In the 45th lecture (out of 48) in his series on listening to and understanding the music of the Western classical tradition, Professor Robert Greenberg attempts a defense of 20th century music (as well as late 19th century Romantic music) that would explain the inaccessibility of the music and the worthiness of cultivating and developing a taste for it.  Yet as the professor engaged in his defense, I was struck by the way that his discussion of the motivations for creation at different periods of time managed to explain a great deal about the layered and complicated aspects of creativity not only in concert music but also across creativity in general, and that the complexity of these motives for creation are not sufficiently recognized or understood.  It is therefore worthwhile to not only explain Professor Greenberg’s discussion of the dominant motives of creativity in concert music from the Baroque period to today but also to discuss how these motives for creation exist far beyond the world of music to the entire field of human creativity.

According to Greenberg’s discussion, composers in the Baroque era viewed their music as being an offering to God that was to be done in a godly way.  Music was to be composed for God’s glory and in a way that corresponded to the principles and laws by which God governs the universe.  During the classical era that followed this, music was viewed as being ornamental rather than essential, and was meant to be accessible to a growing public of appreciative listeners.  In the romantic era that continues to this day, music became a means of self-expression and also a way of expressing one’s own identity.  Thus we not only get music that is intensely personal and autobiographical, but also music that seeks to speak to one’s nationalism or, in contrast, one’s appreciation of the cultures of others that one has appropriated in one’s own work.  Again, though, it is very clear (or it at least it will be very shortly) that these motives can (and should) coincide and also that they speak to more than simply musical concerns but also speak to the whole of human existence and the complex and mixed motives which spur us to create.

After all, everything that we do we should do for the glory of God and in a godly fashion that reflects His laws and His ways.  This will have an effect on the sorts of creativity we engage in.  After all, God’s laws and ways govern conduct in all spheres of human existence, reminding us which foods are appropriate for human consumption, the level of honesty and integrity that should accompany all of our behavior, the ultimate authority of God over all aspects of His created universe, and the reality of future judgment by which we will be held accountable for what we do.  Whatever the realm of activity in which we exercise creativity, be it cooking or visual art or music or writing or building or gardening or anything else, this layer of reality exists whether or not we pay any attention to it.  Obviously, we may expect that our experience of divine judgment will be less unpleasant to the extent that we have consciously and knowledgeably sought to follow God according to the light of our understanding.  This layer of our motive for creation points our attention upward to God, reminding us of the vertical dimension by which we are not only masters of our subcreation, but that we too are a creation that is subject to our Creator.

Yet this is not the only dimension of creativity or layer of creativity that exists.  It is important to recognize as well that in whatever sphere we exercise creativity, we are embellishing something and going above and beyond that which is necessary.  We all need to eat food and drink water in order to survive, but we do not need cuisine to survive.  We need clothing and shelter for social decorum as well as protection from the elements, but we do not need fashion or formal architecture.  We need to communicate in order to understand others and be understood, but we do not need poetry or advanced rhetoric.  And so it goes.  Every aspect of our existence can be engaged in with a high sense of creativity that goes well above and beyond that which is necessary, and in that creativity we often seek the approval and the understanding of others.  We write love poetry so that we may be loved by those whom we love.  We cook creatively in order to express our love of good food and our desire to feed our friends and family with abundant luxury.  We create according to the styles and fashions of our times so that we may relate to others and answer them where they are, sometimes in the hope that we may profit from it ourselves through patronage.  This level of our creativity expresses a horizontal level of creativity that relates to the ways that our behavior has a social dimension, seeking to address not only the needs of those around us but also their wants and preferences.

In addition to this, creativity clearly involves an aspect of self-expression and clear statements of our identity.  Regardless of what realms we create in, that which we create will be an expression of ourselves in at least some fashion, whether intentionally or not.  Even where we seek to suppress our individuality, we will at least create out of our standards and beliefs, which will tell those who interact with our creation some aspect of ourselves.  Quite often this self-expression is far beyond that level, as creative people regularly seek to express their longings and frustrations through their creativity, and create in order to support their worldview commitments and to express their identities.  Very often, our need to express ourselves and to get what is inside of us outside of us so that it may no longer threaten us overwhelms our interest in conversation with others or in a respect for others.  It is easy to create in a self-absorbed fashion, after all.  And it is easy to see that our creativity as self-expression can itself exist across all aspects of our behavior.  We may cook those foods that we most enjoy eating, speak in a way that expresses our own interests and education, whether or not anyone else can understand us, and our art can follow personal concerns to a degree that it is necessary for people to understand our autobiography before they can grasp what it is we create and why.

