How do we know it’s true?

I listened to a programme on two 20th century musical composers this evening – Henryk Gorecki from Poland and Arvo Part from Estonia.  I’d never heard of either of them before, but since I’m half Polish, I expected to prefer Gorecki.  I was surprised that it was Part’s music that resonated.

Part (unlike a talkative Gorecki) is an extremely shy man who does not give interviews easily.  But he said one thing over which I have been puzzling.  He was a mature composer before he ever heard Gregorian chant. But, he said, when he listened to it for the first time he was stunned.  “I knew,” he said, “that this was the truth.”

Okay, what do we mean when we say something like music is true?  It’s not what my mother meant when she said George Washington was telling the truth when he admitted he’d chopped down the tree.  It’s not what mathematicians mean when they it’s true that 2+2=4.  It’s not what a historian means when he says something is true.  It’s not even what believers mean when they say scripture is true.

Yet, we do somehow know that music is a language.  We know that music can communicate.  So music must be able to say something that is true.

I’ve been asking myself – and others – this question for some time now.  I know how we test the validity of scientific theories.  But how do we test the validity of music or art or poetry or sculpture or literature?

I asked a musician this question recently.  He gave me a long silent look which I recognized as the look I give when someone asks me a question and I think “I don’t know where to begin;  I think you need to read several books, or take several courses, or live several decades more before I can begin to explain.  You’re starting out with all the wrong assumptions.”

Then  he said that it was not in understanding the nuts and bolts – how chords were used or different rhythms or instruments were combined.  Finally he said “You listen.  Stop trying to analyze it.  Just listen.  Eventually you might just know whether it’s true, or whether it’s fake.”

So this is what I think he meant and what I’m beginning to think I also think:

There are some things that we apprehend directly.  I don’t mean necessarily immediately, but I mean without need for any additional confirmation.  Like seeing the color green, for instance.  I don’t need to analyze the light spectrum emanating from an object to confirm that what I am perceiving is green.  I apprehend it directly.  Could I be wrong?  Yes, I could be color blind.  But that doesn’t change the fact that there are some things I apprehend directly, that I do not need to analyze or prove further in order to know.  I might, on rare occasions, do some further tests to find out if this really is green or some trick of the light.  But it is not the test results that communicate to me what green is.  It’s the seeing the green.  And without that, all the test results in the world cannot communicate to me what green looks like.

I think the arts are very much like that.  We apprehend them directly.  We recognize directly that they are beautiful or truthful or profound.  Yes, the arts can also be analyzed – what century they reflect, who they were influenced by, how they broke with tradition or reworked some period.  These things are useful and often may increase our appreciation of the intrinsic value of the work.  But they are not the same thing and do not themselves constitute that immediate response which recognizes beauty or truth.

Can we be wrong in what we apprehend?  of course.  We can mistake tatty tawdry trash for great art.  We can be artistically “color-blind” or “tone-deaf” in some areas, unable to see or hear the beauty that is there.  And we can learn, as we mature, to recognize truth in ways that as children we do not.

But in the end, I think we know that art is great because many people recognize it as great.  Because we look at it, listen to it, and know directly that it is true.

On another day I will try to explain why I think the answer to this question matters.  At least to people like me who seem compelled to analyze absolutely everything.  (Well, half of me is Polish.  But the other half is German.)

I have many people to thank for their thoughts on this question, most recently the latest posts on the blog Thinking Makes It So.  My conclusions, however, are nobody’s responsibility but my own.  And I unreservedly reserve the right to change my mind.