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Religion, politics, and musical taste

40K views 191 replies 56 participants last post by  Johnnie Burgess 
#1 ·
Is there any relation between the political/religious ideas/beliefs of a person and his/er musical taste?.
 
#7 · (Edited)
What a person likes to listen to is related to personality & individual tastes, which are strongly related to one's worldview, so there's bound to be a connection.

For example, I like Catholic sacred music, and I am a Catholic convert; I believe in individualism & simplicity, so I like Copland's Variations on a Shaker Hymn; I like order, in behaviour & society, and I love baroque music; I have always been interested in mysticism, which has led me to study Eastern religions, and I am drawn to oriental music.....
 
#140 ·
What a person likes to listen to is related to personality & individual tastes, which are strongly related to one's worldview, so there's bound to be a connection.

For example, I like Catholic sacred music, and I am a Catholic convert; I believe in individualism & simplicity, so I like Copland's Variations on a Shaker Hymn; I like order, in behaviour & society, and I love baroque music; I have always been interested in mysticism, which has led me to study Eastern religions, and I am drawn to oriental music.....
Do you know Meister Eckhart and the Rhineland Mystics?
 
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#9 ·
I think there can be. Although I think religion is a bit of a red herring. Within the Catholic church, for example, there does seem to be a strong link between "socially aware" movements and a modernist approach to music in the liturgy - folk songs and guitars, whereas a more traditional approach to social issues is often more associated with a more old-fashioned approach to music in the liturgy - organ music, motets, choir anthems and plain chant.

Quite where Taizé fits into this, I know not. It seems to cover all the bases.

There is the Protestant view that hymn singing is "wrong" and that one should concentrate mainly on psalms and other quotations from the Bible sung a cappella - typical examples are the Gaelic psalms of the Hebrides and the dissenters who sang psalms to hornpipes. There are also those Protestants who accept the use of instrumental music in the liturgy and also hymn singing. The wiki article on Hymns is useful on this. Depending on which side you are, this must influence your attitude to music irrespective of your political views.

Quite how this relates to classical music I don't quite know. I do know that the pianist for the folk mass does children's musical theatre and modern tunes, whereas the organist for the traditional mass is quite happy to plug all the classical music activities going on in town.

In some ways, it is difficult to say what comes first, one's attitude to music, one's overall personality, one's politics or one's attitudes to religion and the way you see religion informing your life. it was quite funny to see on http://www.talkclassical.com/28172-pope-francis-loves-opera.html some of the comments, as if being pope meant he was no longer a human being.
 
#11 ·
All you need to refute any association that religion has any influence on people's preference of listening is to find one religious listener that thinks that Felix Mendelssohn is the greatest composer that ever lived, and find another person who is totally secular that holds the same. Once two different peoples like the same thing, its because they actually like it for what it is, without any other considerations.
 
#14 · (Edited)
I think that is not my case. I'm not into any kind of political '-ism' and much less, religious. I have never been entangled with such things. Also, no views about the world. As well, I don't know which elements make a 'musical taste'. What happens if somebody asks for my musical taste....? :confused:

Now, does liking Pärt's music tell people that I am religious.... No.

Does listening Gurdjieff's 'Sacred Hymns' tell people that I tend to be mystical... No.

Does liking Shostakovich tell people I embrace political issues... No way.

Does listening to Wagner tell people I embrace racial* or foundational archetypal [stereotype?] idealizations mankind needs... No.

Does liking Mahler's Second tell people I hold afterlife or resurrection believes... No.

Similarly, I love Mozart's masses and it is fascinating that they are not solemn, finding in them certain irreverence... and that is great.

*Racial is used here in its ethnic/anthropological concept.
 
#17 ·
Fap.

"All you need to refute any association that religion has any influence on people's preference of listening"

One and one don't add up to that 'refute'. You gotta say what you mean, even if you don't mean what you say.

;)
 
#20 ·
The thing with religious music, though, is that so much of classical is religious and it's hard to avoid. I'm an atheist but I like the religious music of many composers. Usually it's because I like it as music - Bach's cantatas don't have any meaning for me except in the abstract - but sometimes the work moves beyond basic dogma and says something that interests me - Bernstein's Mass springs to mind.
Also, a piece of music might attempt to express the sort of social/political things I believe in, but I'd have to like it as a piece of music first.
 
