David W. Fenton wrote:
(OK, since there was a direct question doubting the fact I stated, this isn't REALLY breaking my promise to try and stay silent on the subject.)...Raymond Horton �crit:
During some quick research Internet yesterday when I couldn't
answer the question myself, it would appear that Stravinsky, for example,
may have been an atheist as a young man (the three great ballets)
and experienced a conversion during the 1920s (Symphony of Psalms,
more).
Is there some documentary evidence that Stravinsky experienced a conversion, or is this just yet another stupid idea that the combination of religion and music seems to provoke from certain people?
Tuesday I could access a cached version of the Encyclopedia Brittanica Article on-line which described the conversion which followed a reported miraculous healing of the composer's injured finger (!) in 1926, but today the search engines don't allow me to access it. I'm not near a good library, so it's the best I can do - If you or anyone else can dispute it with a better source, please do.
But no, one does not have to be a believer to write sacred music. I wrote part of a cantata when I was an agnostic. It was crap, but most of what I wrote back then was.
Here is one reference to the Stravinsky conversion on a timeline:
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:05u-A3ER42cJ:www.niftymind.com/Stravinsky/timeline.htm+stravinsky+%22religious+conversion%22&hl=en
And a description of it on a less authoritative site than Brittanica:
http://www.ptloma.edu/Music/MUH/composers/stravinsky.htm
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Since I opened my big yap again, I'll throw in two quotes I found while searching for the above. The first is a probable example of another great atheist composer:, the second an example that the subject is, perhaps, worthy of study if addressed in a non-prejudicial way:
--- http://www.classiccat.net/ravel_m/biography.htm
...Ravel was not religious and was probably an atheist....
--- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2001/06/01/bmphil31.xml
...Like Turangalila, Poulenc's Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani is touchingly innocent in its mingling of the sensual and the spiritual. (Poulenc underwent a religious conversion in the middle of composing it, and it shows.)...
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