Song of Albion 2

My title is from Stephen Lawhead's trilogy - chosen because his concept echoes some of my own thoughts. I started this study on music following negative comments I have heard in our church about certain genres of music. I wanted a better understanding concerning music. I quickly realised how little I know about the subject and therefore how unqualified I am to judge. But the study was fun and I use these posts to summarise some of my findings. But first, here are my conclusions:

• Music has hidden power that can touch not only your emotions but also your spirit / innermost being - see here
• Nothing is unclean of itself - it is your involvement with it that may or may not be good, see Act 11:7-9 and Rom 14:14
• Whilst I do well to check out how music affects me, I have no right to be judgmental regarding your views, see Rom 14:4-5
• My duty not to offend others should affect what I do with music, see Rom 14:3 and Mat 22:36-40

If you do not like my conclusions maybe you should read no further - but I would be interested to hear what you think so do please consider leaving a comment.

What is music?

You'll find plenty of and disparate definitions but here is mine: "music is an ordered sequence of sounds that generally include notes. A note is one of an ordered set of tones (a 'scale'). A tone is a sound having musical pitch." A bit convoluted but then I am an engineer.

Music thus is ordered in both in time sequence and in choice of sounds. This order is what distinguishes it from noise. As a reaction against this status quo some exploratory avant garde musicians have tried to remove all semblance of order from their music, like John Cage in his 4'33" - three movements of silence...

and his Imaginary Landscape no.4. which uses random noise from transistor radios...

One has to try a bit harder to define music in such as way as to include these examples!

If you were able to travel back in time to the middle ages or before you would find very different music. Likewise the music of the orient with its quarter-tones might sound alien to western ears. Even in my lifetime church music has changed radically. And then there are all those musical genres to suit different tastes. I would be wary indeed to pounce of one such flavour and pronounce it diabolic without very good cause.

Notwithstanding there is "music" that I personally find objectionable, music that I find very appealing but something within me warns me not to allow myself to become immersed in it - maybe this is my upbringing, maybe not. Anyway I do not see why I or anyone else should not have personal choice in music any less than in colour or food.

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