The punchline couldn't have been more obvious for those who read on these kinds of issues--Americans have been presenting themselves as developing methods to give voices who don't default to white and European a chance to speak now but the historic interests of European Christian traditions was preserving the standards of orthodoxy handed down by the previously alluded to African and Asian bishops.
But for those Christian writers of a more traditionalist mind now a defense of the traditional can miss the ways in which is taken to be the traditional in music defaults to neither Africa nor Asia but to, obviously, Europe. Josh Pauling has made a case that contemporary Christian musical style is in profound ways inimical to the substance of liturgy. I'll quote Pauling at some length:
https://mereorthodoxy.com/hidden-transubstantiation-contemporary-worship/
...
Proponents of contemporary
worship explain that they are not changing the substance, or content of
Christian worship, but only updating the style, or form for modern tastes. Rock
bands, production pop-tunes, TED Talk sermons, coffee-house vibes, and (fill-in-the
latest worship trend here) are, the argument goes, just making Christianity
relevant. While seeming harmless, this argument is built on a problematic
divide between style and substance; a hidden transubstantiation of sorts that
fosters a rejection of form and ritual in worship in favor of a supposed
inner-substance, or feeling, induced by worship.
My contention
is that this style-substance split is the real issue. To be sure, one could
rightly critique the vague and vapid lyrics of some contemporary worship songs.
But the problems go deeper into the messages communicated by the style, or form
itself, which unintentionally drives Christians further curvatus in se (curved in on oneself) and
away from the objective nature of Christian truth as extra nos (outside ourselves).
The
style-substance division severs the deep ties between doctrine and practice
recognized by the historic church. With worship practices now untethered, they
easily end up running counter to the very content of the Christian faith that
worship is meant to buttress. What must be recovered is the sense in which
style is substance and how the
Church has a distinct style and culture that transcend the tiresome debates
over relevance and musical tastes.
…
Contemporary worship
proposes a similar separation between the outer form or style of worship and
its inner content or substance. Worship leaders are the new priesthood who
preside over not the Lord’s Table, but the Spirit’s Moving. The requisite
praise band performs a mixture of songs leading the congregation through an
emotional progression assumed to be the work of the Holy Spirit. The induced
emotions are interpreted as evidence of the Spirit with the subjective inner
feelings of the worshiper being the substance of worship that matters, while
the outer style of music, words said, and rituals enacted are the incidental
forms.
And herein lies
the latent transubstantiation: the outward form of worship does not matter, as
long as the substance, i.e. inner content of the heart feels right. In other
words, low-church Protestants think that the outward form and style of worship
does not affect the content and substance of what actually is communicated in
worship. The same philosophical separation of form and substance used by Rome
in transubstantiation is used by advocates of contemporary worship as
justification for “relevant” styles and techniques in worship, while claiming
to retain the historic substance of Christianity.
…
But the
biggest swap of all, and the one that most uncovers the hidden
transubstantiation, is the elevation of praise and worship to near sacramental
status as evidenced in the large segment of the church service it consumes, and
in the emotional crescendo it creates. This has not always been so; for the
vast majority of church history, the climax of Christian worship was the weekly
celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
…
The way
out of this is to understand that the Church doesn’t play the cultural
relevance and style game. Instead, the Church creates and sustains its own
culture as evidenced in the longest-standing practices of historic, orthodox
Christian worship with their distinct, sacred musical styles and other-worldly,
high liturgical forms all saturated with Scripture. What makes the Church
relevant is the fact that it is timeless, and has an unchanging message of
truth that applies to all eras and places. This timeless approach communicates
that God meets with his people through Word and Sacrament to forgive them in
Jesus Christ. In historic worship, God is the one doing the work, not humans. This
older understanding of the term worship is retained by the Confessional
Lutheran and Orthodox traditions who still refer to their worship as the Divine
Service and the Divine Liturgy respectively.
…
If musical style and liturgical substance are at odds why does musical style "win"? What is it about Anglo-American popular styles of music that is so at odds with the liturgical forms handed down in the Western church traditions? That there are arguments to the effect that contemporary pop music based worship is kitsch is easily made.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ponderanew/2020/03/01/contemporary-worship-is-like-this-1970s-mcdonalds-commercial/
If the liturgy can be destroyed by a single pop song how powerful is the liturgy? If the liturgy is so powerful in shaping us by its nature (if it is) then why not invoke Catholics and liberal Lutherans and Episcopalians? Don't they have the high liturgical traditions, too? Evangelical and conservative take-downs of popular musical styles in worship by invoking the power of liturgy to spiritually form us can seem to ... conveniently forget that they do not for a moment think that the liturgy is so powerful toward the end of inherently shaping or hearts and minds and thoughts toward righteous living when the liturgical traditions are deployed by clerics in traditions they regard as apostate. It seems in the end that invoking the power of liturgies and old-school music as having real power compared to pop music kitsch as an insiders only appeal. That Martin Luther's hymns were drastically changed by the introduction of isorhythmic and isometric straightening of phrases in the era of figured based (i.e. roughly 1600 to 1750) can get passed over. This is not just to say that everything old was new once, it's that fans of the Western old school liturgical style too conveniently forget how modern it once was and how, in light of comparable conservative reactions about music and liturgy in the Eastern church how modern it STILL is.
