Chapter

One

MUSIC AND THE AESTHETIC ASPECT

O ne of the most universal phenomena of the human world is that

of music. Music has always been an essential part of humanity.
Through music we become more human. Perhaps different from
other fine arts, music can be produced simply by our bodily organs.
Yet, the phenomena of musical instruments are also amply attested
in human history. Music can be related to numbers, movement,
metabolism, affection, mind, technique, language, society, economy,
beauty, ethics, and religion, to name but a few. Perhaps the most
obvious relation is to beauty, that is, the aesthetic aspect. Human
beings are created with a sense of enjoyment, both physically and
spiritually. Being created in body and soul/spirit, we do not enjoy
things merely through our sensory perception but also through the
understanding of our mind. Thus, Jacques Maritain explains,

Beauty is essentially the object of intelligence, for what

knows in the full meaning of the word is the mind, which
alone is open to the infinity of being. The natural site of
beauty is the intelligible world: thence it descends. But
it falls in a way within the grasp of the senses, since
the senses in the case of man serve the mind and can
themselves rejoice in knowing: ‘the beautiful relates only
to sight and hearing of all senses, because these two are
1
maxime cognoscitivi’.

1
2  THE PLACE OF MUSIC IN THE CHURCH AND IN SOCIETY

Disintegration between senses and mind results in broken

experience of beauty. If we want to appreciate music, we have to
include both the sensory and the intellectual faculty. It means that
it is not enough to enjoy music merely in a sensorial way; rather, we
have to be able to understand and access the content with our mind.
The Christian Reformed philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd
speaks of the aesthetic aspect of being human that has to do with
2
harmony. Himself an accomplished pianist, Dooyeweerd not only
loves music but also gives a theoretical grounding of art appreciation.
He distinguishes music from art works of the plastic types (e.g.
painting, sculpture, wood carvings, etc.). Unlike the plastic types,
music does not display the structure of objective things; rather, it
can only be objectified in the structure of (music) scores. Because of
its lack of objective, music always needs a subjective actualization,
which we call the art of performance. In music, “aesthetic
objectification and actualization… remain in direct contact with
3
the re-creating individual conception of the performing artist.”
Yet, from the perspective of Christian aesthetics, the individual
4
aesthetic subjectivity can never be absolutized.
With the aesthetic aspect, we can appreciate what is beautiful
or what is ugly. The perception of beauty, though many people
believe that it is in the eye of the beholder, has objective criteria.
In other words, the perception of beauty is not just a matter of
subjective taste. Placing the beauty (or ugliness) of music merely
in the ear of the listener will make music independent from biblical
aesthetic judgment. We believe that the Bible is sufficient, including
sufficient in making the right judgment about beautiful (or ugly)
music. The Bible does not only judge between right and wrong
intellectual concepts; the Bible also judges our individual taste of
beauty and ugliness. Though not many biblical verses deal directly
with the topic of music, we can learn biblical principles of beauty
from the Bible. The Bible teaches us about what is true beauty.
From the biblical aesthetic principles, we can examine objectively
whether our artistic taste is biblically beautiful or not.
Drawing from the theology of creation in the Book of Genesis,
Augustine examined beauty through the criterion of form. “The earth
was without form and void” (Genesis 1:2). Out of this formlessness of
5
the earth, God created beauty. Things that are more beautiful have
more form and less of void while uglier things have less form and
more of the void. In the world, there is a hierarchy of beauty. The
main criteria of beauty, according to Augustine, are unity, equality,
 Music and the Aesthetic Aspect  3

6
number, proportion, and order. God is the supreme beauty because
7
“nothing in him is unequal, nothing unlike another.” Of proportion
he wrote, “…in all the arts it is symmetry [or proportion] that gives
8
pleasure, preserving unity and making the whole beautiful.”
Thomas Aquinas advocated the objectivity of beauty, that
is, the view that beauty is inherent in the object. Because of this
objectivity, beauty must have some certain criteria or conditions.
According to Thomas, there are three conditions for beauty: integrity
9
or perfection, proportion or harmony, and brightness or clarity.
Thomas referred the conditions to the Son, thus liberating the idea
of beauty from mere impersonal concepts. Integrity has a likeness to
the Son insofar as He “has in Himself truly and perfectly the nature
of the Father.” Proportion agrees with the Son, “inasmuch as He is
the express Image of the Father.” Lastly, brightness can be found
in the Son, as the Word, “which is the light and splendor of the
intellect.” Thomas explained integrity in the context of wholeness
10
and completeness. When we expound on these qualities in relation
to music, musical integrity means the perfection of lacking nothing
in its form. Harmony is the property that guarantees music to
be well balanced. Lastly, brightness is the quality that makes
the listeners want to hear the music again with fresh and deeper
understanding. In other words, musical works that become cliché
through repetition cannot be considered beautiful music.
Before discussing the material definition of beauty above,
Thomas gave a formal definition of beauty in his Summa theologiae.
He distinguished beauty from goodness, although in a thing both
are fundamentally identical. Yet fundamentally identical does not
necessarily mean logically identical. Logically speaking, goodness
relates to the appetitive faculty while beauty to the cognitive
11
faculty “for beautiful things are those which please when seen.”
Hence, the discussion of beauty cannot be simply reduced to a
matter of personal or subjective taste, in the modern sense of the
words. Beauty’s relation to the cognitive faculty obliges Thomas to
further give the material definition of beauty which is the three
conditions of integrity, proportion, and brightness. Thomas followed
Augustine when he wrote that beautiful things please because they
are beautiful instead of they are beautiful because they please. The
aesthetic experience of beauty does not begin with our subjective
perception but with the objective conditions of beauty. Beauty is
not merely in the eye of the beholder but first of all in the beautiful
things. Thus when our senses delight in beautiful things, they
4  THE PLACE OF MUSIC IN THE CHURCH AND IN SOCIETY

