My last blog might have led some to believe that I think about beauty only in a major key, something bright and soaring, but all true artists understand that beauty has a minor key as well. The word “awful” comes to mind. In common usage the word usually means very bad or worse. “Awful” originally meant awe-filling and this awe had more than a touch of fear. God was awful.
Consider Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in C-minor and the word awful comes to mind. Greek tragedy also brings the word awful to mind. These works of art, and of course many others understand that beauty encompasses more than the lovely, it encompasses the awful. Beauty can be terrifying in its power, imagine the springtime cataracts in Yosemite or Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment. Beauty can be sad beyond words like The Isenheim Altarpiece or Michelangelo’s Pieta. It can be experienced in both minor and major keys at once as in the love theme from Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet.
As I noted in my last blog, beauty reminds us in ways beyond reason who we are: angels who have become enmeshed in the material world; centaurs who are half-rational and half-animal; fallen creatures who are beloved of God. Yet while beauty is in us, we respond to it as through a glass darkly. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, in our present state we could not take divine love whole, we are too weak for it. It is only mediated through natural beauty, and art to the extent it considers natural beauty, that we can appreciate what divine love must be like and that we are called to it.
Additionally, beauty also teaches us what is not beautiful and thereby helps us know what diverts us from our search. Those things that cause us to apprehend beauty tend to have certain qualities and of those qualities a portion point to truth. For example, beauty usually reflects order, overarching harmony and fitness. Thus, things that do not display these characteristics tend to ring hollow or untrue. Life isn’t simple, and knowledge of good and evil is only obtained with painful difficulty, but beauty is a symptom of the true and good as it exists in this natural world. It even encourages us to understand that truth and goodness are complex things that may contain discord as a necessary part of the overall harmony. For example, a Classical Era sonata form piece of music is tonal, meaning it has a key central to the piece where its begins. It then departs from that key, meets a second theme, unites and returns in fresh clothing caused by the union. This process is usually highlighted to some degree by a discordant note or group of notes; this discord, however, gives the piece movement and contrast increasing the beauty of the music.
Finally, a life spent learning to recognize the beauty embedded in our world cannot help but notice in contrast the heartless operation of the natural world as well; this is a painful, but necessary lesson. It is beauty that gives us hope and thereby courage to continue these difficult lessons in good and evil. Far too much of what passes for art today is trivial because elite thought believes that man is trivial and even that life itself is trivial. Beauty tells us that nothing is trivial and that current elite opinion does not provide a way home.
No. 44: Beauty Has A Minor Key
My last blog might have led some to believe that I think about beauty only in a major key, something bright and soaring, but all true artists understand that beauty has a minor key as well. The word “awful” comes to mind. In common usage the word usually means very bad or worse. “Awful” originally meant awe-filling and this awe had more than a touch of fear. God was awful.
Consider Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in C-minor and the word awful comes to mind. Greek tragedy also brings the word awful to mind. These works of art, and of course many others understand that beauty encompasses more than the lovely, it encompasses the awful. Beauty can be terrifying in its power, imagine the springtime cataracts in Yosemite or Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment. Beauty can be sad beyond words like The Isenheim Altarpiece or Michelangelo’s Pieta. It can be experienced in both minor and major keys at once as in the love theme from Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet.
As I noted in my last blog, beauty reminds us in ways beyond reason who we are: angels who have become enmeshed in the material world; centaurs who are half-rational and half-animal; fallen creatures who are beloved of God. Yet while beauty is in us, we respond to it as through a glass darkly. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, in our present state we could not take divine love whole, we are too weak for it. It is only mediated through natural beauty, and art to the extent it considers natural beauty, that we can appreciate what divine love must be like and that we are called to it.
Additionally, beauty also teaches us what is not beautiful and thereby helps us know what diverts us from our search. Those things that cause us to apprehend beauty tend to have certain qualities and of those qualities a portion point to truth. For example, beauty usually reflects order, overarching harmony and fitness. Thus, things that do not display these characteristics tend to ring hollow or untrue. Life isn’t simple, and knowledge of good and evil is only obtained with painful difficulty, but beauty is a symptom of the true and good as it exists in this natural world. It even encourages us to understand that truth and goodness are complex things that may contain discord as a necessary part of the overall harmony. For example, a Classical Era sonata form piece of music is tonal, meaning it has a key central to the piece where its begins. It then departs from that key, meets a second theme, unites and returns in fresh clothing caused by the union. This process is usually highlighted to some degree by a discordant note or group of notes; this discord, however, gives the piece movement and contrast increasing the beauty of the music.
Finally, a life spent learning to recognize the beauty embedded in our world cannot help but notice in contrast the heartless operation of the natural world as well; this is a painful, but necessary lesson. It is beauty that gives us hope and thereby courage to continue these difficult lessons in good and evil. Far too much of what passes for art today is trivial because elite thought believes that man is trivial and even that life itself is trivial. Beauty tells us that nothing is trivial and that current elite opinion does not provide a way home.