In this next article in the series, William Kilpatrick further substantiates the fundamental intuition that:
Music can play a positive role in moral development by creating sensual attractions to goodness, or it can play a destructive role by setting children on a temperamental path that leads away from virtue... We can start our discussion of this effect with the common observation that we tend to learn something more easily and indelibly if it’s set to a rhyme or song... If Johnny can be taught to read through rhyme and song, might he also begin to learn right and wrong in the same way?
He pulls no punches in his assault on modern music. For since we know intuitively and even experimentally that music does have an effect on how we think and how we act, it would seem obvious that something must be done about it.
Despite the innocent appearance, however, some kinds of music are capable of subverting the social order... [whereas a] man raised on harmonious music, [Plato] says, has a better chance of developing a harmonious soul: he will be better able to see life as a whole, and thus “he would have the sharpest sense of what’s been left out,” of what is and isn’t fitting... Children ought to be brought up in an atmosphere that provides them examples of nobility and grace. This imaginative education is not a substitute for a reasoned morality, but it paves the way for it, making it more likely that the grown child will happily accept the dictates of reason.This is all well and good, but I believe that we begin to move toward the crux of the problem when we probe more deeply into the nature of modern music; in particular, for example, rock music.
Robert Pattison, in his book The Triumph of Vulgarity: Rock Music in the Mirror of Romanticism, argues that the spirit of rock music is really the spirit of nineteenth-century Romanticism, only with a heavier beat and a faster tempo. It is simply another version of Rousseau’s belief that what is primitive is what is best, and that youthful passions, therefore, do not need to be educated or transformed. The rock myth, according to Pattison, is the same as the Romantic myth: a belief that it is possible to have a community innocent of civilizing restraints in which everything can be done on instinct, and in which everyone is free to express himself to the fullest. Moreover, as Stuart Goldman observes in commenting on Pattison’s book, “the rocker feels that we are kept from this — our natural state of oneness with the universe — by ‘them’: the government, teachers, politicians, our parents [and the Church]. All the usual suspects.”And so we begin to see taking shape the result of that modern push for contemporary music in the Church: it is a spirit of dissent and rebellion; a throwing off of any restraint whatsoever.
Pattison is a defender of both rock and Romanticism; however, as Irving Babbitt points out, the essence of Romanticism is that it is never in love with a particular object or person but only with the feelings which that person or object evokes. Consequently, the Romantic spirit is fickle; it is always changing its object of devotion, always in search of a new high. By necessity its interest is in novelty rather than stability.Does this sound familiar? Where else have we seen the push for change seemingly just for the sake of change? The modern mentality, bathed in the entertainment industry, longs continually to feed its insatiable appetite for the next fix - never satisfied with the stability of what is known. This is the mindset of the unrestrained progressive, even in liturgical music, where stability is rejected outright. Rather than hardbound missals and hymnals, everything must be softbound, because it is in a state of flux; or so many have been conditioned to believe by the liturgical music industry, which depends on novelty for continued growth in profit.
But for modern music itself, whether the heavy brand widely influencing today's youth, or even the softer side, which we often find in Masses specifically designated to attract those with contemporary tastes, there is a thought-provoking question.
One question that logically arises here is whether rock can be reformed. Some seem to think it can be, that it’s simply a matter of changing the lyrics, or attaching the music to a proper cause. Thus teachers use rock in classrooms, and educational films are made with rock sound tracks, and thus we have Christian rock and even Christian versions of rock magazines. The idea is that the energy of rock can somehow be channeled toward virtuous ends. This hope, it seems to me, arises from a basic misunderstanding about the nature of rock. I have already indicated that though the lyrics are important, they are secondary. The music is its own message. No matter what the words might say, the music speaks the language of self-gratification. Rock can’t be made respectable. It doesn’t want to be respectable. A respectable rock is a contradiction in terms.