delight because of the objective conditions of beauty in those things.

In this context, beauty is rightly said to have the aspect of a formal
cause. When we explicate this formal aspect in relation to music,
musical beauty should also relate to our cognitive faculty, that
is, we should understand with our mind the objective criteria of
musical beauty.
Perhaps one last point should be mentioned of Thomas’s
aesthetics, namely, the importance of the functional purpose of an
art work. Defending the apt disposition of human body as God’s art
work despite its proneness, Thomas argued:

Now every artist intends to give to his work the best

disposition; not absolutely the best, but the best as
regards the proposed end; and even if this entails some
defect, the artist cares not: thus, for instance, when man
makes himself a saw for the purpose of cutting, he makes
it of iron, which is suitable for the object in view; and he
does not prefer to make it of glass, though this be a more
beautiful material, because this very beauty would be an
12
obstacle to the end he has in view.

According to this principle, the beauty of music cannot be

thought without a view of its proper functional end. Beauty has a
relational aspect. Is certain kind of music beautiful to be used in the
church? Is this music suitable for leisure time? Or, is it proper for
times of grief, times of joy, for evoking a certain mood, etc.? These
are questions that need to be answered.
Significant as it may be, we should be cautious with the
definitions of beauty which originated from Greek philosophy for
they usually neglect the reality of sin. When we believe in the
spreading infiltration of sin in all earthly realms, then we should
also accept the brokenness of beauty in our fallen world. Because of
its proximity to the spiritual in offering a sense of transcendence,
the beautiful can be mistaken as a replacement for God. Brand and
Chaplin warn us that

The line between a spiritual experience and an aesthetic

one is very fine, and the two are easily confused. The
very feelings of tranquility and delight that art gives
us can lull us into thinking that we are right with God.
...No doubt there were officers of the Third Reich who felt
uplifted listening to Mozart and Beethoven on their wind-
 Music and the Aesthetic Aspect  5

up gramophones, after a hard day in the concentration

camps. For them it was a welcome escape from the cruel
13
activities of their day.

As a gift from God, artistic beauty can become a manifestation

of our idolatry. The Bible makes sure that we do not confuse divine
beauty with worldly beauty when it speaks about the suffering
Messiah: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and
rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”
(Isaiah 53:2-3). Yet, “God chose what is low and despised in the
world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are”
(1 Corinthians 1:28). Worldly beauty can distract us from the true
vision of divine beauty.
Similar to Brand and Chaplin, Begbie writes: “I see no
compelling reason why we should construe art as constantly moving
14
us beyond this material world to some ‘higher’ realm.” Quoting
John Dixon, Begbie argues for the physicality of art, namely that art
should be perceived first and foremost as a thing or an object instead
of “merely a means for the communication of some non-physical
15
entity.” This is not to say that art should be independent from
biblical aesthetic judgment; rather, art should not always be placed
as an instrument that serves a higher end. As we shall see later in
chapter three, the instrumentalist view of art is a dominant concept
in the theologies of the reformers. They view music, for instance,
as a vehicle for the Word of God. Indeed, we need to complement
such view with another view particularly that from the theology of
creation. Creation-theological perspective allows us to view art not
only as a means but also as an object that has beauty (or ugliness)
in itself. There is a legitimate place in art for discussing both the
presence and the absence of beauty.
The counterpart of the Greek idealist view of beauty is the
expressionist view. This view defines beauty as whatsoever that
truthfully imitates human emotions. Expressionism seeks a more
realistic approach compared to the Greek idealist view. From a
Christian perspective, a third view that draws insights from both
the idealist and expressionist view is possible. With the idealists,
this third approach believes in the inseparable relation between
beauty and truth and goodness. With the expressionists, it takes
into account the reality of evil and suffering. Yet, at the same time,
this view is more than both the idealist and the expressionist view:
6  THE PLACE OF MUSIC IN THE CHURCH AND IN SOCIETY

“It is a worldview wherein God’s original creation has been spoiled,

16
and yet is being transformed, by grace, into something good.”