Evolution, Pinnacles, and Dissonance

A few years ago, I wrote a very controversial article and as it turned out, included a very controversial statement. I said that “many music historians would say that the development of music can be summarized as an evolving acceptance of dissonance.”

The backlash from some (mostly conservatives) was fierce. They wanted to know what kind of “idiotic” historian would make a statement like that. When I provided a few names, they wanted to know what school they had degrees from, what books they had read and what kind of cereal they ate in the morning. They really wanted to discredit anyone who would hold that viewpoint.

Two quick points about that statement and the ensuing debate:

1) The statement I made was a summary. You obviously cannot fully describe the history of music with one short sentence and I was not attempting to do so. It would be sort of like saying you send people to the moon by launching a rocket.

2) As a summary, it is pretty accurate. In fact, it is very accurate. I am not going to defend it here at a level that will keep everyone happy, but music experts do in fact widely believe that an evolving acceptance of dissonance has driven the development of music. Study the last 500 years of music and the pattern is very clear.

You might ask why people wanted to discredit that statement so badly. The answer is simple really. That statement goes against their musical worldview: a belief that music development stopped a few hundred years ago and has regressed ever since.

Frankly, I find that perspective tiresome. Held only by a few classical purists and some conservatives, it is indefensible. Worse yet, it is dangerous and damaging. I will explain why I think that in a second.

A recent discussion I was drawn into online reminded me of how this is gone over the years in the church. A conservative writer wrote an article discussing what music was appropriate for worship and one of his warning signs of bad music was “heavy use of consecutive 7th chords.”

Of course, I sat up and took notice when I read that because I do not play many chords that are not 7th chords. I may be the worst offender I know of in church music when it comes to this “consecutive 7ths” rule.

Someone wrote in and mentioned that they felt that the excessive 7ths chords sounded “sophomoric.” While that statement made me laugh long and hard, it also told me that that author is one of those who if pinned down, would say that music development pinnacled at some point in the past. Why? Because that kind of use of 7th chords is a 20th century thing, not a Bach thing.

It is not fair to compare some Taylor Swift song to the Hallelujah Chorus. There is a lot of bad music being produced today for sure just like there was a ton of bad music produced 500 years ago. But that being said, music has developed overall over the centuries just as technology, medicine, and many other disciplines have developed.

I said earlier that denying this truth is damaging and dangerous. There are at least two reasons why:

1) It hurts children in their musical development. I have written before about this here. But in a nutshell, elevating the music of the past and having children spend the bulk of their time learning to replicate it does not encourage them to create their own music and does not encourage them to improvise (the key to being functional in real life music).

2) It makes church music needlessly irrelevant and hurts its quality. Here is an example. I made a reference earlier to the “7th chords” debate; I have heard those kinds of statements many times over the years. The idea that someone would decree that 7th chords are off limits in favor of triads is ridiculous, but more importantly, it is a musical step backwards. Extended harmony is in fact an improvement over triadic music.

Hey, good people can disagree on this underlying philosophy. I have good friends on both sides. But how that philosophy plays out in real life application tells us that there are real life consequences. If you are involved in church music or are the parent of a young musician, this issue deserves some thought.