In reality a great art is always the expression of a great culture, whether it be manifested through the work of an individual genius or embodied in a great impersonal tradition. For society rests not only on the community of place, the community of work, and the community of race, it is also and before all a community of thought. We see this in the case of language, which is fundamental to any kind of social life. Here ages of thinking and acting in common have produced a terminology, a system of classification and even a scale of values which in turn impose themselves on the minds of all who come under its influence, so as to justify the old saying that a new language is a new soul. There is also a common conception of reality, a view of life, which even in the most primitive societies expresses itself through magical practices and religious beliefs, and which in the higher cultures appears in a fuller and more conscious form in religion, science and philosophy. And this common view of life will also tend to embody itself in external forms and symbols, no less than do the more material and utilitarian activities of the society. As a matter of fact we know from the magnificent cave paintings of palaeolithic times that man already possessed a religious or magical art of no mean order long before he had learnt to build houses, to cultivate the ground or to domesticate animals.

--- Christopher Dawson, Art and Society

Amid the week's hullabaloo came a copy of a letter. The sender gave some thought to publishing it in our comment column but sent it to me privately instead. It takes the same dismissive, sanctimonious attitude we've seen on recent display. Throughout this letter—as with the discussion elsewhere—we read phrases like "personal preferences", "comfort zones", "personal comfort zones", "musical preferences", "just trivial preferences"....

It's so nice when people call your beliefs trivial preferences.

I especially cherish their encouragement in saying we should leave our personal comfort zones, as though they are granite-jawed, grizzled frontiersman types challenging us to storm Mordor. I also enjoyed the dopey misunderstanding of the tritone. And I confess to having alarmed my neighbors with my screams after reading how naïve Wagner was.

Yah, what a country-mouse, that Richard Wagner!

Here, let me make that sound again:

Some people (including Wagner) have tried to claim that music hit a pinnacle at some point between Bach and Beethoven, but that is a very naïve position.

I wonder if these "some people" live in the same trailer park as the "many music historians" who can summarize the development music as an evolving acceptance of dissonance.

Irony, people! Develop a keen sense of irony.

But what Dawson said is true.

Society rests on a community of thought, a common language that codifies and orders our values, instills a shared conception of reality and erects symbols and forms. Yet for some this common view of life has become nothing more than a trivial preference.

The problem is not just that these people hold balmy beliefs, they don't have the mental framework to entertain anything else. If you wanted to help these people, how could you do it?

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685. Perhaps sometime in the next 42 days you can find an appropriate place to lay a wreath to honor one of the great men who understood that while worship is sometimes corporate, it is always communal. He lived and worked in the knowledge that the 98% is sometimes 100% wrong, and that what conveys meaning is never a trivial preference.