When speaking in the general defense of religion people often say, "But what about beauty, expression, emotions, aren't those all difficult to explain without religion?" They may attempt to take claim over classical works composed by the religious. "We wouldn't have Beethoven, Strauss, Bach, and Stravinsky without religion!" We atheists are not immune to the transcendent and the numinous. Enter in Maurice Ravel, a French composer born in 1875. Often compared to the likes of Claude Debussy, Ravel became one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. Ravel was an atheist.
Among Ravel's completed works, there is a notable absence of religious forms or references. His habitual inspiration came from nature, from fairy tales and folk songs, and from classical and oriental legends. Nor was he always sympathetic to the religious works of other composers [1].Pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory, being an atheist an extremely rare thing. There was just no other competing idea to theism other than a sort of vague deism. Darwin published On The Origin of the Species at the end of 1859 [2] paving the way for scientifically informed atheistic thought.
Maurice Ravel Complete Piano Works
Disc 1 -
Disc 2 -
No comments:
Post a Comment