Church Preaches The Music Of Beethoven
"...the idea is to find spirituality through culture, through the culturalgifts that so many people have suffered for and created over so many
generations..." There is some truth to this and value. Viewing these cultural gifts, such as Brahms' Requiem or Bach's cantatas outside of their, purportedly, sacred settings can diminish a complete apprerication for their work. The idea of this church does make a strong argument for absolute music, music that exists for itself and not to express or imply a "program" or underlying meaning. To some extent this is where churches, such as Tenth Pres in Phila have successfully used culture to point towards spirituality; music as a vehicle to point to the glory of God not as an end in itself.
2 comments:
Jeremy,
What I took away from this article is that these folks are worshipping the creature--the composers--and not the Creator, the one who made music. If the purpose of this place was to worship GOd, then fine; but I don't get the sense that that's what they want to do--they want to worship a god of their own design.
I don't think that's necessarily the case. The enjoyment of good art is not worship. I would simply suggest that some of these works are better appreciated within a sacred context. If people want to gather and listen to some excellent classical music and creatively interact with their culture, more power to them.
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