Opus 2024-191: Thoughts on Music

The product of enthusiasm is not the same as the product of inspiration.  I am going through a stage of buying old CD’s in thrift stores and seeing what they have to offer.  One thing I am looking for is music from my past that I enjoyed and can still enjoy but have no access to any more.  Another interest is in listening to groups that I have never followed and hope that I will find some nuggets in the pile.  

There is a lot of very boring music out there.  One interest I have is Christian music that is helpful in worship.  Most of the contemporary music we are hearing in church today is the product of people excited with music and possibly in love with God.  It is not the music of genius or of inspiration.  It lacks that very special ingredient that makes it worth listening to a second time.  To be honest, it lacks worth in listening the first time.  It reminds me of the songs my grandchildren make up as they are playing in the living room.

I can say the same thing for the secular music I have been exploring.  I will go through an entire album and feel like it contained nothing that reaches into the depths of creativity or else it was being so creative that it was pointless.  Most “artists” have a pattern in their music.  Once you hear the first, you have already met the rest.  There are exceptions.  I put those aside to listen to again.  Maybe I will find some pieces that work into my inner being.

I am most familiar with traditional church music.  When you think about a well known song writer like Fanny Crosby and consider she probably wrote hundreds of hymns, it should slow you down when you consider that a hymnal with 800 different titles “only” has 20 of her songs.  We need to accept the fact that it is a rare jewel that has one song worth remembering over the generations.  Most people writing songs never produce anything that should make it out of the garage.  If their goal is to have a good time in the garage, well and good.  If they expect to take the world by storm, maybe another day.  We need to keep looking for the diamonds and put the glass aside to be recycled.

homo unius libri