#21 · (Edited)
I'm a practising Catholic, but I don't enjoy listening to hymns and sacred oratorios in my spare time :eek: although I do enjoy listening to organ music. I listen to all kinds of instrumental classical music for pleasure and enjoyment, including modern, but I tend to take the bizarre types less seriously and often find them to be abrasive. For some, however, even Schoenberg, Webern and early Stockhausen are bizarre. Likewise, for some, recognizing that the planet is the source of all life and it's destruction spells the destruction of all life is a leftist and anti-capitalist idea :confused: Many of my favourite composers were Jewish and I enjoy Turkish and Arabic Classical Music. In my high school years, I was fortunate to know people who had encyclopaedic tastes in music and this has definitely given me a head start over others whose experiences were limited to 'classic' rock. Despite this background, my interest has focussed on the global art music traditions, mainly those of the west, the greater middle east and the far east.

In my own experience, there is no relationship between musical taste and religious belief or political leaning.
 
#25 ·
I did not have a religious upbringing and the Christian religion meant nothing to me for the longest time. However, in recent years that has changed and I've become more interested in the religious and cultural heritage of which, it cannot be helped, I am a part.

I used to have reservations about sacred music and avoided it altogether. Trapped in a kind of vulgar nerd atheism à la Dawkins, I considered sacred music evil propaganda.

But over the years, the music of Bach, Bruckner, Górecki, Pärt and Hovhaness slowly helped loosen the ideological knot inside of me. I didn't even notice it, but over time, their music made me become more and more tolerant toward religion. And in the end, it even helped me accept and embrace my own religious affiliation as a part of my cultural identity.

Or maybe the propaganda simply paid off.
 
#26 ·
I'm an atheist/ left wing (socialist democracy)/ pacifist and tolerant. I also study physics (I guess it can be relevant to the discussion).
I like all periods, but my favorite is 20th century. I also try to compose music in this style.
I have no problem with religious music, but my appreciation is strictly musical.
 
#28 · (Edited)
Well, with famous composers, we usually know at least a little about what role religion and politics play(ed), so the real question concerns audiences (the "listeners").

With popular music, I think there is often some connection. Generally speaking, Mormons aren't going to be listening to the latest gay club hits, atheists won't be following Christian pop, Obamabots won't be line dancing to a country tune about kicking some other country's ***, tea partiers won't be moving and grooving to raps about how macho you are for killing the police, and so on.

I don't think there is near as much of a connection when it comes to classical music and the 'listeners' because it's actually, gasp, about the music for most people who care about classical. I think some religious people are attracted to certain works by Bach and others because of the sacred angle. And if you polled those who say they follow contemporary classical, I'm willing to bet that you'd find the political average to be somewhere left of center. But that's all I dare guess. As this thread shows, tastes are often unpredictable.
 
G
#29 ·
I am devoutly religious, Christian, politically conservative.

The music I listen to is jazz, punk rock, 80's new wave, some classic rock, and then classical - baroque, renaissance, classical, romantic. I don't care for much of 20th century music.

Make of that what you will.
 
#30 · (Edited)
For most classical listeners, it would seem to be about the music. It certainly is for me. I am not interested in a composer's religion or political views when listening.

With pop music, it is somewhat more complicated. The genre of popular music and especially the lyrics usually determine my interest, but I can 'close my ears' to some dubious lyrics. The Velvet Underground's song, Heroin, for example, makes me squeamish, but I have known the album since my high school days. Some of the Black Sabbath I listened to when I was thirteen has lyrics that are similarly disturbing, but I can overlook them, likely because I have known them for so long. I am not much inclined to discover new popular songs, however, that express values grossly inconsistent with my own.
 
#31 ·
Lyrics (if one can make them out) transmit information. Much (most?) of the time the music really is accompaniment/mood enhancement for the message. Songs therefor are a different beastie altogether from 'pure' music. So... are we discussing in this thread music, or 'text messages' that have music hitched to them? Is that a valid distinction?

I think it's time for a drink.
 
#32 · (Edited)
^ Well, I'm not trying to pass the buck, but it was Fermat who brought up a distinction between listeners of classical and listeners of popular musics. I felt that the distinction was very relevant to my listening habits, so, perhaps it is a valid distinction.

