Robert Reilly, Music Critic, Crisis Magazine

"Is Music Sacred?"

The Philadelphia Society

National Meeting, Chicago, April 30, 2000

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*These remarks are a revised version of the oral delivery. 

As the most immaterial art, music is often thought to be the most spiritual.  By its nature, is music sacred?  If so, what is sacred about it?  These might seem strange questions to ask in a secular age, but the presumption that there is something special about music pervades even our culture.  Consider the poster on the side of a D.C. Metro bus earlier this year, which advertised the benefits of the D.C. Youth Orchestra Program.  It announced that the happy children shown with their orchestral instruments “are playing their way to a bright future.”  Why should that be?  Does playing music make you be a better person? A recent review of a performance of Shostakovich’s piano music said that the C Major Prelude “immediately takes us into the pure, sane world that betokens the composer’s escape from mundaneness into the higher reality of music.”  What is “higher” and more “pure” about the reality of music, and how does the composer reach this reality? 

In order to answer these questions, one must journey back to ancient Greece to the first writings about music and reflections upon its meaning.  This starts with Pythagoras, who is said to have discovered the arithmetical relationships between harmonic intervals. He found a fascinating array of proportional intervals between tones, mathematical relationships that inhere in the very structure of sound. Pythagoras wondered about the relationship of these ratios to the larger world. (The Greek word for ratio is logos, which also means word or reason.) He construed that the harmonious sounds that men could make, either with their instruments or their singing, were an approximation of a larger harmony that existed in the universe, also expressed by numbers, that was exemplified in "the music of the spheres." As Aristotle explained in the Metaphysics, the Pythagoreans “supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number.”  This was meant literally. The heavenly spheres and their rotations through the sky produced tones at various levels, and in concert these tones made a harmonious sound that man's music, at its best, could replicate. Music was number made audible. Music was man’s participation in the harmony of the universe.

This discovery was fraught with ethical significance. By participating in heavenly harmony, music could induce spiritual harmony in the soul. Following Pythagoras, Plato taught that “rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful.” In the Republic, Plato showed the political import of music’s power by invoking Damon of Athens as his musical authority. Damon said that he would rather control the modes of music in a city than its laws, because the modes of music have a more decisive effect on the formation of the character of citizens.  The ancient Greeks were also wary of music’s power because they understood that, just as there was harmony, there was disharmony.  Musical discord could distort the spirit, just as musical concord could properly dispose it. 

This idea of “the music of the spheres” runs through the history of Western civilization with an extraordinary consistency, even up to the 20th century. At first, it was meant literally, later, poetically. Either way, music was seen as almost more a discovery than a creation, because it relied on pre-existing principles of order in nature for its operation. It would be instructive to look at the reiteration of this teaching in the writings of several major thinkers to appreciate its enduring significance and also the radical nature of the challenge to it in our own time. 

In the 1st century B.C., Cicero spelled out Plato’s teaching in the last chapter of his De Republica. In “Scipio's Dream,” Cicero has Scipio Africanus asking the question, "what is that great and pleasing sound?”  The answer comes, “That is the concord of tones separated by unequal but nevertheless carefully proportional intervals, caused by the rapid motion of the spheres themselves.  The high and low tones blended together provide different harmonies.”  Cicero explains in great detail the various movements of the spheres, and which tones they produce, ending with “the other eight spheres, two of which move at the same speed, producing] seven tones.  This number being, one might say, the key to the universe. Skilled men imitating this harmony on stringed instruments and in singing have gained for themselves a return to this region, as have those who have cultivated their exceptional abilities to search for divine truths.” Cicero explicitly presents the case that the right kind of music is divine and can return man to a paradise lost. It is a form of communion with divine truth.

