I don’t see why improvisation and the standardization of music have to be mutually exclusive. E.g., there are a number of jazz standards that are part of common repitoire among jazz musicians internationally. These pieces use minimal notation–only the melody is written out in standard musical notation–everything else is improvised, from the bass line to the way that the piano or guitarist decides to voice the chords (as the chords are only written out using symbols such as C min 7 or D7b5 etc. When I visited a jazz club in Prague, though I was not able to speak Czech with the musicians, I at once recognized tunes like “All the Things You Are,” “Blue Monk,” etc. So it seems to me that minimal notation can be used to pass on tradition just as effectively (and perhaps more effectively) than attempting to write out every note, solo etc.–even then, a piece of music is never played exactly the same way as something of the musician’s own style comes through simply by the way that s/he phrases lines, builds crescendos etc.

Best wishes,
Cynthia

So glad that you dropped by! Your comment is very insightful and find myself more or less in agreement with what you say. I would want to add as a qualifier of sorts that when it comes to theology, I am not completely against a certain amount of systemazing, which to me seems inescapable, and which can, if done in the right spirit, be helpful for the Church.

Best wishes,
Cynthia

This is in contrast to the modernist desire to codify and systematize everything, to locate the “objective” musical expression which is the only ‘real’ music, or the sense in art in general that it must be representational and never abstract. For music, handing on this purified music simply involved representing it accurately and then teaching someone to reproduce it faithfully.

I think we can see this in theology at almost any point in history. On the one hand, the desire to systematize, to account for everything, to codify the “orthodox” position – as if this is somehow the fulfillment of what we’re about as Christians. In contrast, there is the experience that God is entirely beyond systematization – that in a sense, mastery of the ‘rules’ means leaving them behind. You can reference Jesus’ healing on the sabbath in Luke, or in many other instances, where Jesus is fulfilling what the rules intended even as he breaks them on a specific level.

I think that music is an excellent metaphor for theology, actually. Without some systematization, some “notation” as it were, we can’t talk to each other at all. The notation lets us communicate and make sense of our experiences, lets us communicate with the past in a way as well. But if the “notation” is all there is to the music, what we have are reiterations, and not a living faith at all. Mastery of the rules is being able to leave them behind. The notation is a place-holder for the truth, and not the truth in and of itself.

Wow. That was a lot longer than I intended.

Begbie’s project is indeed interesting, esp in this regard. One wonders why theology sees the hard and fast distinction between written music and improvisation in the first place. That is to say, why should theology necessarily give pride of place to notation over performance in the arts to begin with? Begbie’s charge that theology sees it as frivolous indeed seems to be true, but this in and of itself it is of course not a very good “theological” reason :) The fact that it seems to be prejudice rather than sound theological reasoning is troubling to me. It makes me also wonder at the kind of theology that has been done in connection to notated works. Looking at most theological attempts at “theology of art”, I’m rather inclined to say that aside from some unfortunately marginal works (e.g. Begbie, Wolterstorff), theology has made little progress.

One might argue that theologians haven’t been sensitive enough to work done in aesthetics proper so as to undergird their forays into aesthetics, that theologies of the arts are only barely concerned with art, and more concerned with drawing theological principles.

Sorry for the rant.
Thanks again,

Dan