and love in the presence of God and His Son.

“To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it,” says Jesus (Revelation 2:17). This “name” is what we are looking for – our identity. We have give ourselves many names, “Server” “Biologist” “Student” “Mother.” But Christ gives us a new name, one that comes from Him and Him alone. And this is not a name that can be told at parties or put on a resume, but a secret name – one that “no one knows except the one who receives it.” So let’s stop pining after that elusive “thing we want to be when we grow up” because it will never fill that desire for belonging. Let’s instead follow hard after that “new name known only to the one who receives it.” 

Digging in - Part IV: What's religion got to do with it?

In Part III, we discovered that the Werktreue mindset (“work-fidelity”) has many implications for performance, often leading to impersonal and even mechanical music-making. We also discovered that, although Werktreue is central to our approach towards classical music, it is only a surface layer. As Harnoncourt pointed out, “There is no crisis in music; rather, music is reflecting the crisis of an age.” In this post, we’ll refocus our attention on some of the underlying philosophical issues that shape our approach to classical music. But first, we must examine a few basic presumptions in secular philosophy that might serve as roadblocks to discovering the root cause of these musical problems.

Fractured Truth

 

If someone were to ask you, “What is two plus two?”  you would have no problem answering, “Four.” If the other person responded that your answer is merely a matter of opinion, this would sound ridiculous because we accept that mathematics exists within the “fact” realm – in other words, a realm in which the questions have definitive, right or wrong answers, speaking generally. Even if the question were a complex math problem like, “What is the square root of 123,785?” you may not know the answer but you would no doubt agree that there was an answer. Whether the answers are known or unknown, we all agree that mathematics exists within the “fact realm” and therefore a right answer is out there.

But if someone were to say, “Is there a God?” many would likely answer, “Well, that is a matter of opinion. For me there is no God, but for you there might be.” Now, both the math question and the God question actually do have a right or wrong answer. Either there is some kind of Supreme Being that created us all and runs this universe, or there is not. Unlike an “opinion” question such as “What is your favorite food?” categorically, the question of whether a God exists is a “fact” question – one with a right or wrong answer. In spite of this, a secular worldview posits that only empirical facts belong in realm of truth while other subjects like religion are a matter of opinion.

This is what Francis Schaeffer called a fractured view of the truth. He described how, at some point over the past few hundred years, a great split happened in modern thinking. Formerly, the subjects of religion and philosophy were considered to have a right and a wrong answer like math or science. In other words, the question, “Is there a God?” was in the same arena as “What is two plus two?” Of course, people disagreed over those answers, but they agreed that there were answers – not just opinions. But at some point, only subjects that could be proved empirically were considered right or wrong (science, mathematics, etc.) while subjects such as morality, religion, and philosophy were considered matters of opinion. To illustrate this split, Schaffer made the well-known analogy of a two-story house, one in which empirical data is in the basement (fact) while religion and morality are in the top story (opinion).

This is a crucial question for our examination of classical music. For if we believe subjects like religion, morality, or philosophy are merely a matter of opinion, we will not be able to identify the “the spiritual crisis of the age” to which Harnoncort refers. Religion and spirituality can only have relevance and potency when they can be identified as true or false. If we believe that these subjects are merely subjective, they can never have objective value. If you’ll allow me, I hold that religion does exist in the “fact” realm as much as math or science and as such, I believe that Christianity has substantial claims that provide plausible explanations to the musical problems in the classical music world today.

Art-Religion of the Romantics 

 

We first must consider the two major competing philosophies of the past 300 years both of which had a huge impact on music: Romanticism and Enlightenment Era philosophy. More specifically, we will consider both how the Romantic era idolized art which influenced the birth of Werktreue, and how Enlightenment era philosophy in the 20^th century (Naturalism and Empiricism specifically) led to a dehumanized view of man, and thus a dehumanized view of music and performance. Disclaimer: My treatment of these two huge and complex philosophical systems (Romanticism and Enlightenment Philosophy) is far from exhaustive or even very detailed. We will merely touch on a view general ideas that I believe had a direct impact on classical music.

One of the most basic assumptions in a Christian worldview is that there is true and false religion. Since Christianity holds that the subject of religion belongs in the realm of truth and not opinion, this conclusion is inevitable. Furthermore, any false religious position will be misguided and therefore harmful. For example, if a doctor had false views of biology, his or her prescriptions would misguided and potentially deadly to the patient. Our examination of the art-religion of the romantic era is such an example.

