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Does music and religion really go together?

16K views 72 replies 35 participants last post by  Tikoo Tuba 
#1 ·
I personally feel they should be separate, both express very different things. I can't speak for everyone, but I respect your thoughts :)
 
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#2 ·
Actually, I see "Religious music" as a redundant phrase. The best time to listen to music is when I'm half-asleep so that the sounds and phrases produce corresponding simultaneous, unfiltered dream images. If anything, I get more "revelatory" images listening to Merzbow in that state than I do Bach even though pretty much everything Bach wrote was in service to the Lutheran church. The same thing happens when using psychotropic drugs to enhance the listening experience--I get as much of a religious experience from Jazz as I do a hymn. All music is religious. I see separating them into little isolated compartments to be counterproductive and a failure to make a fundamentally important connection to the universe, consciousness and existence. But that's just me.
 
#57 · (Edited)
I think you can listen to "religious music" anywhere but it is not "religious music" unless it is taking place to honour your God(s). I played the organ in my church yesterday and took part in two different choirs. You do get a shared experience with everyone taking part that "feels religious".

This can also happen at other venues I am told by one of my best friends (who is atheist) it was an religious experience to see her favourite band live (The Pink Floyd).

Music has a way to move the soul that is why it is used for religious reasons I think. When you are at the Symphony and you feel the awe it is this feeling. If you agree or not is religious does not matter this is what in my experience is meant by it. In history the closet people would come to this was church so it is linked this way also.

Are you are purely talking works religious in nature hymns, chants and mantras et al? Those are religious by definition although can he enjoyed by non-religious also I wonder if it has a lesser experience?
 
#3 · (Edited)
Music and religion can go together. Sometimes there is some lovely choral work during Mass & I listen to it in a different way than I would to a secular song or, say, to a baroque piece that I might be listening to in a concert held in a church - that's the usual venue for a Norwich Baroque concert. I am appreciating the music but I am also blending it in with my own religious feelings. It is an aid to worship, not just a musical experience.

I am not of course saying that music and religion have to go together or that an atheist couldn't enjoy the choral work as much as me - though s/he would be enjoying it in a different way.

Music also 'goes together' with other things, such as romantic love or mourning. And other art forms can 'go together' with these emotions or themes, and with religion too. I suppose it must be possible for an atheist to appreciate the York Mystery Plays, say, and to put oneself mentally into the spirit of them to enjoy the texts and the acting and to 'live a little' in that space.

In 'Paradise Lost' religion and poetry can go together, and atheists & believers alike read the poetry and savour the metaphysical ideas.

An atheistic Handel-lover will probably put his/her existential stance aside in order to appreciate the way that the music and the religious texts and sentiments marry perfectly.

For me, to say that religion and music can't go together is to limit both, and to limit one's own sensitivity. Saying that religion and music can go together is not the same as saying that they must go together, or that one must be formally religious in order to have a spiritual experience.

Using one's imagination and powers of empathy one can go beyond oneself. I would recommend it.
But horses for courses.
 
#9 · (Edited)
I'm not sure that music is a necessary accompaniment to religion.

Sacred music, whether heard in a religious service or elsewhere, can enhance the enjoyment of both the music and the service for people with a religious inclination. In such situations music and religion go together.

For people who do not share the same religion, or have no religion at all, they might or might not enjoy sacred music. If they do enjoy such music, their appreciation of it probably won't be enhanced, or modified in any way, by the religious connotations of the music. In such situations music and religion do not go together.
 
#16 · (Edited)
For people who do share the same religion, or have no religion at all, they might or might not enjoy sacred music. If they do enjoy such music, their appreciation of it probably won't be enhanced, or modified in any way, by the religious connotations of the music. In such situations music and religion do not go together.
Just thinking about that statement as a believer, personally, there is much contemporary Christian music that I can't stand. Some of it is so bad, mediocre, or just plain uninspired that it even can make me irritated. Some songs I find myself tolerating and doing my best to see the good in, but I have to admit, I am relieved when they are over. Also, some church singers sing with such egos that they distract from the music, and others sing with no sense of inspiration, and it deadens the effect of the song. I know people who won't go to a certain church because they don't like its music. They even have a term for it: worship wars. So in that case, the wrong music or the wrong singing can cause a religion - the root word meaning it binds people to God or to each other - to actually break apart.
 
