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Author Topic:   Christmas music
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 10 of 72 (272659)
12-25-2005 4:26 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Faith
12-25-2005 10:54 AM


Narrow, generally speaking
Faith writes:
I'd be careful about the "religion" generalization though. It was Christ who inspired all this, not "religion."
I'd be careful about the "Christ" narrowness though. Religions other and older than Christianity inspired most of the world's music, and human cultures invented music millenia before Christianity existed.
With that out of the way, O Holy Night and Silent Night are goose-bumpy beautiful songs. Everything Bach wrote is sublime. You won't be surprised to hear that I find Handel oversentimentalized and boring.

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Faith, posted 12-25-2005 10:54 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by berberry, posted 12-25-2005 5:07 PM Omnivorous has replied
 Message 16 by Faith, posted 12-25-2005 10:07 PM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 13 of 72 (272678)
12-25-2005 6:10 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by berberry
12-25-2005 5:07 PM


Re: Narrow, generally speaking
berberry writes:
Oh come on! We are talking about Christmas, after all. I'm no warrior on "happy holidays" or anything, but where we're talking about Christmas I think even Faith is justified in being a little bit Christo-centric.
Well, sure she is, berberry, but that didn't happen in a vacuum. Faith felt compelled to correct someone else's entirely accurate statement with her Christobigotry.
When she insists on seizing upon someone else's complimentary comments about religion's deep influence on music to claim credit for all Christmas music for Christ--an assumption about Christmas music composers she cannot possibly defend, given the long secular Christmas tradition and the unknowable beliefs of even ostensibly Christan composers--even a mild-mannered pagan like me has to protest...
...in a loving, Christian-like way, of course.
And I'm not a Happy Holiday warrior either--it's Christmas, let's just say Merry Christmas. My employers are Jewish, and I tell them Merry Christmas for Christmas, and they reply the same--they host a Christmas party where one of them dons a Santa hat and distributes gifts to us all; they tell me Happy Hannukah, and I reply the same, and I present gifts each year to one or more of the six of them; one of my newly-hired fellow employees, a Jordanian Muslim, wishes us all both Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah: I look forward to learning and sharing his own religion's blessing wishes.
Unfortunately, my fellow employees who are "Christian" rarely miss an opportunity to disrespect and insult both Judaism and Islam. I wish them a Merry Christmas, as I have Faith, but I also voice my diagreement and disapproval, every time they indulge in that little bit of hatefulness. I'm funny that way. I've taken lumps from racists, homophobes, and zealots all my life for my penchant for speaking out, and I won't stop now.
So, no, I'm not cutting Faith any more slack here than anywhere else.
Nonetheless, the Christmas spirit moves me to love her just as much as she loves me.
BTW, anything Mahalia sings moves me.
Merry Christmas, berberry, to you and all of yours!
This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 12-25-2005 06:11 PM

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by berberry, posted 12-25-2005 5:07 PM berberry has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by berberry, posted 12-25-2005 6:24 PM Omnivorous has not replied
 Message 19 by Faith, posted 12-25-2005 10:49 PM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 24 of 72 (272731)
12-25-2005 11:36 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by Faith
12-25-2005 10:07 PM


Re: Narrow, generally speaking
OK, I'll challenge you: You'd be hard pressed to produce examples of very good music, let alone even ONE truly sublime piece of music, something comparable to Bach, in praise of God in any other religion.
Well, that's just silly: I'd be hard pressed to "produce examples of very good music" from other religious cultures? How arrogant you are in your Western cloister.
I'm tempted to tell you that the simple flutes of native peoples are every bit as sublime as Bach (which they are), but I'm sure you'd wave that away, since that is not enough musical structure to embody elaborated doctrine, something Bach does so well.
I will point you instead to an entire musical culture, the Hindustani classical music of northern India and its southern counterpart, the carnatic. They use a 12-tone, untempered scale; the northern form (my favorite) is typically performed as a raga: the intervals can shift to accommodate the devices of the composer. The music is invariably sublime, and the shifting intervals and complex harmonies rival the best of the Western tradition, all in praise of Krishna and Rama.
I adore much of Bach, but I am also aware that he believed passionately in divinely ordained monarchs, and his music often longs for death. He offers as much to beware of as to admire.
Handel is pompous and prosy when he isn't too busy being saccharine and sanctimonious. I'd rather listen to the rain.

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This message is a reply to:
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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 25 of 72 (272732)
12-25-2005 11:42 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by Faith
12-25-2005 10:49 PM


Re: Narrow, generally speaking
Faith writes:
I believe it is simple fact, not bigotry at all. Christ has been the inspiration of the greatest music ever produced on earth. I firmly believe this and my challenge stands. "Religion" as such has produced nothing in particular musically otherwise. There is a lot of inspiring folk music from around the world, religious and not, but only Christ has inspired the sublime.
Ibid.

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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 26 of 72 (272733)
12-25-2005 11:45 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by Faith
12-25-2005 11:20 PM


Re: Narrow, generally speaking
Faith writes:
No other culture has ever reached for musical expression of something as sublime as the idea of God becoming a man and coming to earth
Incorrect.
Ibid.

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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 40 of 72 (273069)
12-26-2005 11:35 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by Faith
12-26-2005 5:04 PM


Re: SUBLIME is the category
Faith writes:
But put up your candidates please, your "pretty good-sized body of mighty-pretty-or-sublime Virgin Mary music."
Heh.
I don't think anybody wants to play pattycake with you, Faith.
While it may amuse you to wave away any non-Christian candidates for muscial sublimity (and it certainly amuses me to watch you do it), the exercise is a bit masturbatory.
As I pointed out above, you cannot know intimately the religious beliefs of even purportedly Christian composers. Further, you dismiss out of hand compostions from a culture about which you know next to nothing: of course their music doesn't speak to you--you don't speak that music's language, but still you are blithely content to dismiss the possibility of anything sublime in that entire oeuvre after hearing only a fragment of it, and studying none.
Theirs is a musical language of meditative universality and tolerance; yours is the musical language of an "exalted" ecclesiastical elite that is grounded on condemning the damned.
I offered the example of another religious culture, one far older than Christianity and one in which God takes human form for redemptive purposes; the adherents of that religion find their music every bit as sublime, and conducive to an adoration of God, as you do yours. The only real challenge has been more than met.
But at heart your "challenge" is a contrivance. Your ability to dismiss again and again what you neither know nor understand is not an answer; it is the problem.

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This message is a reply to:
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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 47 of 72 (273215)
12-27-2005 11:28 AM
Reply to: Message 41 by Faith
12-27-2005 12:13 AM


Evidence
Faith writes:
It's just fascinating how nobody has any evidence that I'm wrong, just a lot of namecalling. Just fascinating. It's just fascinating how nobody has any evidence that I'm wrong, just a lot of namecalling. Just fascinating.
You often find yourself in that position, Faith.
Your opinion is all the evidence you need to feel confident you are right to make sweeping claims of spiritual and cultural superiority; the evidence of thousands of years of high culture outside Christianity, is not evidence at all.
In response to the observation that this is the very definition of cultural bias fueled by ignorance and religious self-righteousness, you claim the critique is ad hominem.
Fascinating, indeed.

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