Quote of the week:
Musicians do not learn from the creation in quite the same way visual artists do. There are no fugues or twelve-bar blues “out there” for us to use as models or to re-present. Even so, the principle suggested in the difference between the first day and all other days pertains to musical practice as well. In music, there are two poles: the strange and the familiar, somewhat analogous to the difference between the abstract and the representational in art. Radically different music may be just as difficult to accept as abstract art, when its harmonic practices, textures, structures, and colors are completely separated from what we have grown used to. This kind of music is best received in the spirit of the first day of creation. We must learn to live in the wonder – even shock – of that day, no matter how disturbed, stretched, or even threatened we might be. Creative musicians have every right to thrive within the spirit of that day and to produce musical works that honor God by following hard after his originating ways.
But this is not all. Many musical days have followed the first day. These are the days of innovative conservatism, nuanced repetition, paraphrase, and variation. While the first day of creation is absolutely essential to the practice of music, so are all the other days. And the most balanced artistic communities – and these must surely include the Christian ones – are those that seek both the avant-garde and the conservative; the new, the disturbing, and the most inventively familiar.
Dr. Harold M. Best
Music Through the Eyes of Faith