#21 ·
Here's an interesting quote from "Religion and Art," an essay by Wagner. He speaks of"art" in general, but as a composer he was certainly thinking of music, and his own goals as a composer of opera, in particular:

"One might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion by recognising the figurative value of the mythic symbols which the former would have us believe in their literal sense, and revealing their deep and hidden truth through an ideal presentation. Whilst the priest stakes everything on the religious allegories being accepted as matters of fact, the artist has no concern at all with such a thing, since he freely and openly gives out his work as his own invention. But Religion has sunk into an artificial life, when she finds herself compelled to keep on adding to the edifice of her dogmatic symbols, and thus conceals the one divinely True in her beneath an ever growing heap of incredibilities commended to belief. Feeling this, she has always sought the aid of Art; who on her side has remained incapable of higher evolution so long as she must present that alleged reality of the symbol to the senses of the worshipper in form of fetishes and idols,— whereas she could only fulfil her true vocation when, by an ideal presentment of the allegoric figure, she led to apprehension of its inner kernel, the truth ineffably divine."
 
#22 ·
Here's an interesting quote from "Religion and Art," an essay by Wagner. He speaks of"art" in general, but as a composer he was certainly thinking of music, and his own goals as a composer of opera, in particular:

"...Whilst the priest stakes everything on the religious allegories being accepted as matters of fact, the artist has no concern at all with such a thing, since he freely and openly gives out his work as his own invention..."
I would certainly agree with this part of the Wagner quote.
 
#24 ·
Historically they were the very foundation and inspiration to many great composers, completely inseparable.
 
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#27 · (Edited)
I am an agnostic-atheist (they are not mutually exclusive positions), but there is no question in my mind, that the do.

Just because I do not believe in any of the gods posited by various religions, for many religions, music is deeply imbedded.

Sufism, for example would be hard pressed to exist, without the ecstatic mental state created by their traditional dance to traditional music.
 
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#30 ·
Religion does not need any form of ecstatic mental state to develop, I suppose.

Religion is Philosophy and must be investigated.

That's the beauty of the subject, religious or non-religious, to be totally free...

Now, music is art, and as such, must be also created in a free mind.
Not to be used just for internal market, by any religion.
 
#28 ·
Music = singing
Faith, belief, doubt etc. = speaking

I can listen to singing as if someone is speaking to me and I can listen to speaking as if someone is singing to me. Do they go together? In the reality of singing & speaking: yes. But as soon as one abstracts from this reality: no.
 
#33 ·
A brief summary of this as I understand it: Christianity began as an offshoot of Judaism, a religion which is full of music, so they kept the tradition of singing, probably even having cantors who were now Christians sing in their services. Paul the apostle classified the Christian music of his time as "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs." The New Testament is full of quotes from early Christian hymns and songs.

Apparently the early churches, at least in the West, frowned on instrumental music. Clement wrote around 150 AD "We need one instrument, the peaceful word of adoration, not harps or drums or pipes or trumpets," and John Chrysostom in AD 345 wrote, "We need no instruments, no trained voice, but only a sober mind . . ."

Of course, there was always tension between clergy and musicians, but eventually the musicians convinced the clergy that instruments were acceptable (or just did it anyway until the priests got tired of objecting), and here we are.
 
#40 ·
I came across an old record at my college radio station purporting to demonstrate the direct descent of early Christian chant from Jewish chant by juxtaposing melodically similar chants. I don't know how scholarly any of this really was. I can't find much else reputable written along those lines. But it's an interesting attempt.
 
#56 ·
Music can do anything religion can do, backwards and in high heels...
 
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