If we bear in mind that kitsch is defined as a false emotion then depending on who you read the entire Christian faith is kitsch, a devotional response to an event (the resurrection of Christ) that, if it never happened, renders all subsequent devotion kitsch by dint of any assent of belief. So perhaps we should use some caution in too fast and loose a use of a term like "kitsch".
Perhaps a more accurate way to describe a problem with worship music based on popular styles, if we trawl through the put-downs offered within the African American Christian churches of blues, ragtime or jazz, can be this--musical styles that evolved and thrived in red light districts and spurred on by the underground sex industries shouldn't be seen as appropriate for church. The trance-inducing dance styles that ranged from ragtime through to EDM are meant to get people dancing rather than reflecting.
Well, trouble with that line of argument is that although a form of that argument was advanced in black churches Thomas A. Dorsey managed to get gospel blues to work within black American churches. In short, if it pleased God to reconcile all things to Himself through Christ why would that include people and not, at some point, the styles of music those saved people sing and play?
If the argument were made that, effectively, you can't write thousands of words analyzing and discussing a popular song as music with formal and aesthetic aspects the way you can about the great music of the liturgical traditions then, well, that's hardly the case. I can provide two examples of how it's possible to write thousands of words about what goes on musically in pop songs. One example was posted at Ethan Hein's blog and the other was posted here.
http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2013/analyzing-the-musical-structure-of-sledgehammer-by-peter-gabriel/
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/12/in-wake-of-slates-wonder-week-tribute.html
I love both "Sledgehammer" and "Living for the City", in case you hadn't picked that up yet.
For those who might want to do a detailed musical analysis of what goes on in the chant "Veni Creator Spiritus" I'm game. I'd love to read a study on what goes on in that chant, not concert or liturgical works derived from that chant, just the chant itself.
Mark Burford mentioned that there was skepticism in the black American churches about gospel blues in his magisterial book Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field. Someone like William Levi Dawson could regard Thomas Dorsey as a good musician while being skeptical about the financial reasons pastors hired "whoop it up" singers--it was far cheaper to higher some gospel shouter than to invest money in hiring a capable church organist or pianist who was classically trained and could direct music services and write music for liturgical occasions. Since this was a battle within African American churches the battle was not necessarily one in which black musicians were arguing Mozart was "better" than African American spirituals, the argument was, as Burford presents it, a concern that to shift toward such vernacular and popular styles would ultimately have the cumulative effect of reducing congregational musical literacy. Preachers could hire the cheaper flashier singers who would whoop it up and the congregations would be excited about this music and then generation by generation the musical literacy of the congregation could decline.
I don't think it's unfair to suggest here in 2020 that the worries of a William Levi Dawson and other black church musicians of the early 20th century had a point. That larger point is a topic for some other time, ideally taken up by others because I am an amateur guitarists and not a church musician. This does, however, get to the complaints implicit and explicit in writing by Pauling and Agnier that in this newer style of pop-worship it's the musicians who are directing everything. A Jacques Ellul style critique of this kind of pop-worship would be to propose that it's a musical technique predicated on crowd agitation and manipulation and that we should be wary of it. A Theodor Adorno style critique would be to argue the culture industry is self-perpetuating and has so expanded into controlling aesthetics and production that even those traditions of Abrahamic religions have decided to deploy those mass influencing techniques rather than preserve traditional musical styles less amenable to bourgeois self-satisfaction. If so then conservative evangelicals and Lutherans could find themselves agreeing with a Christian anarchist and a Marxist ... a paradoxical agreement in light of the ways in which conservative evangelicals and confessional Lutherans might tend to avoid endorsing Marxist anything in the United States . . .
Now for folks who have some familiarity with the regulative principle another matter comes up, could instrumental music in church services have been the root of most of these worship wars and problems in liturgical music? I haven't linked to or quoted OrthoCuban in a while but since he's blogged on music and liturgical issues recently let's take a look at his comments about how there are advocates of Byzantine Orthodox liturgical norms who want to get rid of the Slavic influenced musical styles that reflect a more modern and somewhat Western idiom.
https://www.orthocuban.com/2020/03/western-music-and-its-development/
...This is a post about the development of Western worship music and its partial adoption among the Slavic churches. No, this is not a post about the history of it. But, some history is necessary. When the Kievan Rus converted in 988, Byzantine music was imported from Greece as part of their celebration of the Divine Liturgy. What was imported was the Athonite chant, which was quickly adapted to what became known as the Znamenny chant. In the 16th century, two musical traditions developed, one in the north and the other in the south. In the North, the Znamenny chant and Demestvenny chant began to grow more elaborate. The Novgorod school became strong in the north and became the Muscovite standard. The Tsar himself composed a couple of chants.