You make a good point about lyrics, "if one can make them out." I find that most of the time, I can't, which might explain some of my tolerance for objectionable material.
 
G
#33 ·
I will say that my tolerance for some things has gone down with time.

While I still enjoy the punk rock of my youth (much of it for the nostalgia), as I listen to the lyrics I find they are so out of step with my own beliefs that I find it harder and harder to pay money for the music, not wanting to subsidize things with which I disagree. So my purchases of punk rock have dropped off precipitously. Consequently, my purchases of classical music has risen.

I do enjoy religious-themed classical music - Bach's cantatas and oratorios, various mass and requiem settings - and have enjoyed learning the meanings behind the various parts, even if my own religious beliefs are not completely in harmony with them.

Would I be less inclined towards a classical work that ran contrary to those beliefs? I don't know. I would have to do some research to see if there was something that fell along those lines. For me, it is more the music underpinning any words that carries the greater work. Would I listen to Bach's Mass in B Minor if the music itself wasn't incredible? Maybe once, and then it would be forgotten. Would I care for Haydn's Creation if the music was not appealing? Probably not. I can get the story of Creation from the Bible if that was all the oratorio offered.
 
#35 · (Edited)
I will say that my tolerance for some things has gone down with time.
Mine has, too. Even for some modern classical, that I loosely call bizarre. Yet, when I sample the 'bizarre' music, I often find myself liking it :D Just yesterday, I had said that Lachenmann was often too strange and abrasive and then I spent over an hour really enjoying lengthy snippets of a fair number of his works that I found on YT.

While I still enjoy the punk rock of my youth (much of it for the nostalgia), as I listen to the lyrics I find they are so out of step with my own beliefs that I find it harder and harder to pay money for the music, not wanting to subsidize things with which I disagree.
I feel the same way. I simply don't continue to pay money for that kind of thing: I've already bought it all :clap: I don't listen to much nostalgia music, actually, as many days go by before I play anything non-classical and, when I do, I've mastered the art of 'closing my ears'.

[D]oes the music we enjoy demonstrate our religious or political viewpoint, and can we... be inclined towards a classical work that runs contrary to our beliefs. ...I can enjoy Hindu vedic chants even though I don't share that faith or view of life or society.
As I had concluded in post #21, and this appears to be the consensus of many other respondents, "there is no relationship between musical taste and religious belief or political leaning." I was mainly talking about instrumental classical musics and popular music with unintelligible lyrics or popular music that has nostalgic appeal, since that is what I listen to. I expressly avoid non-Western classical music with vocals: I don't like religious chanting :(
 
#34 · (Edited)
The thread raises two questions - does the music we enjoy demonstrate our religious or political viewpoint, and can we, as Dr Mike puts it in post 33, be inclined towards a classical work that runs contrary to our beliefs.

I have been considering this point. I can enjoy Hindu vedic chants even though I don't share that faith or view of life or society. It's much the same as enjoying a poem that one doesn't agree with - a lot of Blake's poetry falls into this category. I find Blake's views often bitter & extreme & he displays the sort of 'antinomian tendencies' that are generally anathema to me :) - but for all that, I really do like and admire his Songs of Experience.

If I analyse what I'm doing, it isn't just enjoying the form of the work of art or appreciating its beauty, it's a sort of empathy, putting oneself in the artist's or musician's shoes and sharing the feeling that is in the song/poem. But there are limits - I couldn't 'enjoy' violent or racially abusive art, because I would find that sort of empathy impossible.
 
#36 ·
Many people here feel there is no correlation between religious or political beliefs and musical preference. Without doing a study to determine whether such a correlation exists, I'm not sure how anyone would have the slightest idea one way or the other. The issue is enormously complex and finding correlations would involve first determining the preferences and beliefs of large numbers of people and then using an unbiased procedure to look for correlations.

Since I had no idea, I Googled studies of such correlations. The resulting papers tend to be long and a bit complicated, but as far as I can tell every paper that I looked at found that correlations do exist. Unfortunately, reading through those papers and summarizing results is not quite worth it for me. I'm not even sure if the papers agreed in their conclusions.
 
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