In the late 2nd century A.D., St. Clement of Alexandria baptized the classical Greek understanding of music in his Exhortation to the Greeks.  The transcendent God of Christianity gave new and somewhat different meanings to the “music of the spheres.”  Using Old Testament imagery from the Psalms, St. Clement said that there is a “New Song,” far superior to the Orphic myths of the pagans. The “New Song” is Christ, logos Himself: “it is this [”New Song”] that composed the entire creation into melodious order, and tuned into concert the discord of the elements, that the whole universe may be in harmony with it.” It is Christ who “arranged in harmonious order this great world, yes, and the little world of man, body and soul together; and on this many-voiced instrument he makes music to God and sings to [the accompaniment of] the human instrument.” By appropriating the classical view, St. Clement was able to show that music participated in the divine by praising God and partaking in the harmonious order of which He was the composer. But music’s goal was even higher because Christ is higher. Cicero had spoken of the divine region to which music is supposed to transport man.  That region was literally within the heavens. With Christianity the divine region becomes both transcendent and personal because Logos is Christ. The new goal of music is to make the transcendent perceptible. 

The early 6th century A.D. had two especially distinguished Roman proponents of the classical view of music, both of whom served at various times in high offices to the Ostrogoth king, Theodoric. Cassiodorus was secretary to Theodoric. He wrote a massive work called Institutiones, which echoes Plato's teaching on the ethical content of music, as well as Pythagoras’s on the power of number. Cassiodorus taught that "music indeed is the knowledge of apt modulation.  If we live virtuously, we are constantly proved to be under its discipline, but when we sin, we are without music.  The heavens and the earth and indeed all things in them which are directed by a higher power share in the discipline of music, for Pythagoras attests that this universe was founded by and can be governed by music." 

Boethius served as consul to Theodoric in 510 A.D. He wrote The Principles of Music, a book that had enormous influence through the Middle Ages and beyond.  Boethius said that "music is related not only to speculation, but to morality as well, for nothing is more consistent with human nature than to be soothed by sweet modes and disturbed by their opposites.  Thus we can begin to understand the apt doctrine of Plato, which holds that the whole of the universe is united by a musical concord.  For when we compare that which is coherently and harmonious joined together within our own being with that which is coherently and harmoniously joined together in sound -- that is, that which gives us pleasure -- so we come to recognize that we ourselves are united according to the same principle of similarity.”

It is not necessary to cite further examples after Boethius because  The Principles of Music was so influential that it held sway as the standard music theory text at Oxford until 1856. Until this century, it was generally accepted that music approximates a heavenly concord, that it should attempt to make the transcendent perceptible and, in so doing, exercise a formative ethical impact on those who listen to it. Even in this century the notion was not entirely lost. Three short examples should suffice. Early in the century, Ferruccio Busoni said, "Our Tonal System is nothing more than a set of signs.  An ingenious device to grasp somewhat of the eternal harmony.” The great Jean Sibelius, anything but an orthodox Christian, nonetheless harkened back to St. Clement when he wrote that "the essence of man's being is his striving after God. It [the composition of music] is brought to life by means of the logos, the divine in art. That is the only thing that has significance."  When writing his Fifth Symphony, Sibelius also demonstrated the continuing power of Plato’s thought in the analogy he offered to explain the source of his inspiration: "it was as if God the Father had thrown down pieces of mosaic out of the heaven's floor and asked me to solve how the picture once looked."  Igor Stravinsky had this to say about music: "the profound meaning of music and its essential aim is to promote a communion, a union of man with his fellow man and with the Supreme Being." 

The hieratic role of music was lost for most of this century because the belief on which it was based was lost. Philosophical propositions have a very direct and profound impact upon composers and what they do. John Adams, one of the most popular American composers, said that he had “learned in college that tonality died somewhere around the time that Nietzsche’s God died, and I believed it.” The connection is quite compelling. At the same time God disappears, so does the intelligible order in creation. A world without God is literally unnatural. If there is no God, Nature no longer serves as a reflection of its Creator. If you lose the Logos of St. Clement, you also lose the ratio (logos) of Pythagoras.  Nature is stripped of its normative power. This is just as much a problem for music as it is for philosophy. Tonality, as the pre-existing principle of order in the world of sound, goes the same way as the objective moral order. So how does one organize the mess that is left once God departs? If there is no pre-existing intelligible order to go out to and apprehend, and to search through for what lies beyond it -- which is the Creator -- what then is music supposed to express?  If external order does not exist, then music turns inward. It collapses in on itself and becomes an obsession with techniques. Any ordering of things, musical or otherwise, becomes simply the whim of man’s will. 