 “Art is our religion, our center of gravity, our truth,” says Franz Marc, a German painter who lived toward the end of the 19^th century. Among the many facets of the Romantic tradition, the one aspect that concerns us is the creation of their own religion – one where art became the supreme source of life and truth. William Wordsworth in his epic poem The Prelude refers to himself as being “clothed in a priestly robe…for holy services.” William Yeats said that art was “a new religion, almost an infallible Church of poetic tradition.”

The residual effects of this “art-religion” are still seen today, though not as explicitly as in the 19^th century. World-renown soprano Renee Flemming stated in an interview that her mission is to bring “the gospel of opera to the unsaved” (Chicago Tribine, Jan 06, 2013). Bruce Haynes, in his book quoted earlier, writes “This book is dedicated to Erato, muse of lyric and love poetry, Euterpe, muse of music.” When Simon Rattle came to conduct the Oberlin Orchestra, he remarked with encouragement how people ran for consolation to art galleries shortly after the tragedies of 9/11, encouraging us to “keep the faith.” Van Cliburn’s once commented that a pianist must be “married to the piano.”
 
 Of course, these statements are not literal. Renee Flemming does not believe that she is literally gaining converts to an explicit “opera-religion”, nor does Van Cliburn mean that a pianist should literally marry their pianos. But what these remarks do reflect is a view of music that implies a loyalty to music that goes beyond a normal dedication to a profession. If we look at the deep concern, almost obsession, with “serving music” or “serving the composer”, it becomes apparent that these concerns can often go far beyond a normal dedication to craft.

This religious dedication to music causes a number of problems. First, it produces a sense that our primary goal as performers is to serve an impersonal force or influence (like music) or a composer (who is most likely dead). The most basic problem is that truly “serving” a dead person or an intangible idea is not truly possible. There is no way that “music” can be hurt or pleased and neither can dead composers. Taruskin points out in Text and Act that:

A performer cannot please or move the ancient dead and owes them no such effort. There is no way that we can harm Bach or Mozart any more, not any way that we can earn their gratitude. Still less can a performer please or move an inanimate object or an abstract idea. We owe them even less obligation. Our obligation is to the living. Turning ideas into objects and objects in place of people, is the essential modernist fallacy. (Underline mine)

When we try to serve something intangible like music, we can easily mistreat human beings in the process. Think back on the examples of Toscanini and Reiner and how they treated their orchestras in order to honor “the music.” Or recall the quote by Taruskin, how composers began to treat performers with suspicion and almost contempt because of how they often got in the way of their musical ideals. This is why the great commandment in Christian scripture is to love God will all our heart, mind, and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves. Christianity teaches that servanthood is always to have a personal object. Only then will we treat people with the dignity and love in the process of excelling in music.   

Furthermore, idolizing music can often put a strain on our approach to performance. Baily puts it this way:

In the Straight [modern classical] world the performer approaches music on tiptoe. Music is precious and performance constitutes a threat to its existence. So, of course, he has to be careful. Also, the music doesn’t belong to him. He’s allowed to handle it but only under the strictest supervision. Somebody, somewhere, has gone through a lot of trouble to create this thing, this composition, and the performer’s primary responsibility is to preserve it from damage.

Ironically, when performers exalt music as a holy object, a fear of damaging it will often be at the center of their performing. The logical consequences of this approach are either safe, risk-free performances or an obsessive, anxious attitude toward performance. Think back to the Toscanini quote and his anxiety over musical decisions. As with all false religion, it can never produce freedom.

Interestingly, this disposition towards worshiping music suggests that humans are naturally inclined to worship something. Christianity teaches that we are designed to worship. It is built into the very fabric of our being. It’s just like the Bob Dylan line, “ya gotta serve somebody.” Moreover, we long to worship something that is perfect, flawless. Christianity teaches that when the true God is not the object of worship, we will in turn just worship something else, something less than perfect. This typically leads to disappointment and disillusionments. Thus, when we try to worship music, it doesn’t ultimately yield life-giving results but often lead to emptiness and dissapointment.

We’ve seen some of the lingering effects the Romantic era “art-religion” on the modern-day classical musician – viewing music “sacred object” and a religious allegiance to music or to dead composers. I find it incredible how something as seemingly remote as Romantic era philosophy can directly impact such everyday circumstances like a music history class or an orchestra rehearsal. But what about the 20^th century? How did that impact the classical world? Tune in next time…