The southwest had to contend with the Roman Catholic Church next
door. They developed the Kyivan chant style. Both the north and the southwest
adopted polyphonic styles of music, which were not found in Byzantine music.
They did retain the idea of 8 modes which matched the Byzantine tones. They
also changed to the five-line style of musical notation. By the 17th to 18th
century, reform was needed. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Patriarch Nikon were
involved in the reforms that took place over several decades. Eventually,
modern composers, such as Tschaikovsky and Rachmaninoff wrote music for the
Divine Liturgy which is in use to this day among many Slavic churches. They
could be sung by a local parish choir and yet also polyphonically and complexly
sung by a professional choir. [emphasis added]
Why do I bring all this up? Because there are both cradles and
convert clergy and laypeople in the Byzantine churches who try to argue that we
ought to still be singing music according to the 9th century Athonite pattern.
Despite the fact that the Slavic churches form the largest part of the Orthodox
Economia, these cradles and convert clergy have the temerity to argue that
those Churches should change back to an ancient system that no longer resonates
with Western ears. They claim that polyphony is anathema. Let me quickly say
that not all Byzantines argue that.
I have some simple advice for them. First, please stop claiming
that a 9th-century musical style must become the forever-style. Second, please
allow for Holy Tradition to adjust non-instrumental worship to match more
current melodic and, yes, polyphonic traditions. Third, given that Byzantine
music is basically a 9th-century musical style, let me ask you why you are not
singing in a first-century Palestinian-Greek style? If you say that the
development was Holy Tradition, I will ask you why Holy Tradition was not at
work among the Slavs?
I am not arguing for a modern 21st century Protestant Christian
musical style and words. It is worth noting that the words sung in the main
Orthodox liturgies have been long-established, often significantly longer than
the various musical styles. It is worth noting that the Orthodox have followed
the tradition of non-instrumental music, by and large. But, I am arguing that
there is no historical argument for freezing Holy Tradition in the 9th century
on Mount Athos then claiming that this is the only allowed style. There is
neither Scripture nor Tradition backing for this viewpoint.
...Despite Western claims to have preserved musical traditions that have roots going back to, oh, Greece, the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis went so far as to suggest you'd be wasting your time trying to understand Greek music based on Western interpretations of Greek philosophical writings on music. You'd be better off attending a Greek Orthodox service and listening to the music.
I've quoted Fr Ernesto at some length to highlight that in the East as well as West there are traditions of Christian thought that reject polyphony as a corrupt and corrupting musical influence. So, no, it wasn't just Calvin and Zwingli and their theological descendants who thought polyphonic music was best avoided in church services (and, no, this is not the time or space to get into some arguments about how Calvin and Zwingli didn't like the arts, specialists have been able to point out that both men loved music just fine while deciding that music needed to be less prominent in church life)
To put this point more starkly, if there are more practicing Christians in Africa and Asia than in Europe or the United States why should we imagine that liturgical music would not and could not at some point be influenced by those cultural approaches to music? Samuel Hugh Moffett has written two volumes on the history of Christianity in Asia and gone so far as to say that the birthplace of Christianity was Asia. Before Christianity could become what we think of in the West as a "Western" or "European" or "white" religion, it was born in Asia Minor and had important contributors from Africa.
If in the thousands of years since the teachings of Christ were preserved in oral and written form a group of Westerners reified those traditions into a Roman and later a post-Roman European conception of orthopraxy it might be good to keep the perspective of Christian life and practice as global as possible to be more catholic than, well, Roman, European or, as contemporary conservatives are now obviously concerned, "American" and specifically United States focused. If in the time of the magisterial Reformers the likes of Zwingli, Calvin and Luther were critical of the ways in which Roman Catholic traditions and accretions corrupted what they regarded as an orthodox Christian faith similar concerns have been raised by Americans about how "American" Christianity has been made in liturgy and practice. The trouble with the "back to liturgy" call in the Anglo-American Western scene is that keeping even intermittent watch on comparable reactions against the corruptions of Western musical styles perceived by the faithful in the Byzantine and Orthodox traditions suggests that what contemporary evangelical and confessional Lutherans want us to harken back to is itself considered the last millenium's corrupting modernist influence on the part of Eastern Orthodox polemicists in the here and now who think the Church went astray by departing from 9th century chant.
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