In the 1970s, English conductor Colin Davis expressed this dilemma as follows: “Have you read the Sleepwalkers by Herman Broch?  In it, Broch analyzes the disintegration of Western values from the Middle Ages onward.  After man abandoned the idea that his nature was in part divine, the logical mind assumed control and began to try to deduce the first principles of man's nature through rational analysis.  The arts followed a similar course.  Each art turned in upon itself and reduced itself further and further by logical analysis, until today, they have all just about analyzed themselves out of existence.” 

Without a “music of the spheres” to approximate, modern music, like the other arts, began to unravel.  Music’s self-destruction became logically imperative once it undermined its own foundation. In the 1920s, Arnold Schoenberg unleashed the centrifugal forces of  disintegration in music through his denial of tonality. Schoenberg contended that tonality does not exist in Nature as the very property of sound itself, as Pythagoras claimed, but was simply an arbitrary construct of man, a convention. This assertion was not the result of a new scientific discovery about the acoustical nature of sound, but of a desire to demote the metaphysical status of nature.  Schoenberg was irritated that “tonality does not serve, [but rather] must be served.”  He preferred to command.  As he said, “I can provide rules for almost anything.” 

Schoenberg proposed to erase the distinction between tonality and atonality by immersing man in atonal music until, through habituation, it became the new convention. Then discords would be heard as concords.  As he wrote: “The emancipation of dissonance is at present accomplished and twelve-tone music in the near future will no longer be rejected because of ‘discords.’” Schoenberg took the twelve equal semi-tones from the chromatic scale and declared that music must be written in such a way that each of these twelve semi-tones has to be used before repeating anyone of them.  If one of these semi-tones was repeated before all eleven others were sounded, it might create an anchor for the ear which could recognize what is going on in the music harmonically. The twelve-tone system guarantees the listener’s disorientation. [It can also cause worse problems. Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi spent a lengthy period in a mental institution with a condition he associated with a temporary immersion in twelve-tone technique. He healed himself by sitting at the piano and repeatedly striking a single note and then letting it fade away. Was he the first minimalist?] 

Of his achievement, Schoenberg said, “I am conscious of having removed all traces of a past aesthetic.”  In fact, he declared himself “cured of the delusion that the artist’s aim is to create beauty.” This statement is terrifying in its implications when one considers what is at stake in beauty. Simone Weil wrote that “we love the beauty of the world because we sense behind it the presence of something akin to that wisdom we should like to possess to slake our thirst for good.” All beauty is reflected beauty. Smudge out the reflection and not only is the mirror useless, but the path to the source of beauty is barred. Ugliness, the aesthetic analogue to evil, becomes the new norm. Schoenberg’s remark represents a total rupture with Western musical tradition.

The loss of tonality was also devastating at the practical level of composition because tonality is the key structure of music.  Tonality is what allows music to express movement, away from or towards a state of tension or relaxation, a sense of motion through a series of crises and conflicts, which can then come to resolution. Without it, music loses harmony and melody. Its structural force collapses. Gutting music of tonality, as Schoenberg did, is like removing grapes from wine.  You can go through all the motions of making wine without grapes but there will be no wine at the end of the process. Similarly, if you deliberately and systematically remove all audible overtone relationships from music, you can go though the process of composition, but the end product will not be comprehensible as music.  This is not a change in technique; it is the replacement of art by an ideology of organized noise. In an amusing encounter in Hollywood, Schoenberg tried to convince composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold of the merits of his system. Holding up a pencil, he asked Korngold what it was. Korngold said, “it’s obvious, it‘s a pencil.”  Then Schoenberg held the pencil upside down and said, “now what is it?” Korngold replied, “It’s still a pencil, but now you can’t write with it.”

