Music and the Mind

Yesterday I listened to a Shostakovich string quartet which I appreciated but couldn't really say I enjoyed. Then, to cleanse my musical palate, I put on some consort music by the Elizabethan composer John Dowland. What a relief! Whilst I do admire Shostakovich, listening to the string quartet was something of an effort because of its gritty angularity and feelings of threat and disorder. On the other hand, the Dowland was pure pleasure. Everything was right and breathed cosmic harmony. This reminded me once again of the damage Beethoven did to Western music with his introduction of psychologically unsettling states, jarring emotions, rage and sometimes near despair. Yes, I know he brought in profounder ideas of the human psyche taken simply as the human psyche but his music, notwithstanding its splendours, was much less wholesome and spiritually clean than what had gone before. For all his revolutionary impact he didn't come out of nowhere as first baroque and then classical music introduced much more of an earthly human element. But Beethoven took music, and hence art and even human consciousness, to the next level, shifting the focus entirely from God to Man.

This was necessary and intended. To be actively spiritual we had to become more aware of ourselves, and the Romantic movement, of which Beethoven was an extremely significant part, was crucial in bringing this about. We cannot blame Beethoven for the fact that music and art eventually descended into an obsession with (fake) originality and the celebration of ugliness or that second-rate artists decided that, not being particularly creative themselves, their purpose was to shock, épater les bourgeois being their guiding motivation. But his was the seed that grew into a poisonous weed because it was fertilised by corrupted ideology and thought. Moreover, his music already contained elements of the spiritual decadence that would follow after him in a more explicit and developed form.

What should have happened? Having become more aware of self and its creative potential, human consciousness and art (each feeding into the other) should have turned back to God, now seeing him as immanent as well as transcendent. This began to happen to a partial degree but not enough and instead the whole process was thrown off track by the growing atheism and materialism, the consequences of which are still ongoing and developing.

All contemporary art and music is, to a greater or lesser extent, corrupt. If we want to breathe a purer air our best bet is to refresh ourselves, as I did with the Dowland, with music of a previous era. This will not be perfect but it will be spiritually healthy because it will come from a time when the truth of divine being was recognised and not just recognised but primary. Here's a piece to start you off. It comes from a polyphonic mass by the 16th century Italian composer Palestrina. It's the final Agnus Dei of his Missa Brevis in a particularly heartfelt performance. There is still great beauty in the world.

Missa Brevis Agnus Dei II

Palestrina has rather a noble face too.