Music and Mind...

Music is phenomenally powerful at moulding people's perceptions, beliefs and moral disposition. Martin Luther realised this when he composed hymns to spread his doctrine. Catchy, repetitive, no more than three to four minutes long; rather like modern pop music. Now, it cannot be argued that the Beatles, for example, are responsible for the moral and educational disintegration of society but I would say that they made it a lot easier by writing catchy songs in which a revolution is enshrined. Whereas Dunstable, Tallis, Byrd, Purcell et al composed music in the service of Church and King (or Queen), and in which Christian doctrine is a given, since the 1950's we've been at mercy of the catchy tune of fornication, "free love," adultery, immodesty, and so many other deplorable things. Modern people prefer these catchy tunes because they are the very oracles of revolution. Play an English madrigal by Byrd or Gibbons and watch them run for the hills. The reason they despise it is because they have become accustomed to the vain, loud and endlessly repeated tunes of this godless age from the cradle (to the ruin of their taste), and which tunes are designed to render the Christian past irrelevant.

Do play the video. It's one of my favourite madrigals, by Thomas Weelkes. Hark, all ye lovely saints.