This post is inspired by some of the comments on the last post "There is No Hope for Art?" One commentator wrote: "I'm in the art-religion church even though I know there is not a lot to recommend it." I'm not so sure of that. I realized early in life that art, music in particular, was for me a substitute for religion. It took several decades to realize some of the implications of that. I do generally appreciate religion and what it seems to provide in the lives of my religious friends, but I have just never felt the allure myself.
It was G. K. Chesterton who said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” And so now we have people who fetishize any number of things as replacements for religion--sometimes even the religion of other cultures! We have people that worship their own bodies, their appearance generally, their material acquisitions, the environment, food and wine, and a host of other things. Set alongside this, the idea of art as religion is really not so bad!
Imagine that you pursue art or music as a vocation. It provides a daily discipline in your life. You study it in either a practical or scholarly manner (or both). You use it to take you on aesthetic and spiritual journeys. You debate the finer points, including the moral implications. All this is really positive. You could, of course, pursue some of the other things I mentioned in similar ways and derive similar benefits, though many of the things we pursue we do in an unhealthy way. I suppose I would take a kind of Aquinian approach. Thomas Aquinas reconciled the philosophy of Aristotle with the theology of the Catholic Church. If you pursue art with a reasonable and intelligent approach, it need not become a fetish, but rather a benefit in life. Same with everything, really.
But art and music have very special potential benefits that most other activities do not. There is a long and rich history to explore with all sorts of aesthetic and social implications. There is the challenge of performance which rewards not only the artist, but the audience as well. There is the challenge of understanding music from the point of view of the listener and the analyst. Writing about music is another multifarious challenge.
As religions go, you could do a lot worse than choose art and music.
Woody Allen once said that Mozart was proof for the existence of God. I lean more to Bach myself. Here is the Magnificat in D major with Concentus Musicus Vienna and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt:
Talk about serendipity! Just after I posted this I ran into this supporting argument:
It was G. K. Chesterton who said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” And so now we have people who fetishize any number of things as replacements for religion--sometimes even the religion of other cultures! We have people that worship their own bodies, their appearance generally, their material acquisitions, the environment, food and wine, and a host of other things. Set alongside this, the idea of art as religion is really not so bad!
Imagine that you pursue art or music as a vocation. It provides a daily discipline in your life. You study it in either a practical or scholarly manner (or both). You use it to take you on aesthetic and spiritual journeys. You debate the finer points, including the moral implications. All this is really positive. You could, of course, pursue some of the other things I mentioned in similar ways and derive similar benefits, though many of the things we pursue we do in an unhealthy way. I suppose I would take a kind of Aquinian approach. Thomas Aquinas reconciled the philosophy of Aristotle with the theology of the Catholic Church. If you pursue art with a reasonable and intelligent approach, it need not become a fetish, but rather a benefit in life. Same with everything, really.
But art and music have very special potential benefits that most other activities do not. There is a long and rich history to explore with all sorts of aesthetic and social implications. There is the challenge of performance which rewards not only the artist, but the audience as well. There is the challenge of understanding music from the point of view of the listener and the analyst. Writing about music is another multifarious challenge.
As religions go, you could do a lot worse than choose art and music.
Woody Allen once said that Mozart was proof for the existence of God. I lean more to Bach myself. Here is the Magnificat in D major with Concentus Musicus Vienna and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt:
Talk about serendipity! Just after I posted this I ran into this supporting argument:
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