John Keats was right: Beauty is truth. There is something about the Mozart Requiem that can get a choir full of otherwise irreligious heathen to sing as if their immortal souls depended on it.
Yet what of the statement "beauty is in the eye of the beholder?" It is believed to have originated in 3rd century B.C Greece -- a time perhaps more thoughtful than our own. Since then, it has been misused grossly and, in our own time, become yet another piece of bumper-sticker philosophy used to justify the sanctity of personal opinion.
In composing the Requiem, was Mozart expressing an individual opinion? If so, where are the valid contrasting opinions? If Mozart's work happened to hit on a popular opinion of the time, why has his work reserved for itself a seemingly universal appeal which transcends eras and their populist thought?
Only consider it, and you step perilously close to the idea of a Universal.
Certainly, Mozart's Requiem was a colossal personal statement, the capstone on a short but remarkable creative life. Yet where did the sudden seriousness of this piece come from? Was Mozart experiencing -- whether consciously or subconsciously -- a premonition of his own demise?
Was he expressing the divine?
Truth is absolute -- I even know atheists who will claim as much (you cannot claim otherwise without entering into a glaring logical contradiction.) Yet if truth is absolute, and beauty is truth, is it possible to have an opinion about beauty?
I think not.
If beauty is a reflection of absolute truth, then there is ultimately only one kind of beauty. This beauty, however, being absolute (and divine) is infinite, and therefore capable of encompassing all of us while leaving our individuality in tact.
Think of the mountains. One can experience altitude sickness. One can desire to never live in the mountains. Yet I have never encountered a person who said that "I hate mountains. Mountains are ugly." Personally, I have a healthy fear of the ocean. Yet this fear does not keep me from enjoying a sunset over a calm sea, nor does it keep me from feeling humbled by the awesome power of a hurricane.
To experience otherwise is to be aesthetically unhealthy. It's all about "poetics." There is a reason that Shakespeare is able to inspire feelings within us that our cell-phone instruction manuals cannot -- poetics are a basic part of human nature.
Yet while in the mortal coil, we are certainly limited in our perspective. In terms of God and the divine, we can only experience vague intimations and shadows of ultimate reality. We are like people stuck under twenty feet under water, trying to perceive the sky above. Some live in stormy weather, others in calm ponds. Either way, each perspective is incomplete and imperfect.
Yet we are all trying to view the same sky. (Perhaps some keep their eyes closed, but the sky remains above them, daring them to look!)
I will suggest that the main goal of our lives is to daily move towards God, subsequently growing a clearer understanding of our immortal origin and destiny. Daily, we clarify our perspective of eternity. As a composer, I certainly have a different sense of poetics -- God's beautiful truth -- then a painter or a script-writer. Yet, once again, we're all trying to paint the same sky.
Theologians have often mused that heaven is filled not with saintly clones but saintly individuals. They each have a unique perspective on that one whole and glorious creator. They each have a true -- yet individual -- perspective on eternity. If something is infinite, it can offer an infinite number of viewpoints.
I believe that this is the ultimate purpose of creativity and the arts. We are creations imitating our creator. When we do so humbly and lovingly, we have the potential of deeply impacting the quality of our inner lives, let alone the lives of others.
If you doubt this, imagine a world without art. Imagine a world where traffic-noise is the only music, where the Wall-Street journal replaces literature, and where the Dow-Jones gives us the only drama we could ever experience. Living in such a world, you wouldn't know what you were missing, because you simply wouldn't be human. (This is why art that seeks to imitate such things -- whether through abstraction or otherwise -- may be pretty, or interesting, or perhaps clever, but ultimately fails.)
Much ink has been spilled over the golden ratio, and many artists have become obsessed over such numerology. (For those unfamiliar with the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio) Somehow, all of reality seems to be imbued with this seemingly magic number. Analysis has shown us that many of the greatest pieces of art -- whether consciously or not -- have somehow conformed to this ratio. Yet somehow, no amount of analytical knowledge can lead to an artificial and mathematical reproduction of great art. Such attempts, while sometimes interesting, remain only interesting imitations and spirited attempts.
Beauty is a property of the heart, a type of knowledge equal to rational thinking yet entirely functioning on its own authority. It is a part of the human experience that demands to be felt, yet defies adequate classification. We tremble in her presence and find ourselves helpless before her, yet it is only a mere shadow of our Lord passing by. What better way to remain humble than to seek beauty?
I have witnessed musicians nearly jump out of their skin in ecstasy while performing Faure's Pavane. Were they experiencing a biological reaction to a mathematical formula? Can there really be a Darwinist interpretation of beauty, mindful of mathematics, that does not ascribe a stunning intelligence to the whole affair?
It's right in front of us: the things that move us the most tend to be masterpieces of combined and carefully-calculated ratios. Yet how is it possible that artists who had no real care for mathematics would otherwise "accidentally" create works that had such perfect ratios?
Can it be that their quest to uncover beauty and perfect their creative language led them to an ever-clearer vision of absolute beauty? I can only fathom one explanation: if God signed off on his beautiful creation with such a clever yet absolute signature (one that just happens to meander into infinity, mathematically speaking), then is it any wonder that we are naturally drawn to such proportions?
Robert Pirsig, in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," literally drives himself crazy trying to figure out the nature of "quality," and our seeming intuitive (yet indefinable) sense of it. Little wonder he went nuts -- without a divine foundation, such an inquiry, no matter how brilliant or beautiful it may be -- is ultimately doomed to be fruitless. What a pity that stubborn men would sooner sacrifice their sanity rather than admit to the obvious.
Certainly, there are artists who have actively sought to work against these proportions, even deliberately sought to portray ugliness rather than beauty. Yet whenever their work is successful, it is because of a striking opposition to -- rather than eschewing of -- eternal beauty. There's simply no getting away from it.
The psalmist bemoans: "Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee?" Einstein saw the hand of God in the proportions of the Universe. Igor Stravinsky crawled up to the altar, mindful of his place in the grand scheme of things. C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien saw a divine power in myth, poetry, and literature, one that philosophy simply couldn't encompass.
I concluding these thoughts, I return to the words I began with:
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
(John Keats: from 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.')
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