None of these layers are inherently illegitimate and all of them exist simultaneously whether or not we pay attention to them.  That which we create in any realm cannot help but tell others something about ourselves.  We must, after all, have created out of our own knowledge or imagination, and must have created with materials and approaches that were accessible to us.  Our creations, moreover, will tell others some aspect of our character and of our personality and of our beliefs and worldview commitments, whether we are intentionally trying to signal this to others or not.  Likewise, creativity cannot help but be above and beyond that which is necessary for mere survival.  That which arranges and blends and transforms the materials around us cannot help but express some sort of embellishment or ornamentation.  Even the sorts of problems to which we turn our attention to will in many ways be conditioned and influenced by the times and situations we find ourselves in.  Whether we like it or not, we cannot help but be influenced by the social world in which we inhabit.  Even if we lived in the wilderness in deserted places, we would be influenced by the social world we came from even if there was no one to share our creations with.  Finally, we cannot help but create with implications towards the divine.  Whether we recognize it or not, we create because God created us in His own image as creative beings who are responsible and subject to Him.  Even if we rebel against God’s authority, even if we ignore His laws and His ways and pay Him no attention whatsoever, we cannot help but serve Him in that our creations will express our identity as beings created in His image and likeness and subject, eventually, to His judgment.  How we act given that reality is our problem to work out over the course of our existence.

Obviously, different people at different times will emphasize different aspects of creativity.  A great many people may not be aware of the extent to which their creativity reflects these dimensions, so let us discuss a mundane example that demonstrates the layers of creativity that exist even where they are not consciously recognized, and where even the existence of creativity may not be understood.  Let us look at a mother [1] making a dinner for her family.  It is the evening and she has already worked for a long day, but her family is hungry and so she goes about making dinner for them all with the ingredients that she has in the fridge and cupboard and pantry.  The ingredients she cooks from will reflect her understanding (or lack thereof) of God’s laws and ways, and she will likely view her cooking dinner as a fulfillment of her duties as a mother, and her interest in the well-being of the rest of her family.  In addition, she will create dinner with certain aesthetical principles and a concern for what her family likes to eat.  She knows that she may personally enjoy creating peanut soup with chicken but that her children would prefer chicken nuggets with fries.  She may, moreover, choose to involve her husband and/or children with the creation of dinner, so as to make it a family ritual in which everyone takes part and can own some part of, and her cooking will at any rate, even if it does not involve any aesthetic flourishes, express her own beliefs about the role of a mother.

Let us therefore conclude.  We have seen that the various motives that Greenberg ascribes to different ages of concert music in the Western tradition exist simultaneously as layers not only in music but also in all aspects of creativity.  We have also seen that these layers exist in some fashion whether or not people recognize a task as creative or whether or not someone consciously wishes to express themselves or embellish or ornament beyond that which is necessary for survival or wishes to give glory to God.  The fact that we may recognize one or more layers of creative meaning to our behavior does not in any way determine what layers exist.  Quite often people are creative without being conscious that they are creative at all.  And it is very common that people are not aware of the way that they embellish beyond that which is necessary in their tasks for their own aesthetic enjoyment as well as their desire to communicate with others, much less examine the way that the options that they view as available to them will reflect their view of God’s laws and ways and how they are seeking to obey Him or deliberately disobey and disregard Him.  Whether or not we choose to consciously examine our motives and the motives of those around us, such information exists to be decoded and understood, whether we realize it or appreciate it or not.  What we do about that is our concern.

[1] It should be noted that similar concerns would be present to the extent that a father cooked for his family or if someone cooked for themselves or themselves and a loved one who was over for a date, but the example I chose was one that is the most mundane and the one whose creativity may be least recognized.