The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #147391 Message #3424641
Posted By: Steve Shaw
23-Oct-12 - 06:15 AM
Thread Name: BS: Alternative to Science??
Subject: RE: BS: Alternative to Science??
That is entirely correct. A man of his time indeed. Beethoven was baptised a Catholic but he was not a regular churchgoer. What we know of him suggests that he embraced a personal god, or perhaps a higher power to which he may have looked for inspiration, but not God as characterised by the God squads of his time (and ours, for that matter). Denying God in those times and in his circumstances would not have been so easy in any case, even if he'd wanted to, which he may not have done. Certainly, many other composers of his time or earlier would have been expected to embrace Christianity almost as a condition of their employment, which muddies the waters somewhat when it comes to assessing their true degrees of devotion.
It irritates me quite a lot when I see people trying to claim the talents of great artists as the spawn of their faith. No-one would try to deny that religious tradition did not inspire specific works of art to be produced, but that is as much as it is possible to claim. Religion claims so much, yet rejects inconveniences such as the horrors perpetrated "in the name of religion" (I have a lot of sympathy with religion over that, actually). I attended a funeral of a lifelong friend a little while ago. The pastor, in his eulogy at the service, did not hesitate to claim my friend's long and virtuous life (which he did indeed live) to be a product of his Christianity. In the many decades I knew him he never attended church nor ever expressed the slightest interest in religion. So another claim that was a bit of a stretch at best.
There's another point to be made. Bach, Beethoven, Einstein and you name 'em were giants in their fields. In their fields. They were ordinary people in other areas of life. Beethoven drank too much and was extremely quarrelsome and unhygienic. Mozart was full of dirty jokes and Schubert loved to consort with prostitutes who were not necessarily grown up, shall we say. Bach didn't know when to stop having kids and Einstein famously frustrated his violin teacher, who accused him of not being able to count. There's many a superb scientist who is also a believer. The two can be divorced for the purpose of everyday life. Who's to say that the Missa Solemnis could not have been composed by a Buddhist? Vaughan-Williams was an atheist but he wrote a wonderful little mass, one of my favourites (Mass in G minor). "There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass," he said.