79 E College Street, Hillsdale, MI 49242

View map

Conner David McCain, Chant and Modernity: A Lecture-Recital on the Relationship between Freedom and Creativity

What we think freedom is shapes what we think creativity is, how it works, and what its ends are. The way that freedom is generally understood from a secular standpoint, as the ability to pursue any line of action at any moment in time, produces a view of creativity that places novelty as its primary value. For the artist to be freely creative, they cannot be bounded by tradition or the past. One looks at the state of visual art, especially, and sees the result of this pursuit: artistic works which only aim at novelty often cease to be beautiful, as Sir Roger Scruton has seductively argued in his Why Beauty Matters series for the BBC. The way that the Catholic Church views freedom, as the ability to do good in Christ at any moment, outlined by Bishop Erik Varden in his book Chastity, shapes an entirely different understanding of creativity and the creative act than the secular view. In this view of freedom, action is oriented toward a particular end, and human freedom exists to pursue that end, which is Goodness. For the artist, the end of creativity is Beauty. The artist is freely creative only when that end is pursued.

Conner David McCain is Professor and Director of Sacred Music at Saint Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York, and a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at the University of Aberdeen. He holds an MMus from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and an MA in Philosophy from the University of St. Andrews.