Schoenberg’s disciples applauded the emancipation of dissonance, but soon preferred to follow the centrifugal forces that Schoenberg had unleashed beyond their master’s rules.  Pierre Boulez thought that it was not enough to systematize dissonance in twelve-tone rows. If you have a system, why not systematize everything? He applied the same principle of the tone-row to pitch, duration, tone production, intensity and timber, every element of music. In 1952, Boulez announced that “every musician who has not felt -- we do not say understood but felt -- the necessity of the serial language is USELESS.” [American composer Philip Glass, speaking of the Paris music scene in the 1960s, ruled over by Boulez, said that it was “a wasteland, dominated by these maniacs, these creeps who were trying to make everyone write this crazy, creepy music.”] Boulez also proclaimed, “once the past has been got out of the way, one need think only of oneself.”  Here is the narcissistic antithesis of the classical view of music, the whole point of which was to catch a person up into something larger than himself.

The systematic dissection of the language of music continued as, successively, each isolated element of music was elevated into its own autonomous whole. Schoenberg’s disciples agreed that tonality is simply a convention, but saw that, so too, is twelve-tone music. If you’re going to emancipate dissonance, why organize it?  Why even have twelve-tone themes? Why bother with pitch at all? Edgar Varese rejected the twelve-tone system as arbitrary and restrictive.  He searched for the “bomb that would explode the musical world and allow all sounds to come rushing into it through the resulting breach.” When he exploded it in his piece, Ameriques, Olin Downs, a famous New York music critic, called it “a catastrophe in a boiler factory.” (In a parallel case, when Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase was first shown in New York,  a critic called it “an explosion in a shingle factory.”) Still Varese did not carry the inner logic of the “emancipation of dissonance” through to its logical conclusion.  His noise was still formulated; it was organized. There were indications in the score as to exactly when the boiler should explode. What was needed, according to composers like John Cage,  was to have absolutely no organization and to strive for the non-mental. Cage created noise through chance operations by rolling dice. He bought composition paper and drew the notes according to the irregularities in the paper. He took tape recordings, sliced them up, jumbled them together, pieced them together again, and then played them as “music.”  His point was metaphysically, if not musically, potent: nature is not normative. Form is destroyed because form is a reflection of nature. Disfigurement is the means to systematically discredit nature.

There has been an extraordinary recovery from the damage that was inflicted by Schoenberg and his disciples. Almost without exception, this recovery has been undertaken by composers who were completely immersed in Schoenberg’s system, but who rebelled and returned to tonal music.  George Rochberg was the dean of the twelve tone school of composition in the United States and the first to turn against it. In 1964, the death of his twenty year old son threw Rochberg into a crisis. He came out of it saying, “I could not continue writing so-called serial music. It was finished, hollow, meaningless.”  He found that serialism “made it virtually impossible to express serenity, tranquility, wit, energy.”  In his Third String Quartet, Rochberg recovered the world of tonality. The quartet was accompanied by a manifesto in which he said, “The pursuit of art is much more than achieving technical mastery of means or even a personal style; it is a spiritual journey toward the transcendence of art and of the artist’s ego. In my time of turning, I have had to abandon the notion of originality in which the personal style of the artist and his ego are the supreme values; the pursuit of the one-idea, uni-dimensional work and gesture, which seems to have dominated the aesthetics of art in the twentieth century; and the received idea that it is necessary to divorce oneself from the past...In these ways, I am turning away from what I consider the cultural pathology of my own time toward what can only be called a possibility: that music can be renewed by regaining contact with the tradition and means of the past, to re-emerge as a spiritual force with re-activated powers of melodic thought, rhythmic pulse and large scale structure and as I see it, these things are only possible with tonality.”