In a recent Breakpoint article, Chuck Colson asks, “Is there a right and wrong kind of music for worship?”
“One expert on church music says yes, there is. Much of today’s music is of poor quality, he writes. But so was some music written centuries ago. The difference is the old hymns have endured a centuries-long weeding-out process. If we hope to identify the best new music, Williams writes, we must know ‘those marks of excellence that made the best of the past stand out and survive so long.”
If he contends (and I believe he does so correctly) that there has always been good and bad music being produced, then it follows that those who were around at the times the great hymns were written were also, during the same time, subjected to the lower quality hymns as well.
We look back at the time of great hymns and think, “It must have been nice to be around at that time!” as if the only things written at that time were home-run hymns. That was not the case.
The 4 marks of excellence he identifies are:
1. Biblical Truth. Lyrics need not to be literal Scripture, but they do have to be faithful to it.
2. Theological Profundity. Think of how the words to the great hymns encourage us to worship God with our minds. By contrast, some contemporary choruses are often “so simplistic and repetitive that theological reflection never has a chance to get started.”
3. Poetic Richness.
4. Musical Beauty. In great music, “there are certain contours, structures, and cadences that make for a singable melody.”
A case can be made that there is more poor quality music being produced now, but like the age of the great hymns, the good ones will endure and the rest will fade. And you can bet that there were people during the time of the great hymns who longed for the old days, when music wasn’t so “worldy” and “frivolous” and “repetitive”.
“Unfortunately, those in the present must always endure the good with the bad while those in the past have the privilege of passing on only the good.”
Colson wraps it up diplomatically in say that, “in the end—all sides of the music wars can agree that we want to praise God by singing hymns and spiritual songs that are biblically true, theologically profound, poetically rich, and, yes, musically beautiful.”
