I can't recall if there was a previous discussion but, I do remember you said you are a music major. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the alleged inherent sinfulness of a genre of music.
Yes, my undergraduate degree is in music. A lot of what I am about to say will be challenging to understand if you don't have a working knowledge of the basics of music theory (tonality, key, pitch, scales, etc.), as well as a little bit of music history. I say this only because I do not know what you know about these things.
By the end of my undergraduate studies, I had acquired a great love for the music of Arnold Schönberg. He was an Austrian composer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who developed twelve-tone and serial atonal music. To put it in layman's terms, he developed a system of music theory and composition that was utterly free of
tonality—that quality of the vast majority of music where it has a harmonic "home," whereby we know as listeners when a phrase or piece ends, when a musical idea has been completed. Without tonality, music is simply incomprehensible to most ears. Yet Schönberg's music, as well as that of his pupils, has a very, very tight mathematical structure. It is highly organized. For an example of this kind of atonal music, see
this.
I say all that to say this. In college, I loved this stuff. The more modern, the better. In hindsight, I was simply a snob. I liked liking what others hated. It made me feel sophisticated and nuanced. What got me off of it was going back to my music theory roots and becoming acquainted once again with the beautiful harmonic makeup with which God has created the world. I firmly believe that tonality is created into nature. Greek philosophers like Pythagoreus understood this. If you're wondering what I am referring to, watch
this explanation by Leonard Bernstein on the harmonic/overtone series, which Bernstein himself calls a "built-in, preordained universal." In short, the harmonic/overtone series is a natural and universal phenomenon where vibrating objects vibrate at higher frequencies simultaneously, producing a series of pitches above the "fundamental." The mathematical structure of this series is constant regardless of the fundamental pitch. For example, when you pluck the low E string of a guitar, you are hearing the E primarily (i.e., the "fundamental"), but you are also hearing the E above that, the B above that, the E above that, the G# above that, the D above that, etc. Bernstein explains this in more detail. The point is that the harmonic/overtone series is essentially as much a part of the laws of nature as gravity is. The harmonic/overtone series is precisely what modern composers like Schönberg were attempting to break away from.
I realized at that point that atonal music—which characterized much of the nonsense of the twentieth century—while perhaps not inherently
sinful, was undoubtedly rooted in rebellion against God's created order. The sad thing is that I, as an image bearer, had the equipment to discern this: atonal music, for the most part, is positively ugly, a fact I was unwilling to admit in the years of my musical snobbery. There is a reason atonal music is ugly. It is
unnatural. Now, there is a place for pushing the boundaries of tonality. Richard Wagner did it to significant effect. His opera
Tristan und Isolde is four hours of utter musical suspense, the resolution of which does not arrive until the final minute or two. He pushed the boundaries but did so within the framework of the natural order of things.
I could say so much more, but time does not allow me. Hopefully, this is at least a tiny bit helpful in answering your question from my perspective.
